Now, I’m not a political person, and I’m not smart enough to formulate some sort of political post that completely encompasses how I feel WHILE sticking to the facts. I vote, early and often whenever possible and I love the power trip it gives me to do so. I’ll have my ducks in a row and my candidate selected when I pop (read: waddle) in to vote on November 4th.

But I’m going to confess something to you all: I’m so sick of this election. So sick of it.

Not because it’s not an interesting selection of candidates because it totally is, but because I am so bloody sick of how it’s making the staunch supporters on either side attack each other.

As in, “If you vote for XXX, it’s because you’re a moron WHO KILLS BABIES IN YOUR SPARE TIME. YOU BABY MUUUURRRRDEEEERRR WHO HATES JESUS” Or, perhaps, “You’re electing a terrorist because you HAAATTEEE AMERICA! Murderer!”

Talk about missing the entire point here. Or maybe it’s me missing the point.

Perhaps my relentless optimism regarding the general goodness of people has blinded me so much that I actually *do* know people who murder babies and support terrorist activity, but somehow I doubt it. Hurling hurtful emotionally charged statements doesn’t help either side do anything but perpetuate animosity between friends and neighbors.

I’m just waiting for November 4th to be over so I can stop hearing about how “so and so is a bad, stupid person because they voted for someone different than me” and how wrong I am for my choices. Last I checked, a democracy was founded on choices, and I’m entitled to mine, however distasteful they may be to someone else.

But I’m urging you: no matter what hurtful statements are being hurled at you for your choice, stand up and vote. Vote proudly. And vote with gusto. It’s not only your right, it’s your duty.

As for me, I’ll be hiding in my house until November 4th, away from hurled campaign buttons and signs. And likely eating donuts.

(scene: a chubby pregnant woman (CPW) in a large black ankle boot holds a squirming and naked toddler in the chilly October air. She walks as quickly as she can after a small, fox-like dog, who is avoiding being captured by darting back and forth across a busy road. She is followed by a small but wordy 7 year old, an older woman, who is presumably her mother, another 7 year old boy and an 8 year old girl. She looks miserable as she calls out to the dog)

CPW: “Auggie! Come here Auggie!” (she struggles through the neighbors lawn, where the dog is currently exploring just out of arms reach)

Rest of the cast: “Auggie, come here boy!” (in falsetto, what is supposed to be reassuring tones)

CPW (trying to keep any hint of anger from her voice): “Come on home, boy!”

Suddenly, the door to the house of the yard that they’re all occupying swings open. It’s a neighbor, one that CPW knows and tentatively likes. Hoping that perhaps the neighbor has a solution as to how to get an 11 pound dog who runs away back home, as her foot throbs painfully, CPW looks at the door hopefully.

Neighbor (mumbling through the screen) “…leash law.”

CPW (still smiling stupidly): “What’s that?”

Neighbor: “I SAID that there is a leash law.”

CPW (uncertainly): “I’m aware. But he escaped from my house.”

Neighbor (rolling eyes): “Well, there is a leash law.”

CPW (angry now, as she’d already been feeling badly about the dog roaming through the neighborhood): “I know this. We’re TRYING to catch him” (gestures wildly to the group of people behind her all trying to catch this wily dog).

Neighbor: “I’m sick of cleaning up dog shit on my lawn.”

CPW: “My dogs don’t go out front. They don’t do anything on your lawn.”

Neighbor (as though the change in emphasis is going to change the situation): “There is a leash law.”

CPW: “WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO DO? THIS WAS AN ACCIDENT.”

(annoying stupid dog runs into the road, interrupting this discourse. The group follows the dog, still calling out in vain)

CPW glares openly at her neighbor as she hobbles after the dog, still wobbling around holding toddler and limping.

After another 20 minutes of following the dog through the neighborhood and calling out futilely, he is finally captured.

Now the question is what to do with this dog.

(end scene)

Have you ever had one of those conversations where both parties walk away thinking that they’ve established something completely different? Apparently, I had one of those a couple of weeks ago. Cue Wayne’s World like hand motions and wavy camera work as I take you back.

Today is Bastille Day, which means that tomorrow SHOULD be a national holiday–it’s my birthday–but the government has, so far, ignored it. After last year’s decidedly terrible birthday (of which in this post there is no mention of several other key factors against it. Like the fact that I hadn’t slept more than an hour in months and that Dave spent most of my waking hours hiding from the kids and I in the basement) and once I’d reached the conclusion that since NOT celebrating it wasn’t an option (Internet, meet my son Ben, who loves a party more than a drunken co-ed) I decided that I wanted to do something low-key.

