Every other week when I was a kid, some kid brought their store-bought cuppity-cakes into school, beaming benevolently as we wished them a perfunctory “happy birthday” before diving face-first into the sugar. The poor teachers had the task of dealing with us after we’d gotten our sugar high on.

I tried to rise above it as a kid. To say, “it’s okay; the teachers like ME better because I don’t bring on the sugar high.” But it was a steaming pile of bullshit. Had I been given the chance, I’d have jumped to bring my very own sugared treats into the class, my classmates bowing before me, a queen doling out cake to her loyal subjects.

Thanks to my parents humping schedule, I was never given the opportunity.

Nope.

My birthday falls into the absolute middle of the summer abyss. July 15th. Pay day.

Every year, I’d throw parties, and about half the class would show up. The rest were too busy vacationing up in Detroit or whatever and unable to attend. This meant less loot for me. Plus, I felt like a loser. My parents should buy me a pony to make up for this.

And now that I’m an adult, I swore off the 15th as my “birthday,” opting to celebrate on the more refined sounding 28th. That pushes my birthday just far away enough from July 4th that I might actually stand a chance at throwing a party with real! live! guests! Plus, I made it official on The Facebook, which means that it’s really real, right?

Plus, July 15th is cursed. Some gigantor percentage of the last ten years has found me, on my birthday, in the ER or Urgent Care. Happy Birthday! You have a scratched cornea!

But try as I have to deny it, I can’t help but feel like tomorrow IS my birthday. Which means that I’m both terrified by what the day will bring and hopeful that it involves presents.

Which, now that I think about it, is how I feel every day.

It was one of the first nights I’d worked in the brand-new restaurant. Anyone who has worked in restaurants before knows that the first months after opening are a fucking zoo: The pond scum slithers it’s way off the pond and into the joint to try it out – and torture the staff in the progress – the usually new management has no idea how much of everything to order and the waitstaff is so new they can’t tell you if they even stock honey. For tea. At a pizza place. In fact, no one knows if there’s any honey, so it’s a safe bet there’s no honey. It’s a pizza place, after all.

As one of the only servers who’d waited tables before, I got handed the biggest section and was frequently given tables that other servers couldn’t keep up with. It was pizza, not rocket science, and yet, I had the most experience.

One of the tables I’d gotten just as we’d run out of pizza sauce (at a pizza place!); something that sparked horror and general flailing about from management, cooks and servers alike, was a two-top, or deuce, as we called them. Old people. Whatever. I maintained that groups of women are the worst to wait on, so the old people, I wasn’t worried about.

Barely audible over the din of the shrieking waitstaff and patrons (no! pizza! sauce!), they placed their order. I, like I always did, wrote it down neatly in my notebook. It wasn’t to help me remember, no, it was so I could have BACKUP whenever anyone insisted I ordered something wrong. I’d take the fall for a lot of mistakes, but I wouldn’t own it unless it was mine.

I placed the order in the computer and got them their drinks. Pizzas took at least thirty minutes to cook, so I knew I had time to get caught up on the rest of my tables. Like I said, it was a busy night.

When their order came out, I brought it out and served it, just as I’d been showed.

I placed the pieces in front of the woman, she smacked my hand, “THAT’S NOT WHAT I ORDERED,” she screamed. I whipped out my hand-dandy notebook to show her that yes, in fact, it was.

“NO!” she screamed, “it’s not!”

Well, there wasn’t any point in arguing. I apologized. It had obviously been my error in both writing down and repeating back to them. Fine. I knew I was right.

I grabbed the manager and sent him over to deal with her. This was beyond my pay grade.

He fixed it somehow – maybe he gave them a coupon or a new pizza, I didn’t know and didn’t care – and when I brought over drink refills, I apologized again for what had happened.

They looked at me as though I had killed their puppy. Or Jesus. Or their puppy AND Jesus.

Okay then.

