Having been on a diet more or less since Ben was about two (and I had to lose those pesky baby pounds, erm, TWO YEARS after he was born) has it’s perks. You get very accustomed to having to deny yourself those tasty and delicious morsels of goodness known as non-diet food. And if you’re me, you eventually just don’t care anymore about eating junk food and it becomes your way of life to eat more chicken and tofu than God.

The Daver, however, has never had to indulge in any sort of diet. He’s pin-thin and can tuck away a couple of Quarter Pounders (with Cheese!) with nary an ill effect (whereas I get fatter just typing these words).

Until now.

My poor sweet, junk food loving husband has got to go on a diet. A new, special low-cholesterol diet.

I’d been waiting for this day, you see, because as I dieted those pounds off, marveling at every (pathetic) loss like it was a shiny new $100 bill, he merrily ate his way through a bag of chips or thirteen. My chicken suddenly looked less appealing than his fatty cheeseburger and fries, and I’ll admit freely that I was a mite bit jealous. Who wouldn’t be?

I plotted and waited until the metabolism that he was given ran out and suddenly HE would pack on the pounds and look for new (and tasteless!) tofu recipes right along side his doting wife. I planned on rubbing it in at every possible turn (silently or likely not), relishing each and every low fat meal he ate as payback for his formerly glorious metabolism.

Until earlier this week, when he got that dreaded phone call from his doctors office, wherein he was instructed that his LDL (lousy density lipoprotiens) levels were insanely high. Suddenly, I wasn’t laughing anymore, and I was struck with an emotion that I almost never feel: pity.

I feel genuinely badly that he has to now embark on a sad new diet, and extremely sorry for myself that I will inevitably have to follow it as well (collective EW! from the Internets, please).

Anyone have any good advice for us? The Internet is smarter than I’ll ever be (sexier too!) and I could use a hand here.

In a stunning fit of personal irony, I have completely lost my voice. Now, normally, when I’m sick, I get a head cold, pop some sudafed and move the hell on with my life. The last time I lost my voice, well, I can’t remember the last time I actually lost it completely.I think it may have been when I had my tonsils out at age 14. Talk about a fun time!

Normally when ill, I sound like a cross between Janis Joplin and one of the twins from the Simpsons (Thelma?), but now I sound like a balloon that has been stepped on. Repeatedly.

Dave is also sick but he has a fever, which essentially means that he’ll lounge around on the couch looking almost normal until I ask him to help me with something. When that happens, he’ll stop burbbling and drooling on the couch and start using a high-pitched voice while he weakly says things like, “The LIGHT, I can SEE THE LIGHT! DON’T GO TOWARD THE LIGHT! Mother, is THAT YOU?”

He’s trying with all of his might to out-sick me.

Fucker.

—————-

Today is National Blog For Choice Day, in celebration of the anniversary of Roe v Wade.

What most people don’t suspect, in not knowing me, is that since I chose to have my son Benjamin, rather than have an elective abortion, is that I must be anti-choice (as this is my blog, I refuse to buy into the whole pro-life terminology. I don’t actually believe that pro-life is anything but a nasty-sounding term, as most people, without referring to abortions would not voluntarily call themselves “anti-life.” Unless you’re suicidal it makes very little sense.).

Despite the evidence, I am overwhelmingly pro-choice.

I won’t try and bore you with the whys, the hows and all of the other details, as I don’t write well if I’m trying to be political and/or deep and meaningful. Besides 99% of what I might say have been better said by other, smarter, and more eloquent people.

But today I wholeheartedly celebrate Roe v Wade, who has allowed many women to choose how they want their own bodies managed.

[Imagine a nifty little graphic here. I can’t figure out how the hell to put it here. Becky = idiot.]

——————–

If Dave and I make it through today without killing each other, I will consider it a major personal victory. Instead of being disgustingly sweet which is my standard MO when ill, I am full of The Angry.

So full of The Angry that I am trolling around looking for someone who can help me break in my new (pink) boxing gloves, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN, heh, heh, heh. I need to ensure that I don’t have any contact with strangers today, lest they meet the completely irrational Becky that I have become.

