The first thing my mother said about me after I was born was that I had a “face only a mother would love.” According to the doctor, I’d been in some really awkward birthing position, shoved up against some bone or another, and that lead to my black eyes and nose so swollen it took up damn near half of my face.

I politely, respectfully disagree.

Not with the whole “face only a mother would love” because obviously I found someone who if he doesn’t LOVE me, at least tolerates me and my face, but with the “awkward birthing position.”

No, I’m pretty sure that Baby Aunt Becky had lost her way while trying to get out of the womb and was desperately battling to exit THE WRONG WAY. Or maybe I slipped and fell, cracking gnomish my face open. That’s probably more like it.

With genetics like mine it’s a wonder I ever learned to properly walk.

I suppose the term “walk” is debatable since I have tripped over lines in my Pergo floor, routinely fall UP the stairs and just last summer fell through the screen door. All stone-cold sober as a matter of fact.

My father, tasked with teaching me to ride a bike, swears I didn’t learn until I was close to 11 but I think that it was probably closer to 14 by which time many of my friends had cars, so I didn’t ever really get a chance to hone my sweet-ass bike riding skills.

The problem with being a Super Klutz, Overachiever is this (besides those pesky ER co-pays) you have to explain to people how you sustained injuries like these:

*Twisting your ankle while walking–NOT running–down stairs

*Breaking a toe while making a sandwich

Or, maybe even THIS:

Das BOOT.

This would be what I got to wear during most of my pregnancy with Mimi, thanks to a miscalculation on my part where I slipped on a rogue BABY GATE and broke some tendons in my fucking foot.

No, there was no fire. I wasn’t saving cuddly kittens from a burning building or curing world hunger. I was simply walking down stairs and made a misstep that cost me a whole hell of a lot of pain, suffering and dignity (what dignity?).

(As a side note, people who wear walking casts are not retarded. Just because I was wearing Das Boot does not mean that I was any stupider than I was before. It did not require that you speak to me in slow small sentences.

“Dooooooooo yooouuuuuu haaaavvveeee annnyyyy queeesstttiiiiooonnnss?”

The only question I have, mother fucker, is how far up my ass I can shove my boot before I hit your small intestine.

Also? People with disabilities don’t deserve to be STARED at. Just because I was pregnant and crippled did not mean that I was any more of a freak show than I was before. So take a picture, motherfucker, I fucking dare you. I’ll shove that camera so far down your throat you’ll be flashing people for months.

ASS.

So to you people with disabilities that don’t go away after months in a walking cast? I am sorry. Genuinely. People treat you like a fucking freak show and seriously, wow, that fucking sucks.)

Anyway. Coming up with new and inventive ways to explain away dumb ass injuries is always really tricky because you can only say, “I broke my toe making a sandwich” and get the standard blink, blink, blink response before you realize that you have to come up with something more…heroic.

Like, “I broke my toe making a sandwich in a third world country for a starving kid!” Said with just the right amount of conviction, you could pull it off, because it would be pretty hard to question that! What kind of assbag would LIE about flying to a third world country to make a sandwich for a starving kid!?!

Or even, “I twisted my ankle running down the stairs of a burning building trying to save a basket of orphaned puppies!” Everyone loves a feel-good story about adorable fluffy puppies or kitties. Just watch the news!

Now I’m just going to have to teach Amelia to carefully explain that this:

Is from a wicked bar fight. When people question how a baby got into a bar fight, she’ll have to carefully say, “You should SEE the other baby…” And then, BAM! the scar will be easily explained away. No one can question a kid with a scar that takes up half of her head (it’s, well, stretched since this picture was taken).

Twitter informed me last night that I’m not the only one with really ridiculous injuries which sent me to bed laughing my ASS off. Especially the conversation in which I was planning to sue the sandwich for breaking my toe and appear on both the People’s Court and Maury (paternity testing)(duh) for it.

THIS is why I adore Twitter. The mix of the absurd and the sublime.

So gather ’round Das Boot, The Internet, and tell Your Aunt Becky if you’ve had any wacky injuries.

