Ben’s post is live up on the anti-bullying rally over at Band Back Together.

Please, Pranksters, send him some love.

It was totally me.

Aunt Becky: “Oooooh, I should make KEY LIME BARS tonight. It’s only 8:30 and House, MD is delayed and OOOOOO TASTY.”

Aunt Becky (wanders to the pantry): “OH I HAVE RICE TOO.”

Aunt Becky: “Who the fuck eats rice around here?”

Aunt Becky (pours Key Lime crust into pan and throws it into the preheated oven for 8 minutes): “I should take some Vitamin V to properly enjoy The House Experience.”

Aunt Becky: “I’m not sure how I like the new storyline. I think there should be more singing cats.”

Aunt Becky: “OOOO The TWITTER. I SHOULD TWEET SOMETHING PITHY ABOUT CELERY.”

Aunt Becky: “I am the celery pundit!”

Aunt Becky: “That’s PROBABLY the crowning achievement of my life. How pathetic.”

Aunt Becky: “I’m going to doodle ‘Aunt Becky Rules’ on the fridge. Certainly they ALL need a reminder. Perhaps THEN I can get my fake monkey butler Mr. Pinchey!”

Aunt Becky: “Celery is fucking bullshit.”

Aunt Becky (wanders outside to check on roses): “Full moon. Explains a lot. I should give the full moon a FULL MOON.”

(gives full moon a full moon)

Aunt Becky: “I hope my neighbors saw that.”

Aunt Becky (wanders back inside): “Wonder if House, MD is on. We’re not getting back together until he gets a haircut. Prison mullet looks like, well, Prison Mullet. Why can’t he be all Michael Scoffield hot?”

Aunt Becky (spies pan sitting back atop stove, timer blaring): “OOOO. SHIT. DID I ACCIDENTALLY NOT THROW THE PAN IN THE OVEN? I’M SUCH A FUCKING DUMBASS, SWEET BABY JESUS.”

Aunt Becky (reaches to grab pan): “I can totally pretend I MEANT to leave that out….OH BLOODY FUCKING HELL HOT FUCK GODDAMMIT.”

—————

Moral of the story: when in doubt, use a test subject to handle all potentially hot items. Alternately, an oven mitt. But mostly a test subject.

Um. I don’t think the people at McDonald’s want to be considered “wildlife.”

I’m was all lamenting that I hadn’t bought MYSELF a gift for Alex’s birthday because, well, I’m the one who expelled him out of my uterus. But then the heavens opened up and shone down upon me.

I got an email from my friend who makes my profanity-laden shirts.

My new shirts were READY. I nearly peed myself.

Behold the newest in my line of shirts:

It is so full of win that I can hardly stand it.

I also make other profane shirts. They’re available in “fashion fit” (order a size up) for The Ladies and Unisex for The Mens.

Shut Your Whore Mouth shirt, now available in purple, pink AND black:

A Not Your Bitch shirt:

A With The Band Shirt (now available in sizes up to 2X):

A Cancer Is Bullshit shirt:

I Kicked Cancer’s Ass shirt:

I may be weeping with The Awesome right now.

To celebrate my overemotional status, I’m going to do a giveaway of one of these fine shirts. Why? Because obviously. Also: I love you guys to pieces.

Let’s give this two weeks to play out. Tax Day, April 15, a winner shall be announced.

How do you win one?

First, tell me which shirt you’d want and why.

For extra! entries! you can do the following (please leave me an extra comment for each entry):

Write a POST about the contest (two entries!)

Be my BFF on The Facebook.

Follow Mommy Wants Vodka on The Twitter.

Follow Band Back Together on The Twitter.

Tweet about the contest.

Add Mommy Wants Vodka to your blogroll.

Add Band Back Together to your blogroll.

YAY for new shirts!

When I was a wee Aunt Becky, there were many things I’d desperately pleaded, begged and bargained for in the hopes that my slightly boring parents might pull through.

When the EZ Bake Oven came out, I wanted one so badly I could almost taste the tiny, yet delicious cakes I’d create all by myself! My parents, being the dull-as-toast sort, informed me that I could, at any time, use the REGULAR oven, therefore I did NOT require an EZ Bake Oven of my own. Of course, I was never actually allowed to use the oven to make cakes or anything else for that matter. With my propensity for bizarre injuries, who can blame them?

