When I moved out to the suburbs back in aught seven (or was it aught six?), I didn’t expect that I’d blend right in. While I do live in the area in which I was raised, being an adult is much different than being a child. Mainly because you have to remember to take out the recycling bins every Tuesday, and who can remember THAT shit?

(answer: The Daver)

I was a young mother. Not like Teen Mom style, but birth-control-fail-whale and happy-twenty-first-enjoy-your-bottle-of-baby-formula, kind of young. In some parts of the country, having a baby at twenty-one is more normal than it is here in Saint Charles, IL (NOT MO). I’ve never been looked down on, per se (unless the person in question was taller than I), but I’m definitely the odd one out when I take my kid to Jr. High orientation, and not just because I’m wearing a shirt that says “HOORAY BEER” on it.

So the house in the suburbs, that seemed pretty okay with me. I mean, it beat Oak (no) Parking, which is so beyond liberal that me and my boring biological child (not a baby I adopted from some exotic country) well, we were breeders. I was never gonna make it there as a parent.

But here in St. Charles, well, people here are NICE. Within five minutes of moving in, two sets of my neighbors had brought over brownies and cookies for us to eat. It was incredible, considering that, in my condo, the last thing I’d gotten on my doorstep was a bag of dogshit.

My neighborhood is so overrun with kids that when mine go out to play, I can barely identify them in the swarming masses of swirling kids clamoring for money for the ice cream man. It’s fucking great. No, seriously, it is.

Until I go and fuck shit up.

Now when I moved in to my house, I hadn’t realized how piss-poor the landscaping job was. It was like the original owners hired landscapers and every owner since just sorta threw up their hands and decided that rather than “maintain the bushes,*” they’d just wallpaper the bathrooms in every possible fug ass pattern. I imagine it went like this:

Old Owner #1: “Man, those bushes need to be trimmed.”

Old Owner #2: “I’m thinking a three swatch pattern for the bathroom. The room’s only 4×2 – that should make the three patterns POP!”

Old Owner #1: “But the shrubbery must be maintained! We cannot see out of the windows!”

Old Owner #2: “You’re right! We should put a faux wood toilet seat on, too!”

Old Owner #1: “But! We look like recluses!”

Old Owner #2: “What do you think of an angel theme?”

It was February of Aught Six when we moved in and I didn’t know anything about the shrubbery except that there were a number of fake flower beds planted in the front of the house. Oh, and the old owners had been kind enough to leave us a hanging basket of fake flowers that looked like it had come over on the Mayflower.

It took walking into my backyard after the snow melted to note that there was, in fact, two gaping holes in the lawn as well as a number of bushes so overgrown I wouldn’t be surprised if we were on the FBI’s watch list.

“The Serial Killer Next Door,” tonight on Fox News Chicago.

(please ensure, Pranksters, that you find the picture of me with a chain saw to accompany that particular news segment. OH! And I want Tori Spelling to play me in my Lifetime Original Movie.)

I applied this bizarre mix of shredded paper and grass seed to the gigantic spots on the lawn, and oddly, grass grew. Apparently, you grow grass by putting newspaper on it. Perhaps print media ISN’T dead!

But the shrubbery? That was a different ballgame. Two years, two busted ankles, a couple of trips to the Serial Killer Section of the hardware store, and eventually, all of the fug ass evergreens were replaced by daintier azaleas and rhododendrons. Flower beds with REAL FLOWERS were planted and sometimes? They even LIVED.

The problem started here:

I bought Mark Zuckerberg.

Yeah, I know, he’s not the ultimate in tacky and he and I aren’t speaking terms because HELLO, he had a wedding and didn’t invite me. HOW DARE YOU, MARK ZUCKERBERG, HOW DARE YOU?

Once I bought Mark Zuckerberg, I realized he needed some friends. Sure, you can’t have a million friends without making some enemies, but I suspect Mark Zuckerberg has very FEW friends.

I introduce to you, The Bros Winkelvoss, or, as I like to call them, The Winkelvii:

Now you may be saying, THAT’S FLAMINGO ABUSE, or, if you’re my mother, “I raised you better than that.”

But what makes these flamingos even awesomer? THEY’RE SOLAR POWERED.

Yes, that’s right – I have light-up flamingos that I named after the ALMOST Founders of The Facebook.

I decided that this wouldn’t do. It simply wouldn’t do. It needed MORE.

It needed THIS:

I’m thinking these may be Tom from MySpace (that dude was EVERYONE’S friend), Justin Timberlake from Napster, and the guy who put together Friendster.

Who doesn’t want a prop-filled backyard filled with Internet People?