When I was 16, my best friend Rory and I were lazing about my bedroom on a Saturday afternoon like a couple of kittens when we had the most brilliant idea in the history of awesome ideas: Rory offered to cut my hair. Here is the point in the story where I must declare two things:

Rory is not gay.

Rory is also not a hairdresser.

I’ve always had decently long hair, alternating between being about shoulder length and covering the bottom of my boobs. I have hair so thick, when not in the throes of a postpartum thyroid crisis that if it were much shorter, I would likely resemble a cactus, I find anything above the shoulder is sort of bad news for me.

So a couple of times a year, I drag ass to the salon and get it chopped to about shoulder length and let it grow on down until I realize that it’s officially gotten “too long.”

“Too long” for me is anything that makes me look like I might be a member of one of those religions that doesn’t allow women to cut their hair, or when wearing it in a pony tail becomes painful for my neck.

I’d always envied those women with the adorable pixie cuts but never quite had the guts to lop off all of my hair into one. It seemed like an awfully huge commitment for a 16 year old whose relationships were still measured in weeks.

But somehow, to Rory and I, who, I must admit were stone cold sober (as a matter of fact), this now seemed like the perfect cure for boredom. So we grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors and Rory lopped away.

Finally, he told me that I could turn around and when I did I was shocked to see a boy with big dark eyes looking back at me from the mirror. Uh-oh. Rory had given me a boy’s haircut. I gulped. Audibly.

Quickly, I raced upstairs and grabbed a shit-load of barrettes that I’d had laying around and began sticking them in the inch long tufts of hair that I had remaining. I grabbed an eyeliner–it was turquoise (hey, I never claimed to be tasteful)–and smeared it on. Satisfied by my appearance, I went back downstairs to show off my new haircut.

Surely, it was just new-hair-cut-jitters. Right? I hadn’t just committed teenage suicide, had I?

About an hour later, Rory and I had been watching The State on MTV (which, I got on DVD for my birthday and holy BALLS is that fucking funny) and the doorbell rang, our band of merry pranksters had arrived and we were off to do whatever it is that you do when you’re 16 and you have money and nowhere to really go but the world is all so new and wonderful and it’s all so fun.

Everyone had been over to my house BEFORE my haircut and, well, 8 mouths dropped open when they saw what had been done to my now-pin head.

To their credit, everyone was kind to me, probably, in looking back, kinder than I deserved.

(This, I should add, is where I’d humiliate myself by putting in a shot of me with my ridiculous hair so that you, My Internet, could tell me that “it’s not THAT bad” while you snicker into your cupped palm.

But, alas, I lost the book of pictures with all these snaps in my last move and I am actually so devastated by this that I cannot make a joke. I have no digital copy, so these pictures are simply lost. They’re gone forever and I cannot get them back.)

It was only from the back that one of my friends spoke the truth, “Hey Becky, you look like a lesbian now.”

I sucked in my breath sharply at this statement because he’d identified it exactly. I was now sporting the exact same haircut as all of the lesbians at school.

Always someone who had her own sense of style, which, one might properly argue is “tacky” and “unrefined” as noted by this iPhone cover that I am currently crushing on, or the belt buckle with my name on it or any other number of awful tacky things in my closet, I’m not always very quick on the uptake with things.

Something YOU might see as painfully obvious, I won’t notice for YEARS. I’m someone who could wear anal beads as a bracelet and not understand why people were snickering at me while I preened over it, so the haircut? Wouldn’t have realized it.

Well, I might have once the lesbian posse at school started hitting on me, but that was neither here nor there.

Truthfully?

I made an ugly lesbian. The haircut I can safely say was never going to be flattering on someone like me, no matter how much glitter I sprinkled, how many barrettes I clipped or diamonds I wore, short pixie haircuts aren’t my thing.

They make me look like I have a baseball where a head should be.

Thankfully, my hair eventually did grow out, although it took painfully longer than you’d think possible, and I had to go through all the stages of awful: cactus, Bozo the clown, Pig in a Wig, and eventually, back to my shoulders again.