I blithely asked The Daver to take *gasp* a day *gasp* off work *o the humanity!* so that I wouldn’t be stuck doing what I deemed to be “depressing” and “sad.” Basically, much as I love my children, I didn’t want to spend my day alone with them wiping poo-covered butts just like every other day on the planet.

The Daver, who would be a work-a-holic in any job, works the type of job that I can compare only to resident doctors (he is not a doctor) in that his hours are ridiculous and frustrating. For instance, most weeks he works 80+ hour weeks and is seldom home to see the kids when they wake up OR before they go to bed at night. I had to threaten him not to bring his Blackberry into the delivery room when Alex was born.

While it’s not a job I’m always peeing sunshine and roses over him having–I’m downright tired of being having a silent partner–it allows me to stay home with the kids, which beats the shit out of any nursing job I could score. Plus, he really does like what he does, which even I know is a rarity for most people.

I often compare his job to another, more neurotic (shut up) wife.

So for me to ask him to take the day off for my birthday is much more of a big deal than it sounds. For both of us. He might have to spend some time NOT WORKING and I might spend some time with another pair of hands around the house.

Well, in typical fashion for his job, we’d agreed that he’d take a couple of days around my hallowed day of birth off so that he could squeeze a mini-vacation into that time as well, but I found out last week that this wasn’t going to happen. But, I thought we’d discussed, he’d take my birthday proper off, save for a couple of hours in the mid-morning.

And you can guess what happened yesterday: he informed me that no, in fact, he wouldn’t be able to take my birthday off at all. But he might leave early. Maybe. (can I just say, yeah RIGHT?)

So I’m back to spending my birthday at home, alone with the kids, just like today and just like the day after today.

He doesn’t understand why I’m upset with him over this. In his mind, he’s absolved since he promised to either take another day off this week (yeah.right) and even take a week off at the end of the month (yeah.fucking.right), and while I am positive that neither of those would actually happen, it’s not the same. Tuesday, July 15 is my birthday, it is my only birthday and I will be 28 this year ON Tuesday.

It’s stooped so low for me that I had to beg my parents–whom I see every day anyway–to hang out with me on my birthday so that I don’t have to be alone. If that’s not the dorkiest, most pathetic thing I’ve ever had to do, I’m not sure what is. Maybe we can play Yahtzee or Monopoly while drinking some sparkling water! It’s going to be a fucking blast! I’ll be 28 going on 6! Hooray for hanging with my parents!

People always assume that I hate my birthday because I hate getting older, and that’s simply not true. I hate my birthday because no matter how much I beg, it’s just like every other day on the planet for me.

Like me or not, I’ve never been known as a hateable person. Sure, the random person now and again decides that they hate me, but usually there’s a reason. Even Molly, the man-hands girl who had The Sex with my boyfriend had been nursing a long-time grudge waaay back from when I’d dared go to homecoming with a guy she was stalking er, trying to date.

That said, I was hated from the moment Amanda laid eyes on me.

It was an odd situation for sure, I was good friend with her boyfriend Mikey, who hadn’t exactly told me that he was dating anyone, so I literally had no clue why this chick was glaring at me the moment I walked in the room. I’d never been super popular with the ladies, so that maybe wasn’t a huge shock, but she shot me the hairy eyeball for so long that I began to wonder if I had a boogie on my face or she thought I was someone else.

But no. Turns out she was glaring at me because she hated me because I took the male attention away from her (there were a number of dudes there the night I met her, that were my friends). From that point forward, she was my own personal enemy. I was strangely flattered.

That is, until she set about ruining my life.

While it sounds dramatic and all, she didn’t try and kill me or anything, she just waged war on me. At any opportunity to make me look bad, she took it and ran with it. It was always about one-upping me with whatever was going on, whether or not I was even trying to compete with her. She was dying to get me gone.

Things came to a head when I was about 6 months pregnant with Ben. Faithful readers (that I pay heavily) will remember that I was unmarried, 20 years old, and unhappy as hell with my Baby Daddy Nat.

So Nat had a lady admirer, Megan, who I’d always kinda poked fun at. She was a nice enough girl, I suppose, incredibly irritating, and known to get drunk and command that everyone near her listen to her talk about her horribly abusive childhood and how she’d sometimes “cry in the shower.” It wasn’t so much a cry for help as it was a cry for the party to pay attention to her.

But for some reason, Megan thought Nat (who is not an attractive man. What was I thinking? I WASN’T.) was just the bees knees, and at any party we’d go to, she’d glom onto him and hang around him all night. I thought it was hilarious: this chick was obviously annoying, pathetic and stupid, but I never raised a stink about it. Why would he go for her?