Another time, I begged for a bunny rabbit, only to have to sit through a lecture (complete with pictures) about how our dogs would kill my bunny. They weren’t wrong, but I could have done without the the graphic images of dead bunnies forever seared into my brain.

Although my parents had plenty of money, I never managed to convince them to buy tasty and delicious movie popcorn, either. They’d claim it was too expensive; too fattening. Instead, we’d bring our own refreshments into the theater, stuffed handily into my mother’s huge purse. I’d munch on boring tasteless air-popped popcorn while the smells of fake butter intoxicated, taunted me.

My requests for a pony on roller skates and a wee sub-machine gun for my hamster were flat-out denied.

When the new mall opened up in my hometown, I noticed they had an fabulous place unlike anything I’ve ever seen; a place where I could wear a classy boa or rhinestone cowboy hat. A place where I could get fancy portraits done. This place even boasted Soap Opera Mood Lighting.

Glamor Shots.

Swoon!

Even the NAME had “glamor” in it. I was hooked. I wanted MY portraits done. My parents are sleek oak, teak, and fine china people, and even then, I knew that bedazzling anything made it classier.

I begged. I pleaded. I wrote page after page of letters to my parents, outlining all of the reasons I should be allowed to have my Glamor Shots done. “Why don’t you have me take portraits?” my father asked. “Have your father take your picture,” my mother said. Considering that I had 8 million pictures taken of me by my father – not a single one including pancake makeup or anything bedazzled – that was not what I had in mind.

Shortly after, Glamor Shots closed. I’d still see the portraits around; my friends got THEIR portraits done because their parents weren’t dull as beige paint, but eventually, I gave up. I thought the chain had gone out of business.

When I found Glamor Shots on The Twitter a couple of months ago, it was as though the heavens opened up and smiled down upon me. I could still be a model…or just look like one! All this time, I’d thought the chain had gone under, donating their extensive boa collection to the drag clubs in the city. And yet, THERE THEY WERE. OH HAPPY DAY.

Quickly, I followed Glamor Shots and PRAISE BE, Glamor Shots followed me back.

Visions of Soap Opera Portraits swirled in my head now that I had a new-found friend on The Twitter.

Glamor Shots just unfollowed me on The Twitter.

My heart shattered into a million tiny pieces. How could the very chain that I’d so badly wanted my Glamorous Soap Opera Portraits from UNFOLLOW me?

Generally, when people unfollow me on The Twitter, I ignore it.

(pointless aside: Nothing makes me quite as stabby as when someone thinks they’re “calling me out” on The Twitter. Like this one time after I tweeted about Alex calling SNOMG a “wizard,” I made a remark about liking the phrase, “The Undertoad.” No less than twenty people got all high-and-mighty because, “The Undertoad,” is a phrase from a book called ‘The World According To Garp’ and I had the audacity to tweet about The Undertoad without mentioning that it wasn’t my phrase. Um. Okay.)

The Twitter can be a little weird. I mean, I just splat out whatever’s in my head (which is kinda scary) in 140-characters (or less). Twitter = a microblog.

Like this:

I’ll give you that some of my tweets can be marginally offensive but so am I. I’ve ALWAYS been marginally offensive. This is nothing new. And being marginally offensive does NOT cancel out my desire to have a Sparkly Boa Mood Lighting Soap Opera Portrait done. Why would they smite me like that, Pranksters? How could Glamor Shots DO this to me?

All I wanted was to look like THIS guy for a day:

Sighs.

Maybe it’s time to track down Barbizon. There I can be a model…or just look like one.

————-

So dish, Pranksters. Does anyone else get their feelers hurt when they’re unfollowed on The Twitter? What DOES hurt your feelers?

In order for me to Get Less Anxious, I’ve been doing a lot of purging. Getting rid of what’s not important. There’s a lot of noise and crap (literal and figurative) out there and if you’re not careful, it can take over your life.

This week, I braved the Salvation Army drop center, where I swear to you, Pranksters, they judge my stuff before begrudgingly giving me a tax receipt. I did end up holding onto a few things. Maybe I will hold an Internet Garage Sale to raise some money to try and turn Band Back Together into a Non-Profit (I’m guessing it takes more than just batting my eyelashes and swinging the word “bullshit” around).

I came across something in my garage, buried under the piles of stuff to be donated; something I’ve never quite known what to do with.

Let me back up a second.

