Land’s End sent me a bathing suit. I know, I know, you’re thinking, “WHY would anyone send Aunt Becky ANYTHING besides a yacht?” and I’m wondering the same thing. In fact, I’m still WAITING for my yacht.

*taps foot impatiently*

Land’s End sent me a bathing suit so that I would post a picture of myself wearing it on my blog. You can see the error in their thinking, right?

I can.

This was probably NOT what they wanted:

Better yet, this:

Sorry, Land’s End.

I couldn’t resist.

Through the grandparental grapevine, I heard that my son had a girlfriend.

Ben, not Alex. Because if Alex had a girlfriend, he’d try and fart on her to woo her. Which, let’s face it, is how Daver wooed me.

When I asked Ben about his “girlfriend,” rather than chattering on for an hour and a half like he normally does, instead he turned red and ran out of the room laughing, yelling, “I DON’T HAVE A GIRLFRIEND.” Which is precisely how Daver wooed me.

Must run in the family.

Yesterday, he brought up his “girlfriend,” again. By again, I mean that he yelled I DON’T HAVE A GIRLFRIEND, then running around the house for a couple of minutes, before coming back to challenge me, “you can’t guess what my girlfriend’s name is.”

Daver warned him, “don’t challenge your mother unless you want her to know, Ben. If she wants to do something, she WILL.” My heart burst with pride.

Curious now, I asked Ben what “girlfriend” meant to him.

“Well,” he informed me, “it’s someone I like.”

“Does…” I asked hesitantly, worried that I hadn’t properly explained dating to him, “does she know you like her?”

“Well,” he looked at his hands. “No.”

I smiled and informed him that this was someone he had a crush on, not a “girlfriend.” He seemed taken aback.

I asked him if he was going to have her come over to play this summer, and again, he blushed furiously and ran around the house like a maniac. Running around like maniacs is what my children do best and why my single friends use visiting Aunt Becky as “free birth control.”

When he finally came back, he said he was too nervous to ask her to hang out this summer.

I knew I had to act. And now.

“Okay, Ben, when you’re all nervous, you think to yourself, EYE OF THE TIGER,” I pulled out the BIG guns.

He looked confused, so I hollered, “EYE OF THE TIGER.”

He looked even MORE confused. Daver queued up Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” as an A/V tool and I began my wicked Air Guitar Routine. Let me tell you, Pranksters, I would TOTALLY win at any air guitar contest EVER.

Well, the music helped. Soon all three of my children were running around the house, air-playing different instruments (we could form an amazing air rock band) yelling, “EYE OF THE TIGER.”

When the song was over, Ben came back and said, “It worked Mom. I feel like I can do ANYTHING now. I’m all EYE OF THE TIGER.”

Exactly, my child.

Exactly.

————-

Am over at Cafe Mom today. Got two columns for you.

(barely) Surviving Sleep Training

(barely) Surviving Extreme Parenting

Back when everyone I knew owned Nintendo (NES), my brother convinced my parents to buy me the OTHER system: the Sega Genesis. I only had two games for the thing: Sonic The Hedgehog and Echo (the asshole) Dolphin before I realized that video games were bullshit.

But hedgehogs weren’t. In fact, life might be damn near perfect if I could have a lovable scamp like Sonic for a kicky sidekick! One day, I shook my fist at the dusty, unused Sega Genesis, that someday I too, would have a hedgehog-sidekick of my very own.

My twenty-fifth birthday found me in a brand-new house, desperately failing to getting pregnant with a second baby, working forty hours a week, with a menagerie of animals already in my care.

The Daver: “What do you want for your birthday?”

Me: “A pony.”

The Daver: “Our yard is too small for a pony. What ELSE do you want for your birthday?”

Me: “A turbo jet.”

The Daver: “Okay, someday, I’ll buy you a jet.”

Me: “You have to name my jet, “Fluffy.”

The Daver: “Okay. So what do you want for your birthday THIS YEAR?”

Me: “A hedgehog.”

Daver: “You’re not serious, are you?”

Me: (glares)

The Daver: “You don’t want a hedgehog, Becky.”