For months, though, anytime Nat would see Amanda, she would tell him about how much better off he’d be with Megan, how Megan liked him, and she’d make sure to arrange any time that the two of them could be together without me. Hoping for some sort of reaction other than laughter (the girl was REALLY annoying) Nat would always tell me about this, and become sort of annoyed when I didn’t get jealous.

The one night that he cheated on me–while I was pregnant with Ben–it had been carefully orchestrated by Amanda. Now, of COURSE it was Nat’s fault. Of COURSE it was. But, Amanda was most pleased by this, after nursing such a high resentment towards me for years and years.

Finally after months and years of plotting, that stupid bitch had gotten under my skin.

I still see her now and again out and about, and she’s still equally pathetic and sad (she dated pretty much all the guys in one group of friends-my friend group–and they all dumped her). I’m sure if you were to confront her she’d deny any sort of anger, any sort of hatred.

But she’d be lying.

Stupid assed-bitch.

*claps hands happily*

Your enemy stories?

This is part of the list–by no means exhaustive–of things I was NOT allowed to do for the wedding (primarily because Dave is ‘œboring’ and for some reason thinks that I’m ‘œbeing disrespectful to the institution of marriage’ or some shit. I wasn’t listening):

Wear half of a fat suit
Have the nuptials performed by Elvis
Sport black eyes
Dance our first song to ‘œYMCA’
Dance myself down the aisle to ‘œThat’s The Way (Uh-Huh) I Like It’

From this list, you are likely able to determine that I am not typically considered a ‘œwedding’ or a ‘œmarriage’ person. Growing up, in fact, you’d be more likely to find me playing ‘œCommando Doctor Becky, Zombie Hunter’ or teaching my cats to box than you would catch me planning for my future wedding. Never honestly thought (or cared much, really) that I’d be married. Like ever.

I found myself in the unique situation of planning a wedding I wasn’t too thrilled by (not the marriage, mind you, The Wedding).

Shortly after booking the venue, I was dragged into David’s Bridal with my best friend, maid of honor, who happens to have hottest beef curtains in the planets to make fun of the dresses. (let’s get this straight. I *love, love, love* clothes. I do not like white dresses. I have a child, which means I obviously was NOT A VIRGIN when I got married).

We made a beeline to the most hideous dresses we could find. My first choice was a long sleeved, high necked, 567 foot train monstrosity, straight out of a scary 70’s movie. My second (and only other choice) was a simple A-line, champagne trimmed dress. Fucking boring, really.

I sweated out about 32 gallons of water simply by looking at the first dress. It was lace covered, pearl encrusted, beaded, and weighed (I’m not kidding) at least 25 lbs. The sleeves alone were each larger than my head. While I struggled with the huge line of buttons in the back, Ashley went to find me the perfect shoes to go with them (clear plastic stripper heels), which she shoved under the door. Ensemble complete, I threw open the door and danced the Maniac for Ashley, who is rolling on the floor, and the distressed sales clerk, who is all but choking on her tongue as she sputtered ‘œDo you like dresses with sleeves?’ When I realized that the lace was of such poor quality that I immediately began to chafe and blister, I squeaked out ‘œI feel like a cupcake’ and ran back to the dressing room.

Here’s the boring part. I bought the second dress, thereby having to eat all of the snarky comments I had made while walking in. I won’t repeat them, for fear of the wrath. Suffice to say, I am an asshole. An asshole with a big mouth.

Who looked disgustingly like a bride.

Just in case you were sitting on the edge of your seat (That was for you KC) waiting and itching to know what stupid shit I’ve gotten up to lately, I assure you I will be back in action. I’m just at a loss for stuff to talk about. I totally had something good BUT THE TWO ZITS ON MY FACE ARE DIVERTING MUCH NEEDED BLOOD FLOW TO MY POOR, POOR BRAIN.

Ashley, I apologize in advance for being your least sexy bridesmaid. Mayhap you should put me next to you so you look even more amazing. It would be awesome.

Any suggestions for stuff you’re DYING to know about me? Like what my favorite color is, and how many STD’s I’ve had (answer: Pink and Pink).

Let ‘er rip, my bitches.

Fuckity, fuck fuck fuck.

I am now interrupting my regularly scheduled self-absorbed blog post to ask you to go see my friend KC. She has just lost her beloved (and young) dog Sadie, and is understandably heartbroken.

I will be back tomorrow with more useless prattle.

Love you all for everything.

I’m suffering from a major bout of The Crankies and every time I go to write a post, it sounds like I’m just being a whiny damn bitch. Mainly because that’s exactly what how I’m behaving. Rather than bore you with the things that are annoying me (the oatmeal took too long to cook, the cats are following me around, people who stand over me waiting for my machine at the gym make me want to bash their heads in) I am going to post some damn pictures.