Jimmy Wales – you and your eyes that watch me wherever I go, silently judging me for looking up “Why is orange a color and a fruit” on Wikipedia – You’re NEXT.

You’ve been warned.

*giggle-snort

Edited to add: Here is the link to where you, too, can purchase Zombie Gnomes!

P.S. The flamingo one is next.

(scene, 11PM, just returned to the couch to watch another episode of Prison Break with Guy on the Couch. The Daver watches Deep Space Throat Nine Downstairs)

Aunt Becky: “FUCK, I just knocked over my Diet Coke.”

The Guy On My Couch: “I got the paper towels.”

Aunt Becky: “No, I mean, like FUCK!”

The Guy On My Couch: “Um…okay?”

Aunt Becky: “There should be a law against this.”

The Guy On My Couch: “…”

Aunt Becky: “No Diet Coke shall spill after 11PM.”

The Guy On My Couch: “…”

Aunt Becky: “Why are you staring at me like Michael Scofield? YOU’RE NOT IN PRISON. YOU DON’T NEED TO BREAK OUT OF IT.”

The Guy On My Couch: “…”

Aunt Becky: “What are you waiting for? CALL FEMA! CALL THE NATIONAL GUARD! CALL AARP! CALL NAACP! CALL THE BLACK PANTHERS! This is a fucking emergency situation.”

The Guy On My Couch: “…”

Aunt Becky: “And tell them to bring Funyons. I’m hungry.”

The Guy On My Couch: “…”

Aunt Becky: “I’d be okay with Chex Mix too. Just, you know, if Doctors Without Borders is out of Funyons.”

The Guy On My Couch: “…”

Aunt Becky: “THIS IS A DIRE EMERGENCY.”

The Guy On My Couch: (rolls eyes)

Aunt Becky: “Can you stop giving me the Michael Scofield stare, PLEASE? To circumvent your next question, I do not have a fake-gold crucifix with which to help you turn off the electricity.”

The Guy On My Couch: “I think there’s more footage of Michael Scofield staring out the window than any other scene in the show.”

Aunt Becky: “It’s signifying that he’s working something out. You know, how in House, MD (pauses for a moment of silence), they’re always walking with House and talking as a way to show plot progression?”

The Guy On My Couch: “…”

Aunt Becky: “If he just was all, ‘I need a 12×14 cardboard box, a blue felt-tipped pen, and a pink starburst,’ it’d be all, ‘where the shitballs did that come from?’ Looking out the window gives his plans some credence.”

The Guy On My Couch: “What would Scofield use those for?”

Aunt Becky: “The box would be to send a message via carrier pigeon and the blue pen would be a red herring – the pink starburst? That’d be because they’re delicious.”

The Guy On My Couch: (laughs)

Gimmie the Pink Starburst and NO ONE GETS HURT!

Aunt Becky: “Well, they ARE. And where the shit is AAA to clean up my Diet Coke? You DID call them, right? You DID stress that this was a NATIONAL EMERGENCY, RIGHT?”

The Guy On My Couch: “…”

Aunt Becky: “Maybe the IRS can help.”

The Guy On My Couch: “What, are they gonna give you a tax break or something?”

Aunt Becky: “You never do know…” (gazes into the distance)

(several minutes elapse)

Aunt Becky: “If I made a baby with Wentworth Miller, would it cry in a British accent?

The Guy On My Couch: “You’re fired.”

Aunt Becky: “So are you. Where the fuck is the Red Cross?”

When my eldest was five, I was beyond delighted to find that they still manufactured EZ Bake Ovens. I, myself, had often begged, borrowed, and wheedled my mother about buying me one. Her response was two-fold:

A) They cook the cakes with a lightbulb

2) You can use the REAL oven.

Of course, she, being wiser than I, never allowed me within ten feet of an oven. I give you Exhibit A:

Actual attempt by Your Aunt Becky to create a fancy cake. At age 29.

Pranksters, tell me that cake doesn’t look like semen layered upon bubble gum and a sponge.

Anyway, it was with great gusto that I bought my son an EZ Bake Oven. And promptly realized that my mother, in fact, had been right all along – the thing was a piece of junk. The “brownies” we made tasted like water-logged cardboard.

When I noted the 80’s clothes coming back, I groaned, the same way my own parents groaned when I clomped into the house wearing platform heels and a Dashiki. As if leggings and pajama jeans weren’t bad enough, now grown-ass women can wear whimsical overalls?

WHY, o! WHY would I want to wear those overalls? They look like they’d crawl up your cootch and hang out there, not only making you uncomfortable, but also giving you a massive case of camel toe.

Alas, I digress.