And I learned a very valuable lesson that day.

I have a teeny, tiny head.

———————

So, loves, tell Your Aunt Becky all about your worst haircut experience. Was it a bad perm job that took on only a fraction of your hair? A home dye job gone horribly awry? Did half of your hair fall out? Did you routinely get mistaken for a lesbian?

First, this is the post that I am the most proud of, and, of course, it is not here. Which makes no sense, but, you know.

Today is Tuesday, and all of you brilliant and gorgeous readers (wait–have you lost weight? Your looks hot as hell!) readers know what that means: Beaver Talk With Aunt Becky, over at Toy With Me.

Thank you to anyone who has come by to support me over there. I’m still getting my sea legs and feeling a bit wobbly. All of your comments are cherished and loved and crocheted into tiny wee plaques that I hang onto my walls. Or maybe just really, really appreciated.

For anyone who–understandably–does not want to hear me talk about my lady bits, I am rewriting a (probably) unread old post from the vaults, written shortly after Alex was born, and airing it below.

—————-

I weighed myself this week.

This is kind of a masochistic big deal, considering that I had no earthly idea what kind of poundage I put on with this crotch parasite. After I continued gaining weight WHILE BARFING MY BRAINS OUT, I decided that maybe I just didn’t need to know just how efficient my metabolism could be.

Turns out, you don’t have to look when you get weighed in.

I mean, I gained a bunch with my first and all, but I ate garbage nonstop, so yeah, of course I got fat. Well, this time, I did not. And yet I STILL got fat. I feel loftily sure that I would kick some major ass in a famine, but now, my dimpled white ass needs some major work.

Let’s just say that I have my work cut out for me.

Operation Remove My Fat Ass has begun.

So after I got my good cry out, I decided to get productive and go on a walk as I have not been cleared to lift anything heavier than the baby, a walk would be nice and low impact.

I bundled Cletus the Former Fetus (ed note: Alex) up into my fancy stroller, threw my iPod over my ears to drown out his indignant “I can’t believe you’re not holding me to your breast Slave Woman! Where is my nipple? It’s not in my mouth where it belongs, you bitch!” screams, and began to enjoy the motherfucking scenery.

(as an aside, I can only imagine the horrible mother that my neighbors thought that I must be, letting my child cry like that while I grimly, determinedly walk on. I CLEARLY do not deserve to be a parent.)

As I rounded a corner, I saw the strangest thing. For the *second* time in my life.

There was a dog on a roof.

There was a (motherfucking) dog on the roof of a (motherfucking) house.

He just stood there, staring back at me as thought it was the most normal thing in the world for dogs everywhere to lounge about on tops of houses reaching two stories high.

Having had to run on no appreciable sleep for the past six weeks, I many had problems deciding how to react to the situation.

Do I call the dog? Do I keep walking? Do I want a tuna sandwich? Do I EVEN LIKE TUNA? Slowly but surely, my memory banks began to cross reference the situation: where had I seen this before? A whimsical romantically comedy? Possibly a dream I had when I was a kid? Do I even like tuna sandwiches?

And it dawned on me: several years ago, my neighbor called me outside to bear witness a dog sitting on the roof of a house across the street. A couple of us gathered out there, discussing the dog, who looked as befuddled as we were, unsure as to how it got up and as to how it was going to get back down again.

Somebody needed to do…something. If this was a made-for-TV-movie, a hot-as-hell fireman with twinkly green eyes would rescue the dog and maybe he and I would fall in love. And live happily ever after.

I offered to call the fire department, since my neighbors all seemed more interested in gawking and gaping than the poor pooch who was stuck up on the roof.

Figuring this was my shot at my one true love, I did. They directed me to animal control. Who directed me to the police. Who directed me to public works. Who told me to call the fire department.

I’m pretty sure they all looped to the same person, because I had the same fucking conversation. Either that or it was my own version of Groundhog Day:

Me: “Hi, my name is Becky Sherrick and I live here. My neighbor has a dog on his roof.”