Except, they were in my section and every time I went near the table, their mournful, sad and somewhat hateful eyes followed me, just like those haunted house pictures. Every movement I made, they watched, hatefully.

I wanted to yell, “It was just a pizza, you assfuckers!” but I didn’t. Instead, I smiled more brightly with each passing glare. If you can’t win ’em, be cheerful as fuck about it.

Finally, they left, their eyes no longer murdering me every time I stepped foot near the table. My fellow servers patted me on the back. “Eh,” I said, “she looked like a bullfrog anyway.” Because she did.

The following day, I stopped by my pharmacy to pick up a wrist brace. I know what they say about us Midwestern chicks, but I don’t have cornfed ankles OR wrists. So carrying trays that weighed 6000000 pounds did a number on me. Hence the wrist braces.

Who should walk past me?

The bullfrog lady and her husband. They looked relatively normal until they spied me, squatting there, examining wrist braces. Then, again with the “you killed Jesus stares.”

This time I wasn’t at work. This time I was off the motherfucking clock.

So I did the only thing that made sense: I stuck my tongue out at them and blew a gigantic raspberry.

They glared harder (perhaps I’d been upgraded to “kills baskets of puppies and/or Jesus) as I walked back to the register, a bounce in my step, feeling that I, for once, had finally been able to speak my mind.

(they became regulars at the pizza place and I refused to wait on them ever again)

Aunt Becky: “Lookit my garden! I planted it full of things that sound like venereal diseases!”

The Daver: (laughs)

Aunt Becky: “You’re not going to melt in the sunlight out here, are you? I know you’re allergic to air.”

The Daver: “I’ll dart back inside when I feel I’m getting crispy.”

Aunt Becky (sighs happily): “Isn’t it pretty?”

The Daver: “Yes. But I feel like it needs…something.”

Aunt Becky: (stares at him)

The Daver: “Like an accent or something. It all looks so random.”

Aunt Becky: (stares at him)

The Daver: “You know, an accent.”

Aunt Becky: “Like a clown that pops out with his penis dancing to the YMCA?”

The Daver: “Well, that or a rock or something.”

Aunt Becky: “A ROCK?”

The Daver: “Yeah, or something.”

Aunt Becky: “I’ll get to work on the flamboyant clown.”

—————

(at the greenhouse)

Aunt Becky: “They have accent rocks, Daver.”

The Daver: “Nice.”

Aunt Becky: “But they all say lame shit like, ‘if you weren’t my mother, you’d be my best friend.'”

The Daver: (stares into his iPhone, playing Angry Birds)

Aunt Becky: “I want an accent rock that says, ‘GO THE FUCK AWAY.'”

The Daver: “That’d be classy.”

Aunt Becky: “Or ‘Shut Your Whore Mouth.'”

The Daver: “Even classier.”

Aunt Becky: “Accent rocks are bullshit.”

(time passes)

Aunt Becky: “What about a gigantic cross with a life-sized Jesus on it?”

The Daver: “No.”

Aunt Becky: “You’re bullshit.”

The Daver: (laughs)

Aunt Becky: “I guess you better get to work, hiring the flamboyant penis-dancing clown to live in our front garden, huh?”

The Daver: “Guess so.”

Well, at least it’s not me ruining THIS summer. Other summers, well, that was all me.

When I was a kid, it was all, “DON’T TOUCH THIS, OR IT’LL BLOW YOUR HAND OFF” followed by a brief burst of light, a huge bang, and a ton of smoke. THOSE were the good old days, even if they lasted mere seconds and scared me into pissing my pants.

But now, I can’t find a sparkler to save my own skin. I can’t yell at my children to “STEP AWAY OR YOU’LL DIE” because there’s nothing with which they can lose even a single leg. Some call this progress. I call it bullshit.

It is my God Given Right as an American to shoot my own fucking eye out.

Sure, you wouldn’t know that fireworks were actually banned by the amount going off in my neighborhood for the past week or two, but that only further enrages me. How could I have been so stupid as to NOT drive over to a neighboring state for some dangerous fun? I’m sure Missouri isn’t quite as big an asshole as Illinois.