When I saw that Strawberry Shortcake was making a comeback, I’ll admit that I got pretty excited. I mean, that doll used to smell like AWESOMENESS and hell, it’s better than listening to fucking Dora talking about her stupid fucking backpack or Ruby telling Max all bossy-like, “Now, Max…”

WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS, CARTOON CREATURES?

But then, they took on the Smurfs and made Katy Perry – who appears to actually be a smurf in real life – and did a creepy animated Smurf movie. When I stop weeping, I’ll let you know.

My children’s latest obsession is with something that, as a young lass, I, too, loved: My Little Pony. Oh, how I loved My Little Pony – nearly as much as the Pound Puppies and the Barbies that I was not allowed (my hippie mother didn’t want me to grow up thinking women needed to be 7 feet tall with double FF’s and blond). I watched the show as religiously as I could, considering I was allotted an hour of television each day – unless it was PBS, which is how I learned that the art of cooking is this:

“Throw a bunch of shit in a pan. Don’t measure. More ingredients = better. Then order takeout.” Thank YOU, Jeff Smith for that misconception.

I was all excited when the kids stopped watching Phineas and Ferb and began to watch My Little Pony. My middle son, Alex, is extra-specially fond of the show, which I found to be adorable until…

…I realized that they’d redone the show.

I mean, it’s not like the ponies are like all sexified and slinky or anything, which, after seeing the Bratz Dolls, I count as a win, but what was so wrong with the original cartoon? I ASK YOU TELEVISION EXECS, WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE ORIGINAL?

Sighs.

I guess I should go back to my Matlock reruns – interspersed, of course, with episodes of Murder, She Wrote – chug some Geritol, fantasize about getting a cane to trip random walkers-by and yell at the damn kids to get off my damn lawn.

Oh wait.

Those are MY kids on the lawn.

(Scene: Aunt Becky, outside, underneath the rosebed, cursing my climbing roses, my lack of gardening gloves, the cats for peeing on my last nice set of gloves, and the stupid privacy screen for holding onto the fungus that causes black spot. The voices of little children can be heard in the background.)

Aunt Becky (fantasizing) “Grumble, grumble, I’ll fucking turn this cat into a fucking pair of slippers for pissing on my gloves.”

Alex, Age 5, (swoops over and plops on a tiny blue child-sized chair): “Mama, I’m bored.”

Aunt Becky: “Go play with Mark Zuckerberg.” (points at the peacock statue under the tree).

Aunt Becky (mutters): “Need to get some statues of the Brothers Winklevii. Flamingos? Gnomes? MOTHERFUCKING BUTTERFLIES?”

Alex (still sitting in the chair, grumbling): “Nah, that’s boring. I wanna swing.”

Aunt Becky: “Wait your turn, J.”

Alex (begins to smile broadly): “Hahahahahaah! Ben* peed in the yard!”

Aunt Becky (turns head in Exorcist-type fashion): “Whaaaaat?”

Alex (laughing so hard he can barely breathe): “Yep. He peed on the swing!”

Aunt Becky (recalling a similar incident several days prior): “BEN – GET OVER HERE NOW.”

Alex (giggling manically- scatological humor is, apparently, genetic): “He just whipped his penis out and started peeing!)

Aunt Becky (Furious George – about to throw down)

Ben (wanders over and looks down at me, under the rosebush, clearly confused): “What’s up, Mom?”

Aunt Becky (teeth gritted): “Did you pee in the yard – AGAIN?”

Ben (confused look): “No?”

Aunt Becky (knowing this child conveniently “forgets” things he’s done unless I’m particularly specific with him): “Your brother just said you did.“

Ben (still confused): “I did NOT! He’s lying!”

Aunt Becky (looks around for Alex for confirmation – does not see him in the chair): “Whaaaa?”

Ben: “ALEX, YOU STOLE MY SWING!”

Alex (laughing so hard he can barely speak): “I. stole. your. swing!” (erupts into gales of laughter)

Aunt Becky (secretly high-fiving the kid for being so cunning): “Alex – we don’t lie. Off the swings, both of you!”

Ben and Alex scamper off to play in the tree house that is not yet, in fact, a panic room ***.

Aunt Becky (beaming quietly with maternal pride as she goes back to her roses): “Atta boy.”

*my son, not the Guy On My Couch**

**I hope

***I have plans – GRAND plans for a panic room in my treehouse.

I put on some profile thing somewhere or another (probably under my “job skills” on LinkedIn)(no, I can’t believe that I bothered with a LinkedIn profile either – the only way I’ll land a job is if I change my name) that I “can use the microwave.”

Generally, that’s true.