Me: (glares)

The Daver: “So you DO want a hedgehog. Why?”

Me: “I need a hedgehog sidekick like Sonic.”

The Daver: “….”

Me: “He can ride everywhere on my shoulders and we can solve crimes together while collecting those golden rings.”

The Daver: “What do you know about hedgehogs?”

(he was always asking questions like this)

Me: “Uh. Well, they like gold rings and they’re blue and they fight crimes.”

The Daver: “…”

Me (pulling something out of my ass): “Also, they’re indigenous to hot, aired climates and enjoy carrots.”

The Daver: “This seems like a bad idea, Becky.”

Me: “Nah, it’ll be great! Me and my crime-fighting hedgehog will have many adventures.”

Once he was safely out of sight, I googled “hedgehogs,” and found a breeder within ten miles of my house. I called to see if she had any crime-fighting hedgehogs for sale, and when she didn’t, I was crestfallen. She put me on a crime-fighting hedgehog waiting list.

A couple of weeks later, she called and informed Daver that she had a hedgehog for me. Thrilled, we drove to the breeder and I picked up my new crime-fighting sidekick, a cage, and some hedgehog food.

My albino hedgehog looked remarkably like a baked potato and absolutely nothing like Sonic.

I named him Tate, short for “potato.”

“Oh well,” I sighed, “maybe hedgehogs aren’t blue.”

Daver grimly glared, his eyes on the road.

After we got Tate’s cage set up, I read the handouts the breeder had given me.

“It says here that I need to ‘socialize’ him so he gets used to people,” I read aloud. Okay, I could do that. Animals loved me.

When I grabbed Tate out of his cage, he became a hissing ball of pokiness. Well, sure, he wasn’t USED to me yet. No wonder he was scared. After a couple of minutes in my hand, he relaxed a bit and I was able to see how freaking cute he was.

He started licking my hand.

“Awwwww,” I said, “Lookit how much he loves me! He’s giving me hedgie-kisses!” As he continued to lick my hand, I imagined the bank-robbers we’d apprehend, the jewel thieves we’d bring to justice, and all of those gold rings we’d collect along the way.

Tate interrupted my vision of the two of us riding a horse, hotly in pursuit of Bad Guys when he chomped down onto my finger. It felt like a thousand tiny nettles of pain so I yelped. I tried to remove his tiny mouth from my finger, which was now oozing blood, but he held on, determined. I swung my hand back and forth trying to get him to let go of my damn finger. He dug in harder.

Finally, I pried his horrible mouth off my finger and ran to the bathroom to wash the wound, tears flowing. That motherfucker! How DARE he?

For months, I carried him around in his specially-designed “hedgehog pouch,” as the handouts suggested, so he could “get used to me.”

He never did.

My zombie hedgehog was bullshit.

Luckily, I found a new hedgehog.

This hedgie kinda liked me.

(Mostly because I gave him candy.)

Tate was NOTHING like Sonic. When he died a couple of weeks before Amelia was born, no one was too sad. Our scarred fingers were a painful reminder that sometimes things just don’t work out.

I learned a valuable lesson from Tate: not all hedgehogs are crime-fighting sidekicks.

Which is why I’ve decided that I need a feisty camel sidekick named Mr. Spits instead.

In the 7 years since I began Mushroom Printing, I’ve watched blogging evolve.

As blogging became well-known, there have been plenty of good changes; online friendships and online communities were formed among people who’d had little experience with The Internet, the unique opportunity for self-publishing has launched careers and the popularity of microblogs like The Twitter and The Tumblr soared.

There are, of course, plenty of downsides, too. Companies began to take note of these “blogs” and started their “The Word Of Mom” advertising campaigns, sending out freebies (rather than the actual dollars they’d pay a marketing firm) to bloggers in exchange for a review. Personal blogs began to feel a bit less, well, personal. The blogging community became a saturated market and it was hard for new bloggers to get their names out there.