(Dear Missouri, Let’s make out. Love, AB)

Considering our new state motto, “We Impeach Our Corrupt Governors,” one might THINK that Illinois had Fun on speed dial, but without fireworks, it’s simply untrue.

Sure, I can still buy those stupid things you can throw at the ground that make a big SNAP! noise, but those are kinda piddly bullshit, you know? What kid is all “LOOKIT THIS, I CAN MAKE A BANG?” How can I create ACTUAL MEMORIES of acrid gunsmoke and brief flashes of awesome?

Simply put, I cannot.

Until, I suppose, I buy a semi-automatic weapon and use THAT motherfucker instead of fireworks.

That’ll learn you, Illinois, for being such an assmunch.

P.S. Despite my pleas, The Target won’t stock the lethal form of Jarts. I call bullshit.

It’s taken me four years of painstaking work to get my house to look as though we’re not a family of squatters who just happened upon a house and moved in. Hell, I’m just now trying to get my downstairs painted from the hideous green that our previous owners decided was “soothing.”

It’s not fucking soothing. It’s INFURIATING.

(I’m also colorblind, so while it may APPEAR a nice color to you, it looks like cat shit smeared on the walls)

Anyhow, one of the first things I did, beyond repair our hideous downstairs bathroom was to start work on the landscaping.

Now you probably don’t think “landscaping” and “Aunt Becky” should appear in the same sentence, and you would be right. I nearly broke both ankles using a pickaxe last summer, to a chorus of laughter from everyone else involved.

(shut your whore mouth)

See what I had to work with here?

This summer has, thus far, been devoted to watching cat videos and replacing the stuff I ripped out last summer. So I’m outside a lot.

Last week, before I left for Assville, I was outside, planting some roses in the rain, humming the Pina Colada song (I always replace “pina” with “penis” because I am a classy broad) and I remembered something stored previously in the dark, dank recesses of my mind.

Those Geese.

Well, okay, I thought they were ducks, until The Twitter pointed out I was wrong. The Twitter is good for that.

But anyway, I was all, “self, whatever HAPPENED to those stupid ducks that people used to dress up in wee clothing? The ones that I may or may not have stolen clothing off of when I was an asshole teenager.”

I honestly couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen a goose in wee rainboots and that made me fairly stabbity. Not because I wanted to see one, mind you, but because geese are Of The Devil. Had they been otters – which rate high on the cuteness scale – I’d never have stolen their clothes.

But since the plaster geese seem to be extinct, I think it’s high time for something to replace it. ANOTHER animal for (old) people to dress up for the seasons.

And Pranksters, I’m thinking that what would sell like hotcakes are one of two items that I should probably get started on crafting immediately, if not sooner.

Don’t you want to PREORDER this guy in statue form?

Not convinced? Let me show you his wee clothes:

SEE?

Perfect for the holidays, Pranksters.

Now, Option Two is this Bad Boy:

You MAY have to include a note that says, “no this is not a vicious showerhead.”

But let’s see him in his clothes!

Oui! Oui! Oui! You can see the BASTILLE DAY Sea Lamprey has busted out the wine AND the adorability.

These motherfuckers are going to be selling like HOTCAKES. We should start preordering them IMMEDIATELY, if not sooner.

So that, perhaps Pranksters, will be how I finance the landscaping (and subsequent hospitalizations) I must do this summer. THAT is the way I can leave MY MARK on the world.

Statues.

Who wants in on this, Pranksters?

I know that most of you have an image of me, angrily ranting about John C. Mayer while eating delicious encased meats, and while that’s partially spot-on, I’m not normally all that ranty. Unless it’s about the lazy bastards who leave their shopping carts in the parking lots rather than the corral. Because that’s a hot pile of bullshit.

But I’ve been violated by the TSA in more ways that I can count and still don’t care. Hell, I like to think of it as “action” rather than “violation of rights.”