Okay, if I’m being honest, sometimes the things I microwave turn into a hard lump of ash, but I figure nitrates are good for you (don’t you go disproving this one, Pranksters).

I’ve spent years trying to work coffee maker and while I haven’t quite mastered it, I feel confident that someday, SOMEDAY, my grown-ass self will be able to brew coffee, too. Until then, I will live with cold coffee or chunky coffee.

ANYWAY.

My history with kitchen appliances is not stellar. Actually, my history is not stellar. I once broke a toe making a sandwich. I also broke a door carrying a diet Coke, but that’s neither here nor there.

Tom Jones wrote “She’s a Lady” about me. He was being sarcastic.

The dishwasher, however, I like to think of as my BFF. Not because it’s particularly good at cleaning my dishes (it’s not), but because I’m holding onto a vain hope that I will one day be able to teach it to sing Christmas carols.

(again, don’t ruin this for me, Pranksters)

The dishes SOMETIMES come out clean, especially if I’ve washed them ahead of time, but I’m trying to gently talk my dishwasher into working a little bit more efficiently. The best part of the dishwasher – bar none – is I get to line up the dishes in a certain way, which satisfies my OCD in the same way owning 8475 things of handsoap does. If there’s ever a zombie apocalypse, I will TOTALLY have clean hands. And a well-organized dishwasher.

Jazz hands!

Saturday night found me not sunbathing with hot french models on a luxury yacht, but sitting at my computer writing a resource page about puberty, brainstorming other words for “erection,” for Band Back Together (we have nearly 500 resource pages)(Thanks for that nursing degree, Mom!) But if you tell anyone I write resource pages and NOT hang with hot French models, I will cut you.

There I was, happily ensconced in some research. I’d just loaded the dishwasher, finally done making an Oreo Cake for Mother’s Day, the kids snuggled up in their wee beds*, The Daver off playing some nerdy card game that involved copious amounts of scotch (I’m not entirely convinced it wasn’t strip poker) while the Guy On My Couch ran to the store to get stuff to make us some fondue.

As I was sitting there, giggling about boners, I began to smell…something. Initially I wrote it off. My neighbors are always throwing wild parties that involve margarita balls, bonfires and cooking shit on their grill, so I’ve learned to tune out most of the weird smells that float through my window. Besides, my cats shit on a schedule, which ensures that most of what fills my nostrils is the scent of their bung.

I’m considering sewing up their bungholes, but that’s neither here nor there.

As I continued giggling about the term “woody,” I noted that the smell – sorta like burnt plastic – was getting stronger. I assumed that it was merely the margarita ball on fire or something similar. There are always teenagers milling about and while I, as an adult, would consider that to be alcohol abuse, teens are less protective of their margarita balls.

Still giggling about the word, “boner,” I got off my ample ass and wandered into the kitchen to find my iPad and make sure my Tiny Tower was well-stocked. When I turned the corner, I saw that the kitchen was, in fact, filling up with a thick acrid smoke.

Fuck.

The electrical wiring in my house made it clear that SOMEONE in the Daley administration was paid off. Pranksters, if you don’t hear from me awhile and learn that a St. Charles, IL family was burned to death while they slept, please tell the Fire Marshall that it was not, in fact arson, but was, in fact, a feature of my abject laziness and inability to fork out zillions of dollars in order to rewire a house. Also mention that I busted both ankles using a pickaxe, just to drive the point home that I should never, ever, be involved in anything to do with “electricity,” “power tools,” “kitchen appliances,” and once burned by bed with a heating pad.

My first thought was that I’d probably left a candle burning directly next to a pile of papers, something I’ve done before and will do again. When that didn’t seem to be the case, I looked at the light fixture in the kitchen, which is so fug that it may lead to blindness if stared at too long. I remembered that it had blown a fuse the week before when I’d had the audacity to turn it on.

The light was not smoking. Phew. That’d have been awkward to explain. “Yes, Mr. Fireman, my kitchen light picked up a nasty smoking habit – Marlboro Reds.”

I didn’t have either of the dudes home to help me, so I ran around a bit, yelling, “BITCH, GIT ME CHICKEN,” before I saw it.

The dishwasher.

The very same dishwasher that cannot sing “Silent Night” OR “Jingle Bells,” (but can do a passing version of “Good King Wenceslas”). The same dishwasher I’ve been lovingly crooning to. The same dishwasher I spend hours upon hours filling, then refilling, then refilling again until it’s perfect.

(Yes there IS a wrong way to load a dishwasher)

It was…smoking.

Not a Marlboro Red or even one of those hippie American Spirit cigarettes. But like real, acrid smoke.

Fuck me sideways.