Maybe I’ll get over myself this afternoon and put something real up later.

Here is my bomb-diggity wedding cake, which happened to be the only successful battle that I won over The Wedding That Ate My Life.

These are my Metal Heads, and some of my oldest friends. And interestingly, although this was obviously at my wedding, my husband is nowhere in sight. Maybe he was fixing his makeup.

While it looks like a) I’m pregnant and b) that we’re having a moment, what The Daver is doing right now is reminding me that I cannot leave my own wedding. Pretty much most of the wedding I spent begging The Daver to let me go. Oh, and I’m not pregnant, it’s the pouffy thing under my dress making me appear this way.

(see Benner in the background?)

I know you’re probably all “what the hell is up with this chick and the pictures of her wedding?” And I would be too. It’s not like this was the best day of my life or anything (it wasn’t. Seriously.) and I want to relive it over and over.

It’s a matter of being Cranky AND Lazy. The rest of our pictures are on the computer downstairs (my house has about 4,874 computers. Seriously.

Aunt Becky done graduated.

Isn’t my face sexxy? I wish that were my driver’s license photo. Then I’d be beating dudes off with a stick. Both the kids are in this photo, but one of them is quite invisible.

Alex says “Get me away from all of these 6 year olds. They scare me!”

Thank you to everyone who complimented my site design! It was done by a special ickle guy I call “The Daver.” Honestly, it was a template that he set up for me, not a design I paid someone for. I’m not opposed to that, and Dave swears that he can do it for me, but I am not smart enough to know WHAT I’d like to do with it. I have no mental picture about what would be flippin’ sweet, so I go with pre-made templates.

That may have been the most boring paragraph I have ever typed. Well, aside from when I had to write research papers on research methods. That was far more boring, as I’m sure you can imagine.

————-

What the fcuk is the deal with the whole Hannah Montana thing? I saw what’s-her-face on Idol Gives Back, but I just didn’t quite get the appeal. It’s not as bad as the Bratz dolls or anything equally hootchie, but I don’t see why kids go insane for her.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

————

All last week I’d been looking forward to getting down and dirrrty in my garden over the weekend when I have another parent to watch the wee one, lest he climb into a bees nest or something thinking that it was A Ball! In typical form, it was either rainy or cold both days.

And it’s supposed to freeze tonight.

*headdesk*

I am so totally moving somewhere else.

————-

The Mommy Wants Vodka request line is open and ready for business.

Want me to tell you the story of…something? Give me a holler and I’ll do what I can. The only stipulation is that it has to be the story of something that actually happened, not some elaborate fantasy. My fantasy story would involve lots of prescription pills and naps. Not very exciting stuff, indeed.

————

Is the prospect of taking 2 kids to Disney World while The Daver is in meetings all day totally brilliant or totally stupid? Oh, those 2 kids are MY 2 kids, not random kids.

Anyone want to come with and help?

————

All of you lurkers who have come out from the shadows and said ‘Howdy’ to me have totally made my week. You people rock.

————

After a couple month hiatus from The Diet, I am back on the wagon and hungry as hell. Without those 10 extra nursing points, I’m damn hungry. Suddenly all of the foods that I cannot eat sound positively lovely because, well, I can’t eat them anymore. I’ve got about 20 lbs to lose before October, when my best friend gets married (Hi Ashley! Want to bring some stuff over for me to take to the Salvation Army? I could use a good pee-stained mattress or some cans of paint! It would make my garage sexy!).

Before you tell me that I can DO IT! Let me remind you that my thyroid hates me with a vengeance and would prefer that I were about 10 pounds overweight at all points in time. It’s like an insecure lover, trying to fatten me up to keep me all to itself.

I’m gonna try, but I can’t promise that I will be able to do it. Sorry, Ashley, I may be your pudgy bridesmaid after all. I’ll try to get some acne in the meantime so I’ll be the ugliest bridesmaid ever. You’ll be apologizing for me for YEARS to come!

————

After making a huge fuss over how stupid I thought Twitter was, I’m considering signing up. It will either be a glorious mistake or a great idea.

What do you think of Twitter?

———–

I hate rainy days.

Have you ever met someone who you could just tell was slightly…off? You know what I mean, someone who is perfectly okay on the exterior but underneath is someone completely different?

What sucks the most about these people is you never can tell if it’s you being bitchy or it’s them being insane. It means butterfly was that kind of person, not outwardly mean or cruel, but drove just about everyone who met her insane. And I never knew if I could REALLY complain about her, because was she really bad? Or was it JUST ME?