But as I stood in line yesterday, ready to get some hot TSA action, I couldn’t help but overhearing a conversation going on behind me. They were talking about a child who’d stolen a car from his stepfather to see his “real dad.”

Rather than become outraged by the stupid kid (he was 7)(we all know kids under 9 shouldn’t drive), I was pissed by the “real dad” comment. Because if there’s a “real” dad, there must be a “fake” one.

In Casa de la Sausage, there lives a man. He’s the one who takes the child to the doctor – he’s even got the doctor’s programmed on speed dial – and the one who is up at night when we have fevers. He cleans up puke and sputum. He goes to parent/teacher conferences and field trips. He soothes hurt feelers and rocks babies to sleep. He got a couple of poems written in his honor for Father’s Day. He – like the rest of us who know what it’s like to barf in a bucket while holding your kid’s head over the toilet – should get a medal.

He happens to be the favored parent in the house.

That, Pranksters, is a father. There is no one fucking fake thing about it. It chaps my ass that a single person would doubt it.

No, he wasn’t there for the conception (was I?) or the birth. But shooting a load into a vagina does not a “real” father make.

I *know* who fathers my children. There’s nothing fake about it.

I had a fairly vivid series of dream/wake hallucinations (no, this isn’t a standard blog post about my dreams because, well, my dreams tend to involve eating cheeseburgers and/or marshmallow castles) after The Great Stomach Bug of ‘Eleven, Part II. Those hallucinations were, in part, fueled by the Demerol I’d been given by the ER, but they were fairly important, nonetheless.

See, one of them was all, “Get the fuck off your lazy ass and DO SOMETHING.” And by “something,” my hallucination didn’t mean to build a panic room in my tree. It was telling me to get over myself and go to some of those blogging conferences everyone angsts about.

So I did.

I bought my ticket to Type-A Mom the following day.

I’ve been saying “I’m going to Assville” ever since. I’m certain that the folks down in Assville appreciate that to no end, because, well, I’m sure they’ve never heard THAT one before. I sincerely hope I can get a shirt down there that says, “I’ve been to Assville,” because how classy is that? (answer: VERY CLASSY)

I’m pretty excited about going, actually, Assville or not. I know everyone gets all angsty about these conferences, and trust me, I’ve had my cases of ennui (whatever that means), but I’m really excited to see some of my friends.

Most bloggers spend months preparing for this sort of thing – carefully choosing outfits and coordinating nail polish colors – but me? I’ll be lucky if I pack BEFORE the limo comes to pick me up on Wednesday. Otherwise, I’ll make the driver help.

Nah, the only thing I’m doing to prepare is to get a bikini wax. Because, we all know everyone at this conference is going to see my beav. Or care what it looks like. I barely care, truth be told.

Like microwaving Peeps, it just seems like a good idea.

But I’m going to be dead honest with you, Pranksters: I’m nervous about the waxing. I’ve never done one before. Having some tiny, angry Russian lady pulling chunks of my hair out of my crotchal region sounds like the kinda party I don’t want to go to.

I mean, what if she MOCKS MY VAGINA? Because she totally could. And if I was laying there, all spread-eagled on the table, I don’t think I want someone MOCKING my crotch. I’ve delivered three children through that vagina: I’ve been through enough humiliation. I might cry. And then, I’d bet, because she’s all Russian and stoic and shit, she’d bitch slap me for crying.

Pranksters, OMG, what if the Russian waxer lady BITCH-SLAPS ME and then calls her OTHER waxer friends over to bitch-slap me, too! I’m dying inside just THINKING about it.

But if my dream/hallucination is correct, I must get a wax. I must! Well, okay, so the dream didn’t specify what I was supposed to do with my vagina, but you know, I’m sure that it MEANT I needed to wax.

So if you see me at Type A Mom this week, be sure to compliment my vagina.

Or buy me a drink. Whatever.