I opened the thing, which was still cycling, and was nearly bowled over by the acrid stench of burning plastic and steam.

What.

The.

Fuck.

I pulled out the trays and saw it.

My ancient pizza cutter. The one that’s so rusty and decrepit that we’re probably all dying from lead paint poisoning or scurvy. Or dysentery. Or something exotic. The pizza cutter I should’ve replaced nine years ago.

It was there, nicely snuggled in beside the heating element at the bottom of the dishwasher, the plastic handle melting every-fucking-where.

I pulled it out, not actually considering that if the plastic was melting, it was probably fucking hot. So I scorched the tips of my fingers with melted plastic that remains so firmly attached to the tips of my fingers I may actually coat my whole hands in plastic so I can FINALLY start on my long-held resolution of “become bionic woman.”

(the Not Becoming Lil Wayne resolution is going well, by the by, although The Twitter keeps informing me I should “follow him”)

As I was trying (in vain) to remove melty plastic from the bottom of the dishwasher, The Guy On My Couch came home. When he saw me squatting on the floor, covered in bits of melty plastic, he couldn’t help himself – he laughed himself to tears. I growled at him.

The Guy On My Couch: “What…(gigglesnort) happened?”

Aunt Becky (through gritted teeth): “I. don’t. want. to. talk. about. it.”

The Guy On My Couch: “Bwahahahahahahaha!”

Aunt Becky (stands up, swiftly kicks him in the shins): “I hate you.”

Kitchen Appliances: 1

Aunt Becky: 0

I’m still hoping that the dishwasher will master “Silent Night” before December. That is, if it’s not broken. I don’t want to retrain ANOTHER dishwasher to sing Christmas carols, and the coffee maker simply sneers at me.

*throwing things around their bedroom laughing like maniacs

————–

How was your weekend, Pranksters? Did you break any appliances?

This weekend, at Band Back Together, we’re hosting a carnival of posts about Mother’s Day. Before you run away gagging, hear me out: these are the kinds of Mother’s Day posts I wish I’d read years ago. Knowing that I was not alone in my struggles was a pivotal point in my life.

Today, we celebrate the tables forever missing one.

Today we celebrate the mothers we’ve lost and the mothers we’ve found.

We’re celebrating the mothers we wish we’d had while acknowledging the mothers we did have.

This year I’m proud to celebrate a carnival of Mother’s Day posts from perspectives that aren’t always storybook. Perspectives like mine. Perspectives like Jana’s. Perspectives like yours.

Today, no matter where you are in your life, whether you’re missing your own mom, happily celebrating with family, stuck at a table forever missing one, wishing desperately that you were a mother, or wishing desperately that you had a mother, know these two things: you are loved and, more importantly, we are none of us alone.

“What’s wrong, Mama?” he asks as he climbs onto my lap, a spindly bundle of arms and legs that always manage to sucker-punch an internal organ.

“Oh, I’m just sad,” I tell him, running my fingers through his long dark hair, knowing there are some things that cannot be explained to a five-year-old.

“Did someone hurt your feelings?” he asks, as he stares intently at my face, his wide brown eyes boring holes into the back of my skull.

“No, baby, no one hurt my feelings,” I reply, the truth.

“Did a bad guy come?” he asks, quite seriously as his eyes attempt to puzzle out my expressions.

“No, baby, there are no bad guys here,” I laugh a bit, the tears still pooling in my eyes.

His sister wanders in to notice us on the couch together, and, seeing an opportunity in which she should be occupying the space on my lap, climbs up with a grace I didn’t know could come from my genetics.

“You have a boo-boo, Mama?” she asks, her long lashes open and shut as she, too, studies my face with a stunning intensity.

“Sort of,” I tell her as I kiss her, then her brother, on the forehead. “Sort of.”

“Can I kiss it and make it better?” he asks, looking for any open wounds to put his mouth on.

Before I can respond, she climbs down and runs off. She returns holding a box of Hello Kitty Bandaids.

“Here, Mama,” she says, “I got you a Bandaid – a HELLO KITTY Bandaid – for your boo-boo,” proudly she hands me a single bandaid from her precious collection.

“Thanks, Mimi-Girl,” I say, the tears, once again, falling from my eyes, this time, however, from the incredible sweetness of my children. “A Hello Kitty Bandaid will fix it.”

I allow them both to cover me with Bandaids – every mole, every bump, every scrape now carefully protected from the outside world.

“‘Dere, Mama,” she says proudly. “You’re all better.” She scampers off to find her Lego guys to play with.

My son, however, stays sitting upon my lap, twirling a piece of my hair absentmindedly as he thinks.