What hasn’t changed is that I still love blogging. If I had an “I (HEART) BLOGGING*” shirt, I’d wear it, because that’s how much I love being a blogger. I also (HEART) all the “I (HEART) XXX” shirts. Writing here on Mommy Wants Vodka, being Your Aunt Becky, has been a constant in my life. I’ve pecked out over a thousand posts since I began my illustrious blogging “career.” Some good, some great, and a hell of a lot more mediocre.

In that time, I’ve pulled down exactly two posts. The first post was a Go Ask Aunt Becky question about a child recently diagnosed with autism. The post I’d written; the way I’d written it; it fueled a comment war that was more scary and hurtful than helpful to the person who had reached out for help. That was unfair to her.

Astute Pranksters may note that I pulled down the post I’d written yesterday. Not because it was bullshit, or because I hated it, or because I didn’t feel as though I could share it. I’d written my experiences as they happened to me while I paid tribute my cousin. I wanted to explain that those small acts of kindness can stick with you forever.

In the process of giving the back story; the reasons those kindnesses resonated so much, I upset a family member. The damage is probably irrevocable.

When I write, I write with an audience in mind, knowing anyone can read my words. For every post I do write, there are ten others that remain unwritten. I keep my written words and experiences as honest and true as I am able without hurting others. Sometimes, I gloss over bits especially when they make someone else look bad, sometimes I don’t.

Well before I pulled this post, I’d started writing for my friend’s site, which led me to think of all of the words I’ve never written. All of the words I’d wanted to string together but for one reason or another, didn’t. Sometimes, those words remained unwritten because they cut too close to home; because sometimes words, feelings, pain, reactions cannot be explained away by logic. The kind of criticism it would open up would pour salt into an already-festering wound. Others remained unwritten because I didn’t want to cause drama or pain.

Being told that my about my feelings; my experiences, written as I’d felt them as a child, were mostly fiction, I pulled the post; ashamed. I felt cowardly. I feel cowardly. Admitting all of those words; those feelings, to you took a lot for me. Living in denial as I did for many years, well, that is much harder.

I can’t give you a *fistpump* and tell you “I did the right thing” by pulling the post, nor can I say that “I did the wrong thing” by writing it.

There are so many nebulous areas in life, the kind that don’t have clear answers, no villain or victim; and all of my unwritten words, I realized, fall into that realm. Sometimes things just are.

I’m so sorry that my relationship, one I’ve desperately wanted for as long as I can remember, will (likely) forever be altered by those 700 carefully chosen words. They weren’t written in anger, never intended to hurt or accuse. I string words together as I remember them. As I experienced them.

And if that’s going too far, well, so fucking be it.

*Hm, I’d prefer an “I (HEART) PRANKSTERS” shirt, now that I think of it.

On my recent excursion to The Target to pick up my McDonald’s Headset to finally go “hands free,” I realized that I was also in dire need of an additional filing system.

(pithy aside, my brand new house phone, the only one I’m able to use in my HOUSE, is Blue Douche enabled. Which means that I can talk on the EAR PENIS but not my McDonald’s Headset. This seems like a steaming pile of bullshit, or at least, a conspiracy)

One of the many things I miss about school is purchasing school supplies. Buying them for my children isn’t nearly as full of the awesome, because, well, obviously. Their lists always require things so specific that I drive all over town in an endless pursuit of a twelve ring, three binder, red, plastic-covered notebook, wide-ruled, until I give up, convinced it’s a typo. Then I see the OTHER parents have managed to find said item and wonder what I’m doing wrong.

I digress.

Getting my corp. taxes done reminded me that my filing system of “throwing things into envelopes” was probably not going to cut it, especially if I wanted to go all official Non-Profit-ish for Band Back Together, so I eagerly went to see what else existed to make my life, well, BETTER.

It was like the heavens opened up and shone down upon me. There couldn’t have been a better day for it. I’d just gone to the Anxiety Doctor for a medication recheck, gone to the Tax Man, and was staring down the Pharmacist From Hell.

But there it was: A SALE on OFFICE SUPPLIES.