Pick One (fire dept, animal control, police): “What?!?”

Aunt Becky: “I *said* that there is a dog on my neighbors roof. A big one.”

Public Service Official (incredulous): “You’re kidding me.”

PSO (to coworkers): “This lady is calling in a dog on a roof! Bwahahaha!”

Aunt Becky: “Why would I joke? I’m seriously afraid it’s going to jump.”

PSO (to coworkers): Now the dog is suicidal! Bwahahaha!

PSO: “Well, there’s nothing *we* can do about it. Try calling (choose one: fire dept, police, animal control, etc).”

(click)

Me:”That’s what (fire dept, police, animal..) said. oh NEVERMIND!”

Finally remembering that the public works in town have absolutely no idea what to do with a (motherfucking) dog on a (motherfucking) roof, I decided that the best course of action was one of complete inaction.

I just kept on walking, the dog and I eyeballing each other warily as Alex wailed for his breast, bitch.

And then, just like that, like a bolt of lighting out of the clear blue sky I remembered that I loathe tuna sandwiches.

—————–

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve come across lately?

In my brief period of working on The Floor(s) as a nurse, in addition to learning a zillion and one weird acronyms for such things as Follow-Up (F/U) and Shortness of Breath (SOB), I learned the term “Frequent Flyer.” Having only been vaguely aware of this term in regards to “miles” and “airfare” because I was a “poor college kid” and “didn’t travel much,” I was baffled when they referred to a patient as this during report (shift change).

Terrified of the seasoned nurses–you would be too-it took me awhile to muster up the courage to ask what the hell they’d been talking about. When I did, it was explained that Frequent Flyers were patients who were in and out of the hospital frequently.

Get it?

While I thought that a Punch Card Patient (buy 9 visits, get one free!!) was a bit funnier, it reminded me only of a kid I met in college. I’ll call him Ryan because that was his name.

Ryan was from a family of 4 boys–the original Sausage Factory–and these kids were, well, I guess the kindest way to put it is “accident prone,” but that gives you a nice mental picture of someone slipping benignly on ice in an “awe shucks, guys” kind of way. This was not Ryan’s family. As he explained it, these were the luckiest group of unlucky people on the planet. During a family ski vacation, one of his brother’s rolled his ski over another one of his brother’s hands at the top of a slope.

The result? A neatly severed finger, seeping blood into the white snow.

After fixing up said finger in the OR, his family was paid a nice visit from Children and Family Services. It seems as though the quickest way to get them on your ass (besides becoming a foster parent) is to install a revolving door through the ER. Shove through that 4 kids with rotating weird injuries, like broken ribs, missing fingers, busted heads, at semi-regular intervals and SMACK! BOOM! there you have it: you must be abusing your kids.

I can’t say with absolute authority that Ryan’s parents were NOT abusing their kids, but the laughter and general jollity he had about the situation led me to believe that no, this family was just luckily unlucky.

Because it is so often not my children that are involved with this, I’m fairly certain DCFS won’t be beating a path to my house to see how I caused cellulitis (Alex), respiratory issues (Ben) or an encephalocele (Amelia). This is obviously a stroke of genuine good luck, even with the steadily increasing severity of issues.

Between The Daver and I, we seemed to have amassed a stunning amount of stupid crap happening to us. Stuff that winds us up in the ER with various injuries.

(Bonus! Aside time! Sadly, of these probably 12-14 ER visits over the past 3 or so years, I have gotten my fist-full of exactly 11 Vicodin. Ever. Those 11 pills were easily the best part of my 27th birthday, and given to me at just the moment when July 14 waves goodbye to July 15, probably my best birthday present yet. Except the Cabbage Patch Doll that I got when I turned 4. But this is neither here nor there)

No, the list is boring and full of low-fat vanilla misfortunes. Nothing serious to warrant flowers, admissions (mostly) or even more than a simple, “Hey, I had to go the damn hospital last night. I hate hospitals” out of either of us. Corneal abrasion here, shoulder out of joint there, miscarriage here, Crohn’s issues there. No big deal. Stuff that could almost wait until the following day, when our regular doctor is open, except not so much.