So whose ass should I kick today? Anyone in particular?

Dear Vincent D’Onofrio,

We’ve had a year together, and it’s been joyous, hasn’t it? I fell for you when the pregnancy hormones made me nearly impossible to deal with, and my husband learned that plugging me into the television ensured that I wouldn’t pick a fight with him over the ugly light fixtures in the kitchen or my copious toe hair.

I endured many criticisms over our love, darling Vincent, mainly from my friends who couldn’t possibly understand what I saw in a slightly chubby actor almost as old as my father. They showed me pictures of you as Sgt. Pyle (which was a terrible name. Did you know that the Brits call hemmorhoids “piles”? You should have negotiated for a better name when you took that role. I’m just saying.) and as the bug from Men In Black, and I let it roll off my back like so many drops of water into the ocean of our love (or something).

As an avid People reader, I was shocked to learn that not only are you married, but your wife is having a baby. YOU ARE HAVING A BABY WITHOUT ME, and I don’t appreciate that one teeny bit, Vincent. Sure, we’ve never actually “met” in the most literal sense of the word, but that shouldn’t have stopped you from pining for some anonymous (but fabulous) midwestern girl (with bonus kicky hair!), AND NOT KNOCKING SOME OTHER LADY UP!

I mourned our lost love for a couple of weeks, before I made the acquaintance of a new television boyfriend for whom I can pine, someone who is honest about his wife and child but is snarky enough that I can overlook this weeny little detail: Anthony Bourdain.

I can practically hear you laughing through the miles when I say this, because, as you well know, I am not a cook. Maybe I’m even an “anti-cook” as I’d imagine you’d say, with my favorite recipe being “shamelessly order takeout.” In fact, 99% of the things my new boyfriend eats with gusto, I wouldn’t touch with someone else’s mouth and stomach. You might even say to me, “Now Becky, you don’t even CARE about food,” and you would be correct, I don’t. But I do care very much that he can work the phrase “Oh, there’s a pube in my drink” into television. I care about that very much.

As you know, Vincent, “pube” and “moist” are two of my favorite unintentionally hilarious words, and to hear him use one of those appropriately made me swoon with love. For him. Not you. Because the best that you can give me is acting like more of a lunatic and forgetting to shave your face, WITHOUT using either of those words, the words that are (partially) the key to my heart (like hotdogs!).

I’m sorry, Vincent, but it’s over between us, and I hope that you’ll agree that it’s for the best.

With Love (but less than I have for my new boyfriend. A lot less.),

Becky

PS. I hope that your baby cries. A lot.

PPS. A quick internet search has led me to realize that many other people shared my love for you, and they make me feel quite gooshy (in a bad way) inside. They’re creepier than me, right?

PPPS. Hope that you’re not getting any sleep with that new baby.

—————-

So, who is YOUR most shameful crush? C’mon, I know I’m not the only person who has inappropriate crushes on weird celebrities.

Am I?

When I got pregnant with Alex, I discovered that along with lunchmeat and soft cheeses (seriously, WHO KNEW? Absolutely no one told me a thing about this when I had Ben), I could no longer drink coffee. Not because I was being hyper-good pregnant Aunt Becky, but because it made me vomit. Copiously.

Other women planned to stop and grab a margarita and sushi on the way home from the hospital, but not me, I planned our route home to ensure I could hit up a Dunkin’ Donuts and grab a coffee. A gigantic one. Of course, as fate would have it, (due to some complications) I delivered at a completely seperate hospital from my initial route, so I ended up having Dave run out and grab me one after Alex and I were deposited at home.

It was in short, amazingly amazing.

Since then, Starbucks Corp has been rejoicing at their good fortune to have me as a repeat customer. It’s like I’m making up for lost time, with the way I imbibe coffee with a delicious and alarming frequency. I know, I know, I could make it at home just as easily and save a couple of bucks a week, but somedays it’s (sadly enough) what keeps me going on those really bad days.