*cue choirs of angels*

I grabbed three or twelve-fifty-niner of those weird folding file folder thingies, a sassy three-ring binder – practically a Trapper-Keeper – and folders for it, a new notebook, a bigger day planner than the one I currently use, a white board for Daver and an address book. You know, the ones you use your hand to physically write a name and number next to? Oh yes. I’m proudly regressing.

I’ve somehow been placed in charge of all the stuff coming into and going out of the house. It’s amusing to anyone who knows me and annoying to me, who knows me.

When we prepared for the Great Move of Aught Six from Oak (no) Park (ing)* I in charge of sorting, organizing and packing up our condo. Daver can’t get rid of anything. He’s descended from a Pack Rat, but he’s not one himself, no, he’s merely incapable of sorting out what can stay and what should go.

So he saves it all and overlooks the glaring piles of crap.

When I was packing/sorting/cleaning the condo, I came across a receipt. Curious, I picked it up and looked at it.

Pranksters, it was three years old. Figuring that anything saved for that length of time must’ve been something good, I glanced down at it. Four items: a plastic garbage can, beef jerky, Fritos and…wait for it, wait for it….

…..

…..

…..

kitty litter.

Thank the Sweet Lord of Butter that he’d saved a copy of THAT! Otherwise, I’d never have known exactly what he was buying at 1:42 PM on October 22, 2003.

What was most baffling and/or frightening was that this receipt had also managed to move to three separate apartments.

While Daver was raised by someone who is physically incapable of throwing anything away, my father recently got a label-maker for Christmas. I swear to you, eyes wide with glee, he tore into that label-maker like it was a brand-new laptop. Before the day was through, I was wearing a “Stumpy**” label, Daver had a “The Daver” label, the kids each were wearing their names, and he was upstairs happily labeling everything in his extensive file cabinet.

He takes Organization Very Seriously.

He also takes Getting Rid of Shit Very Seriously.

If he’s found something that is very clearly mine, he will happily march it out to my car the very moment I arrive, lest I forget it. Or swing it by my house. In the odd event that I do not claim it in his arbitrary time-line, he donates it to charity.

Stuff = Bullshit.

Organization = Not Bullshit.

The man has it right.

I do not happen to personally enjoy labeling things, because I have a feeling if I started, I’d probably never stop. I’d be up all night, every night, labeling individual cans of diet Coke “DRINK ME,” just because.

What, ME COMPULSIVE? Why, I never!

Also, make all the Abacus Jokes you want, but I have NO CLUE how to use the damn thing.

Also, Also: new shirt idea.

This?

Or maybe this?

Or maybe something else. I dunno. Need a new idear (because my shirts aren’t Zazzle and are awesomely eco-friendly, organic, possibly made from recycled banana leaves) and screen-printed, I pay upfront, which is why I ask you guys about this stuff. You’re my brain, Pranksters. MY BRAIN.

EVEN THOUGH ME AND MY ABACUS ARE ORGANIZED.

*inside joke for anyone knows Oak Park. Parking is BEYOND bullshit in Oak Park.

**My brother nicknamed me “Stumpy.” Because I was shorter than him. I’m not exactly short: 5 foot 5 inches tall; not like 3 feet tall.

I have many irrational fears. I suppose you could just say, “I’m irrational,” but since this is my website, I’m going to tag on the part about fears and pretend that lalalalalaa I’m totally, completely, entirely, 110% sane.

Shut up.

I’m deathly afraid of earwigs. My earwig phobia can handily be traced back to the time when, many years back, when Young Aunt Becky actually drank a live earwig that had been evilly lurking inside a Diet Coke can. That’s the stuff nightmares are made of.

I’m also afraid of fish, the color orange and anything sung by Rush.

But the one that is most impactful is my fear of Garage Sales.

I like a good bargain like I like Orange-flavored Hostess Cupcakes (read: love) and I love weird, eclectic things and Garage Sales are notorious havens of such finds. Why once, I got a Plexiglas Goat’s Head for a penny! If that’s not a win, I don’t know what is.