In 2002, a freshly single mother living at home with my parents, I’d realized that I needed to figure out What Next. Since toddlerhood, I’d planned to be a diamond-encrusted, world-saving doctor. Newborn on my hip, I realized this was probably going to have to be put on hold until said infant got a little, well, bigger.

Half a degree in bio/chem meant that I could handily enroll in nursing school, which was, at the very least on a similar plan, and wouldn’t make med school too far a distant chipmunk on the horizon.

So I did.

The first year, I spent doing the typical freshman pre-reqs, falling in with a motley crew as I commuted by train to the closest school that I could get my bachelor’s degree in nursing. I earned the nickname Super Becky Overachiever, acing all the exams (a degree in bio/chem is far more rigorous), becoming a TA for inorganic, organic and biochem as well as picking up some tutoring gigs for Anatomy and Physiology I and II.

Sweet ASS, I thought, as I patted myself on the back. I loved being busy, feeling useful, and doing something with myself back then just as I do now.

The first year of nursing school dawned and I parted ways with my homies from my pre-req days. They had another year before nursing school, so I’d be meeting a whole new set of people. No bother, I figured. I tended to get along with just about everyone.

When I walked in that first day, thirty pairs of eyes glared at me. To this day, I don’t know why I was met with so much hostility, but there it was, and there I was. I slurped my coffee, smiled a big ole fake smile, walked to the back of the class and took a seat.

The instructors bounded in applauding, “AREN’T YOU JUST SO HAPPY TO BE HERE?”

No, no I was not. In fact, this was not at all where I wanted to be, but I grinned uneasily as I looked around at my classmates; the ones I’d be stuck with for the next two years of my life.

Everyone else beamed, nodded, and started applauding back.

Okay then.

I tried to make nice. Really, I did. As a (former) waitress, I can bullshit with the best of them, but man, these people, I couldn’t crack ’em. For the next four (four!) hours, I sat there, alone in the back row, listening to a discussion about wiping butts, properly changing sheets, and bedpans. Each point the instructor made, punctuated by a question or comment from my classmate about something inane.

“One time, my grandma had the bed made wrong at the hospital.”

“I like cheese.”

“Our bedpans at the hospital I work at look different.”

Four hours a week of this, four days a week.

I walked back to the train, alone, and I wept. Not the kind of cry that leaves tears dribbling out of the corners of your eyes, oh no. I sobbed. I sobbed so hard that cars passing by stopped and asked if I was okay. No. But I would be.

My heart was broken.

I did what I always do: I made the best of it. I befriended the other outcasts. I zoomed to the top of my class, got invited into the prestigious nursing honor society, while slouching in the back, playing Bejeweled on my phone. Every time I got discouraged, I reminded myself that this was temporary.

I developed an incredible respect for nurses. Still have it.

Nurses = awesome.

I wouldn’t be where I am without where I’ve been or what I learned.

A couple of weeks before graduation, there’s a big thing for nurses called a “Pinning Ceremony.” It has nothing, I learned, to do with wrestling or sex. First, you get your picture taken, something I didn’t want to have done (I’m a rebel like that, and really, who the hell wants a snapshot of a twenty-five year old?), but my friends all insisted.

I love the surly face.

Anyway, there’s a big ceremony, a bunch of yapping, and we get pins.

That’s a nursing school pin. (also, like my retouching job?)

The night of the pinning ceremony, it was unveiled that some of the class had made each of us a gift from money leftover from something or another.

I don’t remember precisely what the ceremony involved, only that I spent most of it thinking about a) how hungry I was and b) listing the periodic table of elements (Hydrogen, Helium...) in my head. I probably played Bejeweled on my phone. Afterward, I went to the alter to collect my gift, the flowerpot I still own.

As I was looking for my name-flower pot (what the fuck was I going to do with that?) two nearly identical very short, very round woman with matching tight perms and haircuts so short they like tattoos waddled angrily up to me.

One of them shook their finger accusingly in my face: “WHERE IS NADIA’S?”

“Huh?” I replied. Nadia was a classmate who, well past the normal age of the graduating class, spent most of her time bitterly gossiping with her friend Melissa about everyone else. She especially hated me because, knowing I didn’t want to be a nurse – her life’s ambition – and beating her test scores seemed to mean that I was an asshole. (I am an asshole, but not for that)

“EVERYONE ELSE HAS A FLOWERPOT. WHERE IS NADIA’S?” the woman spat at me. Clearly, sparkling personality ran in the family.