There is one nasty side effect of drinking as much coffee as I do, and it’s not the perpetual state of the jitters that gives me the look of a seizuring patient, but as nearly every daytime TV commercial reminds me, it’s my teeth. After not thinking much at all about the color of my teeth, one day I decided to check them out in the mirror.

Holy pajamas, Batman! They were almost grey they were so stained.

Yesterday found me scouring the toothpaste aisle in Target until I found a 2 hour whitening kit that I plan to use to accentuate my brand new kicky haircut.

I’ve always made fun of people who get nervous about haircuts, because aside from taking an insanely long and boring time to accomplish, it’s not a big deal. It’s hair, it grows back eventually, and if you hate it passionately, I try to buy a box of dye and change the color to something alarming to detract from it’s ugliness. This spoken from the woman who hasn’t had a haircut in over a year and is now nervous as hell about tomorrow: Hair Cut + Color Day.

I’d planned to celebrate the return to my pre-Alexander weight by getting a haircut and funky color, but seeing as my metabolism isn’t quite yet done fucking with me, I have no earthly clue when that will be. And with the rate my hair is growing, I’ll be that freaky person with hair down to my ass before I can lose this 20-odd pounds. As it is, it’s long enough to require being tied back at all points in time, because the baby enjoys nothing quite as much as using my hair as handlebars.

Plus, I’m hoping that with the removal of (I’m guessing) 3 pounds of hair, I’ll finally see the scale move again (I’ve been considering removing vestigial organs to accomplish this until it dawned on me that I have no vestigial organs LEFT. No appendix, no tonsils, and no wisdom teeth. I guess I could remove my gall bladder and a couple of feet of intestines too, but I’m not sure it would net much of a weight loss.).

Currently, my hair resembles Katie Holmes’s pre-baby hair, that color, length and curliness, and I’m planning on doing her post-baby haircut (without the funkadelic layering) and some color to remove the grey hair that has sprouted from my head since I was 20 (this is the first time I’ve had my natural hair color in 10 years. It’s so dark brown, it’s nearly black. Who knew?).

Any suggestions on color from The Internet? I’d like to do something a bit funky, and I don’t mind the upkeep on the color as I am bound and determined not to let myself “go” just because I have two kids. I don’t have any idea how to upload pictures here to show you my coloring (I’m a techno-meh) but I’m fairly dark-skinned, am often mistaken for either Mexican or Jewish during the summer months (I tan well), so much as I would like (and I’ve always wanted to do this), I sadly cannot go platinum blonde.

Besides, don’t gentlemen marry brunettes?

Merry Christmas to you from Casa de la Sausages and your Aunt Becky.

Hope that Santa was good to all of you.

Now that my father is home from the ICU, resting comfortably and finally in real clothes again (which means that he has stopped accusing me of trying to look up his gown), I can focus my neurosis on more meaningful things.

Like the loss of my sunglasses, which I have had for over 3 years. And I am ridiculously, oddly, and oh did I say ridiculously? upset about. I can’t begin to understand how this loss is breaking my heart so thoroughly, but inexplicably it is.

And in spite of their insane cost, I plan to go out tomorrow, ice storm or not, and replace them.

I don’t get this sudden need for THOSE EXACT SUNGLASSES to be replaced NOW, NOW, NOW. It was all that I could do to NOT go out tonight, sheets of ice on the roads be damned (it honestly appears as though Swarovski has set up shop in my front lawn. EVERYTHING has been crystallized, including the dog poo. If only Swarovski was in the market for crystallized dog poo, I would TOTALLY CORNER THE MARKET).

I think I may be going insane.

I’d imagine that most couples had a far more romantic situation when they realized that the person across the table from them would be the person that they spent the rest of their lives with. I’m picturing an intimate candlelit dinner, or a walk in the park when all of the flowers are fragrant and blooming beautifully, maybe lazing around on bearskin rug in front of a cozy fireplace (complete with crackling logs, of course) with strawberries and champagne.

While I picture this to be all well and good for other people, the moment that I knew with absolute certainty that Dave was the man that (like it or not) I would be spending the rest of my days with was absolutely nothing like this. In fact, it was so far removed from romantic that it might be called The Anti-Romance.