I also love to purge my house of excess crap. I don’t like…well, I don’t like stuff. With five people under one roof, you can imagine how quickly stuff accumulates. I’m not a hoarder and having a bunch of stuff around makes me anxious(er) and twitchy(er) so every couple of months, I go through the house and remove everything we don’t need. When I’m done, I feel like I’m on top of the world. I’m all Leonardo DiCaprio King of the World, Bitches! I’m high on freaking LIFE. Stuff, BE GONE!

So the stuff is out of our closets and moved to a second location: my garage. That’s all well and good until I realize (as I have today) that I must now move it somewhere…else.

The obvious solution (and what I normally do) would be to donate it to the Salvation Army. There’s a drop-site within a mile from my house and I can load up a couple of bags and easily drop them off.

But there’s always that niggling voice in the back of my head that suggests that maybe, just maybe, I could have a Garage Sale! Maybe someone would actually WANT some of my stuff! Like all of my old Williams-Sonoma Cookbooks that I never used because, let’s face it, BUYING cookbooks doesn’t mean you suddenly BECOME a cook!

(who knew?)

Maybe someone would give me a dollar for one of those cookbooks! Or what about all of my hardly-worn Calvin Klein pants that I outgrew? (ungrew? I don’t know. I lost weight and now they don’t fit) Or those toys the kids never played with? SOMEONE MIGHT WANT AN AWESOME TOY FOR THEIR KIDS.

This is what the voice in my head says. For a brief moment in time, I listen. My eyes glaze over, and I think that it might be nice to make a couple of bucks. Hey, I could buy my laptop and start planning my Epic Road Trip to visit the Pranksters! The wheels in my head begin to turn. Slowly. Creakily.

Then, Cold Hard Reality bitch-slaps me across the face.

I think of the people who will haggle with me over a coffee cup I’ve reasonably priced at a whopping ten cents. I hate to haggle more than I hate anything. In fact, I’d rather give it away than have to haggle with Garage Sale People.

So I’m left back at Square One. A Garage full of Sale-able stuff that I guess I’ll just donate to charity. Unless you Pranksters have a better idea.

I hope that whomever ends up with that Williams-Sonoma Cookbook set knows what the hell “creme fraiche” is. Because I sure as hell don’t.

————-

Do you have any better ideas, Pranksters?

My first waking thought yesterday was, “and THAT is why I’ll never do meth.” Must have been a hell of a dream.

I padded down the stairs and blearily poured myself a bucket of coffee. I was out of Redbull, so I made it with water. No wings for me, I thought sadly, as I started to try and piece together something to be offended by. Motrin Moms was so last year. Groupon was too easy. We are PRANKSTERS. We needed something like John C. Mayer, but better, I thought as I rubbed my tongue across my teeth.

Furious George had merit. Furious George Takes Over The Internet. Furious George Cuts Bob Ross. Furious George...wait…what the hell?

My tongue encountered something unexpected. Sharp, even. A popcorn kernel? That wily bastard!

I stumbled to the bathroom to floss (not remembering, of course, that it had been awhile since I’d had popcorn) and looked in the mirror.

What.

The.

Shit?

My tooth was missing.

Or, I should say, a big chunk of it.

I had somehow managed to crack a tooth while sleeping.

I’m notorious for ridiculous injuries. I broke a toe making a sandwich (it wasn’t even FOR ME). I broke a door carrying a diet Coke (24 ounces of swinging death, baby). I jammed up my ankle walking down the stairs (not even saving a basket of cuddly puppies from a house fire). I cut my eyeball at a wedding on my birthday (I can’t begin to explain this one). I don’t know how Lassie makes this shit look glamorous because I sure as hell don’t.

But my tooth. Broken. While sleeping. This takes fucked-up to a whole new level of awesomely dumb.

I got it fixed, of course. I can’t be a toothless blogger. Lord knows someone might actually see me someday.

So if anyone asks, I broke my tooth chewing the bones of my sworn enemies. Like John C. Mayer. And Mark Zuckerberg.

This will be our little secret, Pranksters. Just you and me and the Internet.

Also, uh, don’t do meth.

————–

What’s the stupidest injury you’ve ever gotten, Pranksters?