————-

I’m over at Cafe Mom talking about shared custody which seems especially timely since The Daver wrote about becoming a stepfather yesterday for Band Back Together.

When I was a baby, I’d sleep so late in the mornings that my mother often rushed into the room, certain I was dead. And I was. DEAD TO THE WORLD.

As I grew up, it became clear that I was simply not a morning person. I’d wake up, stomp around the house for half an hour spitting venom at anyone who dared speak to me and then be…okay. Not great, but okay.

Rather than be offended by my mutterings of “I hate you, motherfuckers,” this delighted my family to no end. My brother and father often fought over who got to wake me up. My brother generally won.

So I’d be woken up to his frantic BANG BANG BANG on the door and just as I had rolled over, realizing that I was not, in fact, eating a castle made of marshmallows, he’d burst into my room.

Singing.

Off-key.

Often, he’d include a pot to bang.

“IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP, BE-CKY, IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP NOW!” was a favorite, although generally it was this: “RISE, AND SHINE, AND BRING OUT THE GLORY-GLORY, RISE, AND SHINE, AND SING OUT THE GLORY-GLORY.”

By the time I’d lobbed a pair of shoes at his head, I was downright furious. It’s bad enough to have to live THROUGH a morning, but to be woken up to my brother’s off-key warbling of church songs? That was fucking TORTURE.

Once I’d gotten dressed and stomped downstairs, my family would greet me one by one with, “WHY HELLLLLO, BECKY. HOW ARE YOU TODAY?”

I’d let my middle finger respond.

While this brought no end of amusement to the rest of my family, I’d always hoped that I’d grow into a morning person. After I plotted their death by torpedo or frenzied shark attack, of course.

Not so much. Their untimely deaths OR an ability to enjoy anything before ten AM.

I’ve fought against it but it turns out that I will simply never be a morning person.

Mornings are bullshit.

This week, I have to be a morning person. My preschool teacher is gone for a week, which means that I have to entertain a very bored Alex and Amelia.

It’s gin and tonic o’clock somewhere, right?

—————–

Are you a morning person? Can you come over and watch my kids for me?

I’m entirely certain I was a difficult child. Especially knowing now* what an all-mighty, insufferable pain in the ass I can be, it’s not too surprising that my mother would try to off me. I’m only surprised that she’d wait until I was eighteen to do it.

While the rest of you Pranksters had cars as teenagers, I didn’t. Instead, I bummed rides from you. See how thoughtful I was? I could drive, I just didn’t care enough to buy my own car. I much preferred to spend my dough on cheeseburgers and jaunty hair accessories. Not much has changed.

For my high school graduation, my parents gave me a car.

Before you begin hurling coffee cups at your computer monitor in righteous indignation, I assure you that it was decidedly UN-like the car commercials where the graduate wakes up to a brand-new bow-wrapped Lexus in the driveway.

No.

My parents gave me a two hundred dollar Dodge Shadow in a color I can only call “road chocolate.”

(that is a rough approximation of the Dodge Shadow I owned)

You’d think with a carpool lane consisting of Range Rovers, Porsches, and Jaguars, I’d have been underwhelmed by this dingy road-chocolate colored piece-of-shit car, and it couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

Sure, the window didn’t roll all the way up and okay, I had to put a portable boom box in the front seat if I wanted to listen to music, and sure, the seatbelt didn’t quite….well, buckle, but it didn’t matter. The car was mine. I loved it. Pink puffy hearts.

I’d tool around in my jalopy, cold in the winter and hot as balls in the summer, and once school started, I drove it to and from my college classes.

One particularly hot autumn day, I approached a long line of cars stopped in front of me and began to eeeeeeeeasse onto the brakes. I felt something snap. So I eased more. Then I eased even more. By the time I realized I was fresh out of easing room, I veered off the road onto the gravel shoulder, the brakes were jammed down to the floorboard.

The brakes were d-e-a-d busted.