You see, I knew that Dave would be my husband for as long as we both could stand each other when he not only allowed me to put my bucket of frozen fecal matter in his freezer, but offered to help me place the sample IN the bucket.

If that ain’t true love, I’ll never know what is.

But let me back up for a moment, to illuminate PRECISELY why I was doing this (and to reassure you that I don’t have some really foul fetish).

It started over the winter, the pain and the constant crapping, but I kept writing it off as stress or something that I’d eaten (I’m telling you here and now that health care professionals are REALLY the last to seek medical care). Eventually it dawned on me that my body was rebelling against me, and that mayhap I should get it checked out.

So I made an appointment with a gastroenterologist in the area, and begrudgingly trooped in, tail between my legs (no, unfortunately I do NOT have a vestigial tail, although that would be completely rad. Imagine the pranks I could pull!). Besides being completely intimidated by me (which is amazing, considering HE was going to be the one looking at MY colon. You’d imagine it’d be reversed here), he very thoroughly ordered a number of blood tests AND some *ahem* OTHER tests.

And these *ahem* OTHER tests were some of the most humiliating known to man. You think that someone looking up your pooper is shameful, wait, JUST wait until someone orders you to poop in a jar. AND THEN TAKE IT SOMEWHERE. Wait, wait, wait, I can make this MORE humiliating, I promise. Have someone inform you that you have to COLLECT all of your feces for 3! days, and THEN take it somewhere, where you are horrifyingly clear that some poor lab tech in the back is cursing you while gagging BECAUSE A COMPLETE STRANGER IS EXAMINING YOUR POO.

Hell, although the rest of my family is intent on disproving this, what with their insistance that when I sit upon the porcelain throne is the absolute perfect time to have a conversation with me and/or sneak a quick scratch behind the ears (I’m looking at YOU here, Daver), I don’t even like someone TALKING to me while I crap, let alone looking at my own personal byproducts. *I* don’t even want to look at them.

Dave insists that Rate-my-Poo dot com is the most hilarious site on the planet, but I won’t even load that into my search engine, because I do not find poo amusing. Poo jokes are golden (much like dick-n-fart jokes. Yes, I am, in fact a teenage boy, NOT a 27-year-old mother of two. Sorry about any confusion), but actually dealing with The Poo on a more intimate basis gives me the heebie-jeebies AND the Pee-Shivers.

So armed with my orders, my “hat,” my latex-free gloves, and my bucket, I decided to “do the deed” over the weekend. Which was the time of the week that I consistantly spent with my then-boyfriend, a time that both of us treasured. I am utterly unable to censor myself, so Dave was well aware of what lay before me, and although I offered to stay home and “complete my orders” he insisted that he didn’t mind. He even offered to clean out his freezer for my “sample” (I don’t think he’s cleaned out a freezer again, ever.).

It’s disgusting, when you think about it (well, all of this is pretty nasty), how one must collect the poo to put it in the (extremely large and reminded me of the buckets of cookie dough or popcorn that you get from the Girl Scouts. But filled with something far less awesome) bucket. You have to complete your “business” in a container that you put into the toliet affectionately called a “hat,” and THEN you must fish through your excriment to seperate the solid from the liquid (God, I have the heebie-jeebies just RECALLING this) and put it in the bucket that you’ve removed from the freezer.

Before you place the bucket back into the freezer, you must “burp” it, as the methane gas pressure can build up so much that the top will be blown off, spattering the insides of your freezer with what is decidedly NOT brownie batter.

I don’t know about you, but the absolute LAST thing that I want to do with my excrement is to touch it OR BURP IT, gloves on or not, so each time that I had to do this, I nearly wept out of shame and disgust. Dave, sensing my plight (well, more like having to listen to me whine and shake each time I had to do this), galantly offered to do it for me. He OFFERED to WILLINGLY handle my poop (I would never, ever offer to handle his, no matter how much he whined.). If that’s not love, I suppose that I’ll never know WHAT love is.