“Some boo-boos,” he finally says, “they can’t be fixed with a Bandaid.” He speaks with a wisdom far beyond his years.

“You’re right, my boy,” I say, the tears dotting his hair. “Some boo-boos are in secret spots. Hidden spots.”

“Where you can’t see them, right, Mama?” he asks, without really expecting an answer.

“Yep,” I say. “Some boo-boos are on the heart.”

He looks at me thoughtfully before scampering off to a drawer, where I can hear him rummaging around, looking for something. I turn back to my game of Tiny Tower in the vain hope that my broken heart will soon feel whole again.

He whirls back into the room, a mess of elbows and knees, and clamors back onto my lap, where he elbows me in the sternum, leaving me momentarily breathless.

“Here,” he thrusts a piece of paper into my hands happily. “It’s for you.” He then hugs me so tightly I feel like I might burst and watch as he climbs down off the couch and off to find his sister.

I look down at the paper, curious as to what he would have given me.

Painstakingly, he’d sketched a heart in the center of the page and signed his name in a loopy, scrawling way that only a five-year old can. The tears begin again, but this time, they are happy tears.

He rushes back into the room, his sister and their Lego people in hand.

“See, Mimi? I fixed Mama’s heart.”

And I marvel at them, as they dogpile on top of me, at how I ever got to be so lucky.

I’ve been on a fondue kick.

I do this pretty often – I’ll eat one thing for like six months straight until the sight of it makes me vomit. What, ME (with) food issues?

Lately, rather than spaghetti and meatballs, it’s been fondue. I’ve been on fondue like it’s my job.

I was feeling kinda mopey on Saturday, what with a week full of sick kids who decided that staying home to torture me while whining and coating my home in a nice glistening pile of germs – rather than going to school and infecting all of their classmates – was the way to handle it. By Saturday, I had a 101 degree fever, a cough that would make a TB sanatorium proud, and a case of the Mondays.

The only answer?

(not more cowbell)

(also not more vodka, but only barely)

FONDUE.

I bribed The Guy on the Couch to go to fondue with me, and when I say “bribed,” I mean that it went like this:

The Guy on my Couch (mowing lawn and singing loudly off-key)

Aunt Becky: (standing on driveway waving frantically)

The Guy On My Couch: “Shit are you okay?”

Aunt Becky: “Yeah, why?”

The Guy On My Couch: “You looked like you were having a seizure.”

Aunt Becky: “Nope, just hungry. HEY, Fondue Reso in an hour and a half. BE READY.”

The Guy On My Couch: “You sure you’re not seizing?”

Aunt Becky (mysteriously) “Can one EVER be sure of such a thing?”

———

Upstairs, trying to find something to wear. Have forgotten that I’ve thrown all my clothes down to be a) washed or 2) given to Goodwill. Have no clean pants that I can find and do not feel like wearing a dress as the fondue restaurant tends to be cold.

Ah-HA I say to myself as I pick up a pair of jeans – this is PERFECT!

I slip into the jeans and change out of my Shut Your Whore Mouth shirt and into something slightly more dressy. Contemplate making dressy Shut Your Whore Mouth shirts as I slap on some makeup and perfume before heading downstairs.

The Daver: “You look nice.”

Aunt Becky: “Thanks!”

The Guy On My Couch: “Ouch, Daver. You didn’t tell me that *I* looked nice.”

The Daver: *laughs*

(a few minutes pass so I pick up my crabby daughter and whirl her around until she’s laughing so hard she can barely breathe)

The Daver: “Are you…”

Aunt Becky: “…?”

The Daver: “Are you wearing MATERNITY pants?”

Aunt Becky: “Thems be mah EATIN’ pants.”

The Daver and The Guy On My Couch begin to laugh uproariously. Unsure of why the grown-ups are laughing, all three children join in.

———-

An hour and a half later we’re sitting down on what we’d both forgotten was “date night,” so the restaurant is packed. Our server shuffles by us at least ten times before finally making his way to our table, by which time I am ready to gnaw off his arm. Uncooked, even.

A Server Named Dennis: “So sorry about the wait. It’s been crazy.”

Aunt Becky: “I heard that table behind us (an 8-top of a particularly annoying family) hound you for decaf. It’s all good.”

(sidebar: decaf coffee and hot tea are the banes of every server’s existence)

A Server Named Dennis: (laughs) “What can I get for you?”

The Guy On My Couch: “We’re weird.”

Aunt Becky: “You can say THAT again.”

The Guy On My Couch: “We’re weird. We don’t want meat. We just want cheese, then chocolate.”

A Server Named Dennis: “So it’s like a Festival of Cheese? Cool.”