If Ryan’s family was the luckiest set of unlucky people I know, my family would be the low-fat, low-sugar variety of that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m neither wishing things were worse or tempting fate here–I’ve had my share of Real Issues lately–but sometimes, you gotta take a step back from it all and have a good fucking laugh.

At least, that’s what I told myself when Dave gave himself what Twitter calls “Bagel Finger” this morning. Just as you’d imagine, he was recklessly cutting a bagel (obviously while saving a kitten from a burning building AND defending The Honor of his wife) when he miscalculated the amount of pressure he was exerting with his massive arms of steel (his guns, as I like to call them. Which, if you knew Dave, would make you laugh). Or he didn’t realize how sharp the knife was.

Either way, the morning slipped into afternoon with a bloody bagel and a busted finger.

As I drove him to the ER, the same ER we just took Alex to for his cellulitis not long ago (for the record, I am way too lazy to look up when this happened. But sources inside my head tell me it was “pretty recently”), I just had to laugh. Not meanly, no, I felt genuinely sorry for Dave, but just because this was becoming absurd.

I laughed, not unkindly, again as we walked out of the ER a scant hour later, Dave’s splinted finger jauntily reattached with some glue, catching the light with it’s shininess.

No, I laughed because no one would fucking believe it.

No, this picture has nothing to do with anything. But it cheered me up a bit, so, you know.

—————–

Back when I was 15, like all hot blooded teenagers I was learning how to drive.

Between my father’s obvious terror at the idea of being in the front seat of a car driven by his daughter and my mother’s out and out refusal to drive with me, I was stuck researching other options so that I may actually get approved for a driver’s license sometime in the next 14 years.

The other option came in the form of my over-18 years old friends, whom I was allowed by the state to drive with.

So one day, I was tooling around with my friend Audrey as we drove out in the more rural areas outside my town. I figured that this was probably safest alternative, considering that there was little to no traffic for me to hit with my car.

On one of the winding roads, just as you came over a hill was a farm. And on that farm they had some chickens.

And those chickens saw fit to cross this road at THE EXACT MOMENT I DROVE UP THE HILL.

It was a blind hill, so I couldn’t see anything on the other side of it.

The next thing I knew, I ran over not one, not two, but an entire flock of chickens. My car was awash in chicken feathers and poo.

I screamed along with the poor chickens.

I slammed on the brakes and turned to Audrey, tears pouring out of my eyes and she grimly informed me that I needed to go back and put any of the chickens that weren’t dead out of their misery. This was an even more horrifying prospect to me, who now just wanted to climb back in bed and wrap myself in the comfort of a large vodka.

I liked chickens, I did! I thought they were cute and sweet and I was happy to have them around. Opossums, however, I would have happily run down with my car, bike or even my boot clad feet. They were mean, they were nasty, and I hated them. But chickens!

My heart shattered loudly at the prospect. Becky, MURDER OF CHICKENS, I could see the headlines now.

But no. I couldn’t sit their daydreaming while there were more chickens to maim! I executed a 14 or 47 point turn and drove my Car of Doom back, crying and blubbering on and found the chickens. Well, some of them. Thankfully (I suppose) for my guilt-ridden conscience the ones that were dead were, in fact, dead, and the ones that weren’t had moved on to less dangerous car infested pastures.

As we drove away, me still weeping over the dead chickens, my car covered with carnage and feathers, Audrey looked at me and said,

“Why did the chickens cross the road?”

She waited a couple of beats as I grimly held onto the steering wheel at a perfect 10 and 2 position.

“TO GET RUN OVER BY BECKY.”

I was highly unamused.

You totally want to vote for me again! It’s EASY! Because you can vote DAILY until July 6, at which point I will stop shamelessly begging you. Also: you can make me do shit for you if you vote for me. But not BJ’s. Because THAT would be weird and uncomfortable.