Monday morning came, and off I trucked back home which was about 45 minutes away, with the bucket-o-frozen poo sitting shotgun, strapped merrily in place. As I dropped it off at the lab, I’d wished that I were dead. No, scratch that, I’d wished that I was LESS THAN dead, I wished that I’d never been born at all. I wished that MY PARENTS had never been born. So great was my shame that I fell all over myself apologizing to the receptionist, the lab tech as well as the waiting room full of people who could have cared less. I’m certain that I looked insane.

I was later diagnosed with a mild case of Crohn’s disease, which has thankfully been in remission for several years. As for Daver and I, we’ve been more or less stuck with each other ever since. Every time that I become irritated by his colony of dirty socks that happily live next to our bed, I try my damndest to remind myself that, at one point in time, he selflessly offered to touch my poop.

(while discussing the possibility of having any of our children returning home for Christmas once they are married)

Me: “I don’t know, I just worry that the boys will get married go to their in-laws for the holidays. The way I figure it, the more kids that we have, the greater likelihood that SOMEONE will come home and spend Christmas with us.”

Dave: “Well…”

Me (fully expecting to be rebuffed): “I mean, except for Ben. It will never dawn on him that he should move out of our house. He’ll be living in our basement playing Everquest for the rest of our lives.”

Dave: “It won’t be Everquest…”

——————-

(While standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth, I suddenly begin to feel sappily in love with my husband)

Me: (Now back in our bedroom, spooning) “Have I told you lately how happy I am to be married to you?”

Dave (sleepily): “No, not lately.”

Me: “Well, I am…I love you very, very much.” (sniffs air) “DID YOU JUST FART WHILE I WAS SPOONING YOU?”

Dave: “Not just now, no.”

Me: “OHMYGOD, my EYES are burning, you ass!”

Dave: “I’m SORRY, dude!”

Me: “Sorry isn’t going to BEGIN covering it right now! What you need is a DUTCH OVEN!” (pulls comforter over Dave’s head so that he is forced breathe the toxic air) “You like that, do you?”

Dave (gasping for air while laughing): “I surrender, I surrender!”

Me: “Do you think ‘Toxic Ass’ would be covered under ‘fraud’ for an annullment?”

Dave: “Dude, you KNEW about my ass before we got married.”

Me: “Good point.”

(This one’s for YOU, Ashley)

After Ben was born, I went back to school coincidentally where my best friend was going. As we both needed a similar elective to help us further our degrees, we were thrilled to sign up for one together: Music Appreciation. The class met ungodly early, but since I had a vast knowledge of music thanks to my years as a concert cellist, we figured it would be a blow off class. We were not let down.

The first couple of weeks passed without incident: we showed up with Ashley dragging my tired ass into the room (SO not a morning person. I owe you, dude.), sat in the back, and proceeded to write notes back and forth in our notebooks. The teacher was, for some odd reason, terrified of us and would nervously rearrange her stack of papers whenever we tried to speak to her.

It took probably a whole month before we noticed the person sitting in front of us, only because one day, in a fit of exhaustion, we blearily tried to sit IN HIS ROW. We didn’t have assigned seats, of course, but this pimply rat-faced boy was territorial over HIS SPACE. Having been summarily corrected by him as to where HE sat, we slunk back to our row and took our seats. It was then that it all began.

First we noted his high-waisted stonewashed black jeans (occasionally white) and his cheap vinyl windbreaker. The hair on his head hung past his shoulders in what would have likely been beautiful curls, had he ever bothered to wash it and/or use product in it. Instead, it curled greasily around his squinty rat-like eyes and only accentuated his parchement complexion. This whole situation may have actually been circumvented had the following not occured.

After having a musical score passed out to show the class (most of whom had never seen one.), the lecture continued while the score circulated. Ashley and I began a conversation in earnest about the newest Coach purse collection (the teacher was too scared to tell us to shut the fuck up).

While debating the merits of leather versus vinyl, Rat-Boy angrily swivels around in his chair, located directly in front of Ashley and furiously whispers, “WHERE’S the SCORE?” to her.