————–

Blah-blah-bloggies. I’ll do something humiliating for you guys if I win. YOUR CHOICE.

I spent a good deal of time yesterday trying desperately to be offended, Pranksters. I looked everywhere. We needed a CAUSE. A pet cause! Something to be Furious George about. Everywhere I looked, Bloggers were angry – really mad – about things.

We had nothing. HM. Maybe that’s a good cause.

(I’m still thinking. Maybe a Furious George Campaign? Fists of Fury? Something SUPER AWESOME that we can all link up together like the John C. Mayer thing)(Holler if you think of something)

Well, I had this, a memory I’d long repressed, thanks to years of painful flashbacks. Another example of how stupid I used to be before I simply shut my own whore mouth and kept my opinions to myself.

Scene: Movado jewelry store, circa 2005. Movado, if you don’t know it, is a fairly fancy watch maker, who also makes modernish, interesting jewelry. It’s like Tiffany & Co, but way better.

I’d gone in with a friend of mine to buy something ridiculously expensive. My taste in jewelry runs from the stuff you have to ensure to this, which I wear most days:

It’s hit or miss.

But that day, I was buying something fancy-pants. I was chatting with the salesperson, who was my age (25) and relatively hip. She brought up engagement rings, something I cannot speak with any authority on, unless you want to talk metal (platinum) or size (big). The minute you start going on about clarity and grading, my eyes glass over. But she and my friend were having a grand old time. They pulled out engagement rings (much to my dismay) and started trying them on, cooing over each of them.

I was bored shitless so I opened my stupid trap.

“Phew, at least you don’t have any HEART-SHAPED DIAMONDS. THOSE THINGS ARE FUG.”*

Now, I love hearts. Valentine’s Day is my favorite holiday because I love hearts so much. Hearts = rad.

But for my engagement ring, something I’m (presumably) supposed to wear every single day? Not so much. I like those uh, circle diamond ones. Whatever they’re called.

(I just got my vagina-license revoked)

Anyway, back at Movado, Girlfriend cast a WITHERING look at me.

She snapped the engagement rings back from my friend as she sputtered out, “MY MOTHER HAS A HEART-SHAPED DIAMOND ENGAGEMENT RING.”

Then she flounced off.

I’d found and managed to offend the only 25-year old in Oak Brook who loved and planned upon owning a heart-shaped diamond.

THAT took talent.

————

Okay, it’s your turn, Pranksters. I need some embarrassing stories from you guys now. I’M STILL UPSET ABOUT THIS ONE. I hate hurting people’s feelers.

————

Bloggies? Vote? PLEASE? If I win, I promise to do something incredibly embarrassing.

*I wear a necklace with my name on it. NO one should be offended by my taste in ANYTHING.

This morning, once again, I woke up with my pillow soaked with tears, the sobs still fresh in my throat. I wiped my face off with my sleeve, as I sat up, trying to remember what dream I’d had, what had made me so bitterly sad that I’d wept in my sleep loudly enough to wake myself. Nothing. My memory banks came up with nothing.

I sighed as I changed my pillow case. Normally I dream about new and exciting ways to mock John C. Mayer, and although John C. Mayer could have been the reasons for my sobs (Hey, “Your Body is a Wonderland” is a terrible song), I don’t think it was.

This is the fifth time in as many days I’ve woken up with a wet pillow case. On the rare times I can fall asleep (a hearty fuck you goes out to insomnia), this is what I’m repaid with: night terrors.

Amelia’s appointment yesterday with the EI evaluators went as expected. She’s ahead in some areas, behind in others. It’s the medical equivalent of a push and it’s certainly not something that keeps me up at night, her inability to perform quadratic equations and properly discuss string theory aside.

I’ve managed to buy her a birthday present and pink cupcake mix for her birthday on Friday (still haven’t done anything for a big blowout bash), both of which should delight her. I’m thrilled that she’s going to be thrilled by this. Everyone should be so lucky as to have pink sparkles on their birthday cuppity-cakes.