My mother, probably off buying cyanide to poison me with, didn’t pick up when I walked to the nearby elementary school to use the phone, so I had to call my boyfriend’s mother, who graciously came and rescued me.

I never saw my road-chocolate car again. I went back to bumming rides off my friends until the day I became suicidal and bought a two-seater cherry-red Honda del sol.

It was a bonus: a sweet ride that doubled as a coffin (in the event of an accident).

More importantly, it had a six-disc changer in the back. Even then, I was aware of the things that REALLY mattered in life: like air conditioning and the ablity to listen to all my Britney CD’s AT ONCE.

*teenagers are, of course, certain of their awesomeness and anyone who says otherwise is clearly a Communist.

While I was dying of the stomach flu from hell last week, my daughter took it upon herself to throw rabbit food all over the family room. When I say, “all over” I mean motherfucking EVERYWHERE.

A week later, I’m still cleaning it out of the most random of places. Amelia has been grounded until age sixteen.

I was in the middle of frantically vacuuming it out from under my end table, mentally adding a couple more years to her grounding, possibly a moat and a fire-breathing dragon, when Daver asked me to cut his hair.

“I’m going short for summer,” he informed me.

“Sure,” I said, wiping sweat from my face. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

He grabbed his clippers and began to cut his hair. Eventually, he called me. “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”

With that he handed me the clippers.

He didn’t SAY anything about the clippers, so I assumed that they were on the proper setting. Or whatever. I’m no clipper expert.

So I just grabbed ’em and started clipping.

If this were a sitcom, this is where you guys would start to groan.

I neatly shaved a two-inch stripe on the left side of Daver’s head before I realized he’d set the clippers to their lowest setting so I could shave up the back. Not shave his whole head with them.

“Oh FUCK,” I said.

“What?” He replied, somehow oblivious that I’d just made him look like a second-rate Vanilla Ice.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.” This was very bad. Very bad indeed. “I just shaved a vertical stripe on your head!”

“WHAT?” With that he ran to the bathroom to look.

“BECKY!” he hollered. “WHAT DID YOU DO?”

“I, um, I can FIX it,” I promised.

He sat back down and handed me the clippers again, proving that he’s a masochist.

“Maybe I should Bic it,” he said.

“Dave, your head is shaped like an alien. You can’t Bic that shit. You’ll scare small children.” I said as I tried to blend the hair.

I stood back to admire my handiwork.

“Um, maybe you can use some makeup or something.” I suggested.

“Makeup? What the fuck can I do with MAKEUP?”

“Well, um, you could apply brownish eyeshadow to that area some so your pasty whiteness doesn’t shine through. Like that spray paint shit they sold to bald guys.” I said it, then remembered it was an SNL skit.

“I’ll just wear a hat.”

(hours pass)(I eat a cheeseburger)

“The hat doesn’t cover that bit of my head, Becky. YOU OWE ME,” Daver said.

“Well, you could wear a ski cap. I have several…oh, wait, they have rhinestones on them. Plus, um, it’s summer.”

“Yeah,” he said, annoyed.

“From THIS angle, it looks fine,” I suggested, starting to laugh.

“You’re sitting on the OTHER SIDE OF ME.”

(I begin to laugh uproariously)

“I can try and make it look intentional. Shave a swish on either side of your head.”

“I CANNOT GO OUT IN PUBLIC LIKE THIS.”

“Bwahahahahahaha! (wipes eyes) People will just think you have some horrible condition that makes you bald on one side. You can tell them you have leprosy. Maybe people will give you free things!”

I’m laughing so hard that I’m crying.

“Oh great,” he said, playing the straight man. “People will think that I’m rotting. That’s just GREAT, Becky.”

“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Especially if you flail around a little bit. You should practice flailing around. OHMYGOD WE NEED TO GO OUT IN PUBLIC NOW.”

“No.” Dave replied.

“Well,” I snorted. “It’ll grow back. Remember that time I had a mullet?”

He laughed.

“Exactly.”