Completely baffled by what he’s asking her (remember, now, we are discussing PURSES not music and have yet to see the score), she stammers out a “Whaaat?”

Since he’d probably been up too late whacking off into his music appreciation text book while playing Everquest in his parents basement, he was a little testy with her when he demanded yet again, “WHERE’S the SCORE!!?!”

Finally the lightbulb of comprehension flickered dimly over my own head as I understood what he was asking: he wanted the MUSICAL score, not ask us about sex (get it? Scoring? Having the sex?)! I gestured to the other side of the room, where people were listlessly looking at the score, and pointed it out to him. He seemed mollified and swiveled his scrawny body back around.

It was so ON.

Every class, we studied him, every aspect of him: the way he shuffled, his white stained hightops circa 1986 (yes, really), his varying shades of black jeans, the amount of dander on his back, the way he tried to set himself apart to the teacher as a true lover of music (and then the way she brushed his unrequited love off). Our notebooks, which had previously only been filled with gossip and drivel, were now filled with elaborate color coded charts and graphs that documented his every move. Days that he was absent, we were crushed. When he arrived, we celebrated.

One day, an eagle-eyed Ashley noticed that he had a new backpack. A new MONGRAMMED backpack. J=Jaassoon A. D=Dinkinnnnnnssss. What did the “A” stand for??? We spent weeks coming up with the answer. My vote was for “Americus” and Ashley’s was for “Aloysius” (pronounced Allooooiiiissshhhuuuss). To this day, I suppose that we’ll never know.

What I do know is this: on the last day of class, Ashley and I headed into the cafeteria to grab some greasy breakfast and Jason was there. In a fit of boldness, I asked him if he’d like to eat with us (keep in mind, I’d been too shy to speak with him before as he made my heart go all aflutter. No, not for serious.), and he did. We had breakfast with my imaginary boyfriend that morning, AND I NEVER SAW HIM AGAIN (sniffs wildly).

Oh wait, yeah I did, the following semester. He’d gotten a stupid looking bowlers hat and was wearing an Einstein t-shirt.

What? I’m NOT obsessed!

I was once accused of being “socially-uncaring” by Ben’s father, which was especially hilarious considering he did (and still does) work for a company that manufactures parts for a superfluous home appliance. He works as tech-support. At the time of aforementioned accusation, I was in nursing school. When I pointed out the obvious discrepency, the only other poo that he could fling in my direction is that I preferred to listen to something other than NPR while in the car, didn’t pour over the works of Michael Moore, and I disliked sitting around talking about the sad state of the world, because well, I don’t like to be depressed unnecessarily.

(and I wonder why I broke up with him).

(no, no I don’t)

———————-

Growing up, the radio at my house was always tuned to NPR or WFMT. It was like living in a dentist’s office. To this day, I still have a vast appreciation for classical, as I played concert cello for many, many years. I cut my teeth on Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and can still recall watching the film version while I stayed home with chicken pox in the first grade (and that wasn’t the first time I’d seen it). To say that I grew up a bit twisted would be the understatement of the year.

(as a complete aside, the NPR skit on SNL actually took my breath away, I was laughing so hard. It’s_just_SPOT_ON.)

The older I got, however, I began to realize that one didn’t actually NEED to listen to music that made them either feel badly or required too much thought. Sometimes a song is, afterall, just a song.

——————–

Yesterday, I dragged my poor, sweet husband out to buy Britney’s new CD, because if you’re going to go the absolute opposite direction from NPR, Britney may be it. I genuinely think that this may be the first time in history that I’ve bought a CD on the day it dropped, and I am not disappointed. It’s a quindessential pop album. Her voice is absolutely overprocessed and almost electronic on some tracks, but you know what? I can dance my ass off to it (very, very, very badly, but it’s MY living room. Someday I will fufill my life’s goal of learning The Robot. Sadly, though, it’s not today.), and some days, that may be all that I need.

(besides, between the fact that the baby seems to dig it AND loves Diet Coke, my husband may have just reached new levels of horrification at the whole nature versus nurture debate. And that my friends, is priceless.)