I shrugged. I hadn’t been in charge of the flowerpots. Didn’t care about Nadia or her flowerpot. She could have mine if it meant so much to her.

The two woman stood there, on the alter of a church, no less, firing insults and complaints at me. I walked away.

It was a perfect end, really.

I graduated some variation of cum laude and ended my illustrious career as a hospice case manager (nurse) at the age of twenty-six. I’d been a nurse for under a year. Longer than I’d expected.

And now I have this completely useless flowerpot in my garage. Generally, I hate useless things. But I feel as though I should want to keep it. Or smash the shit out of it. Or something. Yet, I don’t. Which is why I’ve held onto it for so long. I just don’t quite know what to do with it, so I do nothing. It sits there, quietly haunting me, reminding me gently of where I’ve come from.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s a good thing.

These pictures are the epitome of win.

Look closely, Pranksters. Look very closely at this Facebook Ad.

You too, can be a member of the intense, elite CIA!

Then, you too can pose triumphantly with a squirrel carcass.

There is nothing not AMAZING about this picture. I’m going to frame it.

Then, while trying hard not to delete my own Facebook Profile (I was creating one for Band Back Together)(I don’t know why either), I came across this beauty, which makes me really happy, and will probably ensure that I never, ever, ever, delete my Facebook profile, ever.

Now, I’m a born and raised Chicagoan, and I’ve never, ever considered putting a tiny pig in red galoshes as “something to put on my Chicago Bucket List.” Become a mob boss? Yes. Become a Mafia Princess? Yes. We teethe on deep-dish pizza and are well-accustomed to corrupt politics and locals never go to Taste of Chicago.

I might have even once had a love-affair with Rod Blago’s magnificently luscious hair (this was also probably my favorite post):

But to dress a wee pig in tiny boots? I don’t think I know any Chicagoan who wants to do that. That sounds like something a Wisconsinite would do.

This morning, as I was getting my blueberry-flavored coffee and Junior Mints at the Sleven down the street (Breakfast of Champions, I told the guy behind me who snickered wildly at my selections), I noticed something so awe-inspiring that I simply had to take a picture for you.

Do you see that, Pranksters? PURPLE IS A FUCKING FLAVOR NOW. I have been petitioning for “purple” to be made a flavor for YEARS.

Don’t believe me? LOOK

And now, Pranksters, it is. Purple is FINALLY a flavor.

Um. UM. UMMMMM.

This exists. I don’t know why.

Next time, I’m TOTALLY buying it and leaving it out around the house so when people come over, they’ll see it and be SUPER uncomfortable when they see it. Like, “woah, does Becky USE this stuff? If so, WHY?”

I love making people uncomfortable.

Last, but certainly not least, is an email I got awhile ago from someone I do not know.

I think she’s in love with me.

After getting some shit for writing about how uncomfortable I was in my skin when I was heavier, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to talk about weight, so let me preface all of what I say with this: I write satire and I also write from the heart. I do not, have not, and never will care about what anyone else does, weighs or looks like. I am not about to attack anyone for their weight because your weight does not matter to me (Aunt Becky loves you as you are) and I never have attacked someone on or offline for it.

When I talk about my struggles with weight, I am being honest. When I talk about my struggles with headaches, I am also being honest. I am not a doctor. I am not telling you what to do. I am also not asking you what you think of what I have done. You do not have to agree with it to be my friend.

ONTO THE POST.

In the LONG GONE days when I was skinny, I always had a bit of a pot belly. While the chick in Pulp Fiction thought they were cute, I counted down the years until I could have a tummy tuck. I think everyone has that feature they dislike tremendously about themselves. My stomach was mine.

The pooch got worse after I gained and lost 60-70 pounds three times (thanks, crotch parasites), most of the weight in my torso, and by the time I’d gotten down to the weight I was three weeks ago, (sixteen pounds away from my high school weight), I probably could have worn the excess skin as a handy scarf. It was a matter of when I’d get the skin lopped off and when always fell into the nebulous future along with “achieving total world domination” and “learning to make jello.” I figured I’d get to it when I’d get to it.

When I did end up in the plastic surgeon’s office to discuss a possible breast reduction, I’d made the appointment to discuss a tummy tuck as well. Figured I’d at least DISCUSS it with the guy while I was in there…right?