And yet I’ve spent the last couple weeks talking through clenched teeth, the most minor of infractions setting me off, sending me into a blind panic. A dead weight has settled onto my chest there’s an omnipotent feeling of cosmic not-rightness. Everything feels wrong. Nothing is wrong, yet everything feels wrong.

My feelings make no sense to me.

I know what this is. It’s PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I hate to even write those words out because I see them and I know some assjacket is going to be all, “YER NOT A VET, YEW WHOR,” and then I’m going to feel worse because I’m already feeling guilty about feeling the way I do. I have the Girl That Lived and still I have PTSD? Certainly, I do not have a right to those feelings.

And yet I do. I’m as entitled to my feelings as the next assjacket.

Really, I liked it better when I pretended I had no feelings. I think sociopaths have that part down. Feelings are kinda bullshit. Unless we’re talking about my love of Bob Ross and Richard Simmons. Or any white guy with an Afro. White guys with Afros are most certainly NOT bullshit.

It began with a tiny pink lollipop, really no bigger than the tip of my finger.

I saw it sitting quietly on the counter as I stood there in the kitchen, seething; a drinking glass clutched in my hand, poised to throw at the wall, the blood pounding in my ears, drowning out all other noise.

The rage had come from nowhere it seemed, and in an instant, as I looked at that tiny pink lollipop, part of the My Little Pony advent calendar I’d bought my daughter (apparently boys are the only ones who should be taught to rob banks at Christmas), it evaporated. What came next was a sorrow so deep that it shook me to my bones, and I nearly fell to my knees as the sobs wracked my body. I wept, consumed with the kind of feral cry that reminds us that we’re not really that far removed from our animal ancestors.

In that instant, I was transported back to that room. The room where no pink balloons floated. No baskets of flowers were delivered. No visitors came to offer their congratulations. There were no happy phone calls made or cheerful cards read. The room was a barren hospital room overlooking an ice-covered roof and had two – not three – occupants. Both sat on the bed, weeping. Later, it was only one.

I think about that room a lot. I spend a lot of time with my ghosts, roaming those halls and reliving those uncertain days after my daughter was born.

But it is that room that haunts me most.

I want so badly to go back to that room and take that weeping, fractured, shattered woman into my arms and say to her, “Your daughter will live. She will live. She will go on to do amazing things with her life and so will you. Amelia will do much good for so many people. You will take all of these broken pieces and you will rebuild into someone else. Someone better. You will take all of this pain and you will use it to fortify you; to guide you; to help you find yourself. Please know that you are so loved.”

Because I will never forget how alone I felt. Maybe that is where that chasm of rage came from. That secret place, that land of tears and sorrow, that is ours to face alone. It was in that room, where no balloons bobbed and swayed, where no one celebrated Amelia’s life, that I sat alone in my own land of sorrow.

Seeing that lollipop on the kitchen counter brought it all back. It took me back to that room, the most uncertain, horrifying time in my life, and it reminded me of the days when no one celebrated her birth. The memories left me gasping.

I’d wanted so badly to celebrate her first birthday. To throw an ebullient celebration of Amelia’s life, a Fuck You to the Universe. I even had a CandyLand theme picked out. But I was so stuck in that land of tears that I simply couldn’t. It broke my heart.

Amelia will be two on January 28 and I have not planned a party for her. I want to. But it’s hard. This particular party is hard for me. It dredges up memories of some of the worst days of my life.

But I think that is what I need to do; throw her a birthday party, a REAL birthday party, the kind of party she deserved when she entered the world and defied all odds. I’m struggling, battling my demons, my dragons all rearing their heads as I work to slay them.

I will do it. I must do it.

I may never be able to go back in time to reach those two people in the room where no one celebrated her birth, but I can show Amelia how many people celebrate her life.

I will fill the rooms with balloons and shout to the world from the rooftops that this, this was the day that my daughter, Amelia Grace, the Warrior Princess of the Bells, she arrived.

And nothing, not one damn thing, has been the same.

Then I will sit back and watch my daughter giggle and snort and dash about, her curls bouncing merrily as she chases her balloons; her life finally, at long last, celebrated.