The Guy On My Couch: “BRING ON THE CHEESE. Okay, we’ll start with the Swiss.”

A Server Named Dennis: “For two or…”

The Guy On My Couch (decisively): “For four.”

A Server Named Dennis: (laughs): “We shall begin the parade of cheese.”

The Guy On My Couch: “WINNING.”

Aunt Becky (on iPad) : “Fucking Tiny Tower – I need a fucking new elevator.”

Both stare at me.

Aunt Becky (mysteriously turns on her Slack-Jawed Yokel voice): “I got mah eatin’ pants on, y’all.”

Both stare at me.

Aunt Becky: “I done hurted mah elbey-bone.”

The Guy On My Couch: “Go back to Tiny Tower.”

Aunt Becky: “YOU GOT IT.”

Three cheese later, we get to the chocolate. The battle of the forks ensues.

Aunt Becky: “MAH MARSHMALLOW, BACK OFF FUCKSTICK!”

The Guy On My Couch: “You don’t get ALL the marshmallows, Miss Greedy-Pants.”

Aunt Becky (narrows eyes): “I can take you.”

The Guy On My Couch: “This IS a business dinner, yes?”

Aunt Becky: “Yes.”

The Guy On My Couch: “You probably shouldn’t kill off one of your board members. I’m guessing that’ll reflect badly on our non-profit status.”

Aunt Becky: “…”

The Guy On My Couch (smugly): “Pass the marshmallows.”

Aunt Becky (narrows eyes): “You’re fired.”

The Guy On My Couch: “You can’t fire me, Miss President. You’re a non-voting member.”

Aunt Becky: (begrudgingly passes a marshmallow)

The Guy On My Couch: (pops it into his mouth)

Aunt Becky: “I licked that while you weren’t looking.”

The Guy On My Couch: “I hate you.”

Aunt Becky: “Don’t FUCK with my marshmallows.”

————–

How was YOUR weekend, Pranksters?

Being a grown-up is bullshit.

1) Replacing the windows in your house brings you to higher orgasmic heights than your last, well, orgasm.

2) You become very interested in the state of the new grass growing in your front yard. So much so that you will use any excuse to make people go and look at it. People. Like the mailman. Or a random jogger.

3) You own a designated Puke Bucket.

6) You refer to the hardware store as the happiest place on earth.

11) Bra-less, your breasts appear to be two oranges in tube socks. This alarms you less than it should.

23) You don’t drink to get sloppy, you drink because you “like the taste.”

47) Between the Teacher’s Institute Days, the celebration of Columbus’s Taint, International Ballpoint Pen Day, and obscurely PC-named weeks off, you’re not entirely sure your child actually attends school. Ever.

106) Once you get the kids to bed, your racy thoughts turn to ugly pajamas and television. When your spouse turns to you with “that look” in his eye, your only real response is a resonating sigh.

235) Tax refunds are no longer spent on a Hot Wing Tour of the US, but used to replace a door. A door, I should add, that while not entirely functional, is not broken.

551) You become irate at those stupid fucking teenagers driving up and down the street at Mach 8. So much so that you have a collection of golf-balls ready to lob at their cars.

1301) Your major selling point when purchasing a new mobile phone is no longer, “What games can it run,” but rather “Does it have a calendar? What about silent setting for meetings, Oh and does it synch with my linked-in?”

3159) Your idea of a “good time” involves reading a book about famous mathematicians.

7741) When you’re out past 9 PM, you’re all, “HOLY SHIT it’s LATE.”

19320) You begin to buy plants based upon the time of year that they bloom rather than, “does the name sound like an STD?”

What are some other signs you’re getting old, Pranksters?

(I’ve been up half the night playing Barf in Buckets, so my brain is a little fried)

Interviewing for jobs is bullshit.

I mean, you’re standing there, nervous as shit, and apologizing to the silk plant to your right for bumping into it because you know the secretary is secretly taking notes on you and OH EM GE is that a camera above you or have you been watching too much reality television?

On my last job interview, well before I’d gotten pregnant with Alex, I was doing the rounds and applying for all sorts of jobs I didn’t really want. I figured the interviews were “good experience,” plus, I got to wear a suit. I like suits.

I’d applied for a job working for a major US health insurance company. I’d be doing some claims processing, going over the necessity for certain treatments, and, I later learned, (ALLEGEDLY) taught to work the system in order to ensure that the members got what they needed when they needed it.

It was the only job I’d been applying for that managed to pique my interest. The rest of the interviews went like this:

Aunt Becky: “Hi, I’m…”

Person Interviewing: (interrupts): “Do you have a pulse?”