Many, many years ago, before I was Your Aunt Becky, before I was Mrs. The Daver, and before I was mother to my three crotch parasites, I was Super Student Becky Overachiever, Esq. One night, I packed up all my shit into my friend Scott’s purple Neon and we drove off into the sunset. Or, more accurately, to my new school.

Yes kids, that’s right: Aunt Becky Does College.

A sunny fall afternoon, I sat on a bench outside of the science building where I was catching a quick smoke while listening to my well loved copy of 40 Oz To Freedom on my discman (that’s what we had before we had iPods, kiddos), enjoying the cool breeze from Lake Michigan and wondering if I had enough cash to grab a bottle of vodka after class. Some things, they never change.

I’d noticed that a slim, neatly dressed guy had sat down while I smoked–this was also back in the days before people mandated smoke free benches–but hadn’t thought beyond that. I looked about, stubbing my butt out on the concrete, craning my neck to see if I could see what time it was.

I didn’t want to be late for Calculus as my raging bitch of a professor (her name was Dr. Funk. Which, honest to God, is the coolest name ever for the world’s least pleasant person. Let’s just say I’d still kill for that name.) hated me. Finally, as I realized that I was in the one spot at school WITHOUT a clock nearby, I noticed a large Swiss watch on my bench-mate.

I took off my headphones and asked the guy what time it was.

“It’s 2:45,” he informed me, with an accent of indiscriminate origin. He paused a moment as I nodded my thanks, “Or how would you say that? Quarter to three?”

“That works,” I smiled at him.

He stuck out his hand to me and introduced himself, “I’m Matthias, nice to meet you.”

I shook his hand and replied, “I’m Becky, nice to meet you.”

In that matter, Aunt Becky met Matthias.

———-

Matthias, it turned out, was from Switzerland–my earlier snobby summation of his watch had been unfailingly spot-on–and was, just as I was, new in town. Although we had no classes together, we quickly fell in as fast friends, and were often in each other’s company.

One afternoon, Matthias had come up to my dorm floor, where I lived with Pashmina and my roommate Vanessa. Should you want to read The Vanessa Chronicles, I suggest here, here, here and here.

(As though you don’t have anything better to do)

Pashmina, her roommate, Matthias and I were all sitting in Pashmina’s room, eating shitty Chinese food from the place down the street that you could spend $5 and get food for a week (you’d also get acute GI distress for that $5 but hey, we were young) and Matthias started in on Why Europe Is Better Than The States. It wasn’t as though he didn’t care for the states–he did–but same way that I find the whole WC/sink-in-another-room thing odd, he found many of our customs equally strange.

Namely, the fact that our school, even with it’s billion and a half dollar tuition, didn’t have a Polo club. Matthias was outraged, and even mentioning that we were in the city where horses didn’t exactly roam free, could dissuade his bewilderment.

So, he the next thing he suggested was that we start our own Polo club.

I have to backtrack a bit, Dear Reader, so that you understand who he was talking to.

While I personally love a romp at the gym–hello endorphins–I don’t much care for competitive sports, especially ones that involve balls being thrown at my face. See, I don’t win, I’ll never win, and although I’m not a sore loser, being The Loser gets old after 20 or so years.

Pashmina is and was back then a swimmer by nature, which, like the elliptical, is a sport best enjoyed alone. Besides, even then (she’s still one of my best friends), I knew how frighteningly competitive she was and there was no way in hell I would compete with her for anything.

And honestly, the only sport we’d get picked to play on back then would have been a Competitive Smoke-A-Thon.

If that doesn’t clear it up for you, let me try this: remember The Wedding Singer? At the wedding when Adam Sandler mentions the “mutants at table 9” and the camera pans over so you see a table full of gangly weirdos?

We were the table 9 of sports. So the prospect of putting us on horses and doing whatever it is that you do in polo was absurd at best.

We each agreed immediately.

This was how I became Vice President of a polo club at age 19.

Part II will air tomorrow.