She was addicted to the computer far before I was, and as such, she never, ever went off her chat program. She talked to Dave constantly on IM, no matter what I was doing. Even if I was having The Sex.

One day, after class I ran back to my room hoping that she would still be in class but no, there she was hooting and cooing at the computer screen. I informed her that I would be napping, hoping that she would leave for an hour or so, but no, she sat there clacking away on the computer.

Maybe it’s me, but I can’t handle that kind of noise when I’m trying to sleep. Once I’m asleep, it’s all good and I can totally sleep through anything. But going to sleep, I need quiet. Well, this day, it annoyed the fuck out of me that she wasn’t taking the hint.

So I sat up furiously and said, “It means butterfly, I am TOTALLY buying you a quieter keyboard for Christmas!”

Well I’m sure that my tone was decidedly angry, it didn’t warrant what she did next: burst into tears and ran into the hallway, presumably to tell on me. This pissed me off even more, because I hate nothing more than the guilt of making someone cry, so I got off and flounced off to Pashmina/Stimpy’s room where I vented.

I could still here it means butterfly crying from there, and I felt bad, but not that bad.

We both pretended it had never happened.

Several weeks later, during the end of October, her boyfriend came up to stay with us, as SIU closes it’s campus during Halloween due to some previous riots. For a whole week.

What I was expecting when Dave showed up is a fumbling nerdy guy, probably 350 lbs, glasses and back-ne. What Dave was is a skinny Metal Head. A cool one. I liked him immediately and wished that HE were my roommate.

(and no, this Dave is not The Daver. I would never allow a penis that had been inside of it means butterfly to be inside of me. I do have standards, afterall).

Since I was in the bottom bunk, and they shared the top one for his visit, I jokingly told them that they could not have The Sex while I was underneath. Our bed swayed alarmingly if you so much as breathed on it, and I knew that if some humping was going down, I’d never get to sleep.

And ew.

It means butterfly was not a very attractive girl, and I already had to watch her pillowy body flop around the room, and I did NOT need to think of her having The Sex.

One night, during this time, I went to sleep, headphones on and grooving to some Slayer (or something. I don’t remember), when I started to feel something…moving. My bed was suddenly rocking back and forth. This displeased me so much that they were doing gross things to each other ABOVE ME that I grabbed my stuff and went to sleep on Stimpy/Pashmina’s floor.

And boy was I pissed.

I spent the rest of the week sleeping on another friend’s floor (A BOY!!) and occasionally popping into my room to get supplies (mainly cigarettes). During one of my brief stops into MY OWN ROOM, I came to find it means butterfly frantically tearing through our room, throwing my stuff around while shrieking and crying. She got so upset about this that she barfed in the garbage can in the bathroom.

I asked her what the hell she was doing and she screamed “LOOKING FOR THE GODDAMN REMOTE! I CAN’T FIND IT!”

She tore up most of my room looking for the damn thing, which she eventually found in her own bed.

Why she had convinced herself that I had somehow stolen her remote and hidden it somewhere when I hadn’t been in my own room in hours, and ESPECIALLY since she flipped out about leaving the TV on the wrong channel, I had never used her TV again.

I guess that was the end for me. I couldn’t handle walking on eggshells around this country bumpkin of a girl with no life and no winning attributes at all. I couldn’t stand her, couldn’t handle all of her control issues, and didn’t really want to do it anymore.

I all but moved out, moved home at the end of the semester, and only thought of her again when Stimpy and I would get together and make fun of her.

———-

5 or so years pass, and on my wedding day, my bridal party and I went to the salon to get our hair and makeup done. I was on complete edge, running on adrenaline, and freaked the fuck out.

My mother had showed up to get her hair done completely wasted and I promptly cried off all the makeup that had been applied. The makeup artist was so sweet to me, redid it all, and talked me down (along with some of my girls, of course).

When it was time to go to the church and put on the pouffy white dress, so I hopped off the salon chair, gabbing with Stimpy and Ashley and this girl walks by. Literally the last person I’d expected to see on MY WEDDING DAY was right there. I’d have frankly been less surprised to see Vincent D’Onofrio or Anthony Bourdain walk in together, with their dicks dancing in unison to a Janet Jackson song.

That’s right, it means butterfly was there, at the salon, on my wedding day.

We said perfunctory hello’s to each other, I explained that I needed to go to MY WEDDING and had to leave, and I haven’t seen her again.

I can’t, however, pass a bottle of wax without remembering the day that she burst into Stimpy’s room with her used wax to display how much hair she’d gotten off her lip.

Fucking Sasquatch.