The breast reduction, he said, was probably going to leave me unhappy. Especially because according to the weird insurance criteria, it wouldn’t be covered, at least (according to you Pranksters) not without some major legwork. He said I’d probably want an augmentation with some reduction and other things I can’t remember and I trusted that coming from him.

The tummy tuck, I learned, could fix some of my abdominal muscles, something that had been long busted since I’d gotten pregnant with my first. Plus, it was going to fix something else I’d hated: my pooch.

My abdominal muscles were in sad shape, even I knew that, and were likely contributing to some of my migraines. Not my normal migraines, but the ones triggered by muscles spasms in my back and neck. It wasn’t necessarily a reason to do the surgery. It wasn’t necessarily going to fix anything.

Medicine is, after all, an imprecise science.

We all know that I signed up for a full abdominoplasty and had one three weeks ago tomorrow.

I paid out of pocket. Entirely. (for all of you who asked)

The full abdominoplasty differs from the mini-abdominoplasty in that it deals with tightening the muscles underneath. In my case, he repaired a diastasis recti (separation between the left and right side of the rectus abdominis muscle, which covers the front surface of the belly area.). A full abdominoplasty is also a more major surgery.

The surgeon thought that he could remove 2-3 pounds from my abdominal area. He removed 6 and fixed my abdominal muscles.

Not going to lie. The recovery has sucked far harder than I’d thought it would. I’m sawed more than in half. I’m in pain most of the time. I have to wear a delicious (read: hideous) binder all of the time, too (which reminds me, I need to buy a new one. I’m thinking that I’ll buy a Spanx or a Yummy Tummy rather than a medical one. Which do you recommend?).

As one of my Pranksters said, it does get better every day. And the results are amazing. My headaches are better. I’m swollen, but every day, I’m a little less so.

I’m happy that I did it.

I don’t have a before picture of my pooch before my operation. If I go up on the doc’s website, I’ll show you, but I didn’t take one. I was too embarrassed.

Instead, I can give you this:

Meet Fetus Amelia, Pranksters.

It’s the only shot I have of me while pregnant.

Now, for the dramatic reveal. Please excuse the lighting in my bathroom. I am not orange. I swear.

I know you want my binder. AND my phone.

And here’s the dramatic NO BINDER reveal*

The lines you’re seeing are mostly from laying on the binder. And yes, I am a little swollen.

My stomach, Pranksters, even swollen, has NEVER been so flat. EVER.

This totally beats a pair of boobs.

*I’ll take another picture next week BEFORE I get cast onto Baywatch**.

**Is that show even on anymore?

So instead of being a good mother and writing some heartfelt post about how my kid started school today (he did) and I cannot believe I have a fourth grader (I totally can) and how fast summer went (it dragged like a cats’ ass), I’d much rather discuss something more interesting. Tattoos.

Specifically, the one I am going to get worked on today.

Back in January, I was all, IMMA GET A NEW TATTOO! on Twitter, and I decided that I had to do it now, RIGHT now, because I lack impulse control. I was fortunate to be referred to someone whose work I loved, who is like world famous and shit, and she got me in because someone canceled, which is kinda like kismet and stuff.

This is what I wanted, a phoenix tattoo:

And after my first appointment, I came back with this:

Then, I went back in February to get this done:

THEN, in April I went back to get the color filled in:

Awesome, no? (if’n you like tattoos, I suppose)

Today, though, I’m going back for touch-ups and, like I said before, because I don’t plan ahead very well, I’ve finally decided what I wanted to do. First I was gonna be all, “IMMA MAKE THAT PHOENIX RISE FROM SOMETHING!” because people are always like, “Nice Peacock,” and I’m all, “Imma shoot you.”

And I probably will, some day.

But today, I want to put something THERE, where the nifty arrow is pointing. Last night, because I am brilliant, I asked Twitter. Twitter said that I should put in that space:

1) a meatball

2) RIP Tupac

3) Bacon

4) a giraffe

5) OJ Simpson’s Face

Twitter is an asshole.

I’m adding something into that space because eventually I want half of my back done. My mother, she will shit a brick (she hates tattoos), but I’ve always wanted something part of the way down my arm. Not, like, SLEEVE style, because I am a chicken shit, but something that goes along with the Phoenix.

So, Pranksters, what would YOU put there?