I’ve mentioned before that after Ben was born, I was struggling mightily with what to Do (with a capitol D) for the rest of my life. Whomever thought that the 18-20 year old bracket was the appropriate age for people to decide what to Do should be strung out and shot somewhere, because, hi, at 20? I was still a blithering idiot.

Difference was, now I was pregnant. And looking to make paychecks larger than so-and-so-measly dollars every week so that Ben and I could (gasp!) move out of my parents’ house. My standards weren’t particularly high, but my options were limited.

Before I decided on nursing, my mom shelled out 20 clams for me to take some sort of career figurer-outer class at the community college. Perfect, I thought as I left my screaming child behind. I just KNOW that the people running this class will see my inherent star quality! Perhaps they will just HAND me a diploma and maybe even put me on Star Search! I just KNOW I’m miles ahead of the rest of the knuckle-draggers in this class!

I showed up to a motley band of scraggly people all sitting rather reluctantly in a small classroom. I was instantly confused. I mean, why would someone PAY to voluntarily subject themselves to this and be unhappy about it later?

I took a seat at a table by a large no-nonsense looking woman with extremely long fuchsia fingernails. Each had a nice sunset scene carefully painted upon it and I was semi-jealous. I’d never considered my fingernails as a medium for such wonderousness. I thought about telling her how much I dug her nails, but one look at the beady mean eyes peering out of her doughy face told me that I should keep my goddamned mouth shut.

Undeterred, but still sort of unsure if I was in the right place, I carefully pulled out some scratch paper from my backpack and waited patiently for the instructor to come in and recognize my obvious superiority.

I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, about 20 minutes after the class was set to begin, our instructor breezed in. Rather than scan the room to find the superstar among the drones (that would be me. The superstar, not the drones), he simply began passing out a big fat folder crammed with papers.

Once the folders were all passed out, he simply told us to begin filling out the test within the folder. Use the pencil, he warned us, or the Scantron machine wouldn’t be able to score it.

Well, okay, I said to myself. I like tests. I’m really GOOD at tests. I bet this TEST will tell me that I rule and that I should just bypass school entirely and become an heiress. Fucking SWEET.

I happily opened the test up and prepared to meet my destiny (or density. Whatever).

I noticed unhappily that the test was one of those gradient ones where I had to say from 1-4 how interested (one being least and 4 being most) I was in the statement. Like this:

1 2 3 4 I am interested in becoming a ditch digger.

Okay, I thought, brow furrowed in concentration. Is this a trick question? It sounds like a trick question. I mean, who would want to become a ditch digger? And wait, aren’t they called something more PC now, like a Hole Management Expert?

I looked around the room, expecting to see a sea of confused faces and to my dismay, everyone else was studiously filling out the form.

I furiously scratched a line into 1, praying this wasn’t a trick question, and went on to the next question.

1 2 3 4 I am interested in tracking statistical marketing data.

Uh…uh…uh, I thought frantically. Are they talking about the people who stalk you at the mall, begging you to do taste tests and surveys? EW. No thanks. That’s one of those jobs you just sort of fall into, not something that you aspired to.

1 2 3 4 I am interested in hosting parties.

Finally, I cried to myself, FINALLY! Something I could totally do! I LOVE hosting parties! Hooray!

I furiously scribbled a 4 and went on to the next.

1 2 3 4 People would call me a methodical person.

Hmmm….I thought. Is this a trick question? I don’t know that anyone that would think of me in those terms. I scribbled a 3, just guessing what people might say about me and moved on.

I spent the rest of the test, all 232 questions, in much the same vein. Finally, it was over and we were instructed to go on break. I took that opportunity to visit the computer lab and check my email. I laughed my way through a couple of those forward How Well Do You Know Me emails (which turned, I must add, into meme’s years later) and when it was time, slunk back in to the room.

My star quality was no longer sparkling.

The instructor passed out sheets of paper with our results on it, a certain combination of letters. Those letters, he explained, would correspond to a set of jobs that I was uniquely qualified for.