Aunt Becky: *blinks*

Person Interviewing: “I mean, OBVIOUSLY you have a pulse, you’re here, right? (nervous laugh)”

Aunt Becky: *blinks*

Person Interviewing: “Can you start on the Ortho floor this afternoon? We’ve got a ratio of 8 patients to one nurse and no nursing techs. You’ll be working an 18. SOUND GOOD?”

Aunt Becky: *blinks*

Person Interviewing: “Here’s your uniform.”

Aunt Becky *backs away slowly*

Person Interviewing: “You can wear jeans! JUST GO TO THE ORTHO FLOOR PLEASE! J-CO* IS COMING!”

That’s the way my interviews had gone. And as much as I’d loved to have worked an 18 on a floor without techs with 8 whole patients who weren’t quite ambulatory, I had enough respect for my back to turn it down.

So my job at the insurance company, well, it was what I’d wanted. Mostly. I didn’t want to work weekends or holidays. Working an 18 would leave me injecting myself with normal saline just to stay awake. I love people. I don’t love sick people. Shitty career path, huh?

Anyway.

First stop on my interview train was to a computer where I had to type shit. I think they wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to type, “I HAVE A BOMB MOTHERFUCKERS” or something. Last I checked, everyone our age types at like 8097 words per minute. Side effect of the computer generation.

Once the computer, which was made in approximately 1902, green words and all, booted me off, I waited for my round of interviews. I checked the room for cameras, but didn’t see any. Delusions of paranoia much?

Eventually a spry looking lady came to get me. She introduced herself as the person I’d be working for, which made me breathe a sigh of relief – she seemed both sane and high energy. Great combo.

She led me to a small meeting room and began chit-chatting with me while we waited for the other person to show. Apparently, at Super Huge Insurance Company, two managers did the interviewing. I immediately suspected a good-cop/bad-cop routine.

The second manager sauntered in, and I immediately read her as a bitch. Between the way she walked, the way she sneered when my manager spoke, and the haughty smile she gave as she tossed her bleached-blond hair back, I could tell that, had she been my table and I her server, she’d have run me around every time I got near her, only to stiff me and complain to my manager in order to get some free coupons.

My heart sunk. I thought about all those ortho people I’d have to lug around and shuddered instinctively.

Before we began, my manager assured me that the questions were unique – there were no “wrong” answers. We went back and forth between the standard interview questions, “how would you handle XYZ?” “Where are your pants?” “How would you describe yourself in three words or less?”

Bitchy blonde lady asked me one, “What happened the last time your boss made a decision for you to carry out – but it was something you didn’t want to do?”

I wracked my brain. Generally when my bosses told me to do something I didn’t want to do, I deliberately disobeyed. No wrong answers. No wrong answers. So I can keep talking and it won’t be WRONG. I love this game!

They stared at me. I began to sweat – I couldn’t tell the about the beers I’d snuck in the back coolers or the times that I didn’t charge my friends for keg beer. I couldn’t tell them about sprinkling a ton of red pepper flakes into the dipping sauce of a particularly rude table. Um. THINK, Becky, THINK. Or BULLSHIT, Becky, BULLSHIT.

“Well, there was this one time (okay, that sounds good, like you know what your saying. Good work, mental high five!), that my manager Peter, he, um, (BECKY, STOP SAYING UM. IT’LL CLUE THEM IN THAT YOU’RE FULL OF BULLSHIT) well, he asked if anyone was stealing blocks of cheese. He kinda looked like a detective, ready to catch the cheese thief, but that’s mostly because he looked like he’d stepped out of the set of a 1920’s movie (STOP ADDING DETAILS, MORON). When he asked me if I knew who’d been stealing cheese, I said ‘I didn’t know’ even though I MAYBE knew. (God, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.)”

I looked at the two of them, ashamed, knowing I’d blown that. But NO WRONG ANSWERS! PHEW.

The blond one glared at me, rolled her eyes and spoke, “You’re wrong.”

My mouth dropped open as my face turned electric red. Not being much of a blusher, it made it that. much. worse.

She continued, “I don’t think that’s what you meant.”

Okay, now I was just confused. Rather than respond, I simply stared at her. My manager got all flustered and quickly ushered me out the front door where I realized, once and for all, that I was not being filmed. My reality-show dreams had been dashed.

And there was no way in fuck that I’d gotten that job.

That afternoon I got the offer letter.

I started the following week.

*J-CO isn’t to be confused with J-LO. J-CO is actually the Joint Commission, accredits and certifies health care organizations. They’re also pedantic and annoying as shit when they come for inspections (as, I hate to admit, they should be).