I frantically searched through page after page of letter combinations until I got to mine. My eyes rested on the job I would be happiest with:

Veterinarian (poultry).

Yes. A chicken doctor. Wow. The possibilities. Wow.

That must be a glitch, I said to myself. On down the line I went.

Brick Layer.

My third?

Mosaic Tile Layer.

Uh. Jesus. Uh. Yeah.

*blink, blink, blink*

I was uniquely qualified to become Becky Sherrick, Doctor Of Chickens or Becky Sherrick, Layer of Bricks. Fucking awesome.

I was not even REMOTELY of Star Quality ™. No one was going to beat down my door to be on Wheel Of Fortune or American Idol. No one was going to have me bikini model cars or become a sexy astrophysicist. No one was going to beat down my door: period.

Unless they happened to wear feathers and cluck a lot.

Dear Aunt Becky,

Is Dr. William Sears evil?

Signed,
“The Baby Book” Makes Me Cry

Dear He Who Makes Me Giggle,

Now, dear reader, “evil” is a word that Aunt Becky uses sparingly and in reference to things like “butter,” and “dressing room lighting,” and even occasionally “Cosmo Magazine.” So I’m not certain if “evil” belongs in the same sentence as “Dr. Sears.”

That is, of course, unless you don’t co-sleep, don’t breastfeed your child until they’re 15, and consider using a pacifier on your beloved child. After all, YOUR nipple should be the pacifier. Then you might call him evil.

Because he is hyper-critical of mothers who don’t sleep in a family bed. Those who might use formula (his own wife breastfed their adopted kids! Get off YOUR ass and nurse yours!). Those who do not wear their babies. The un-crunchy (plastic?) set.

New parents, Fair Reader, need to be judged like they need another sleepless night.

Yours,

Aunt Becky

——————-

Dear Aunt Becky,

I am considering constructing a room to hang sausage. As the Patron Saint of Sausages, what advice to you have for me?

xoxo,

Sausage-a-holic

Dear Encased Meat Lover,

First off, let me tell you how amazing it is to hear from a fellow lover of tube-shaped meat. There is nothing on the planet that makes me happier than a plate of grilled up hot-dogs or sausages, except, perhaps, a new Chanel Bag. But that’s neither here nor there.

I’m afraid, however, that I don’t have a whole lot of advice to give you.

You see, while I am an avid Queen of The Sausages, and my home may be known as The Sausage Factory, I don’t actually hang my encased meats in a room. I prefer, in fact, to allow the men-folk of my house use their beds rather than the rafters. I know, I know, Fellow Meat Lover, I am too kind.

My suggestion to you, my new friend, is that you go to Wisconsin. They’re known for their cheese and their weenies up yonder dere, and I’m imagining that they might actually know what a room full of sausages might look like. And not in the It’s Dinner Time At Aunt Becky’s House kind of way.

Smootches,

Aunt Becky

—————————

Auntie Becky,

Why does my cat (sic: put her) butt (sic: in) face?

Love,

Felis catus
Dear Cat Fancy,

I can only presume that your cat, like my own, has a camera implanted firmly up his (or her, let’s not be sexist here) butt-hole. Maybe it’s connected to the CIA database, maybe it’s your in-laws spying on you, or maybe it’s for a sexy adult video site, I just don’t know.

But when your cat sticks his (or her) puckered poo-hole into your face, what he (or she) is doing is saying to you, “SPEAK INTO MY MICROPHONE.” Alternately, “SMILE FOR THE CAMERA.”

Please, avid reader, PLEASE be careful what you tell your cat’s ass. You never know who is watching.

Signed,

Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Out To Get You

For the first 8 months of his life or so, Auggie used every opportunity possible (which is a hell of a lot when you have a 7 year old who languidly opens doors and wanders through them) to bolt from the sanctity of my home to my neighborhood. I cannot tell you how many times my fat pregnant ass had to huff and puff down the street after him in a futile exercise of Showing My Neighbors That I Cared. It embarrassed me to have The Dog That Runs and shamed me further that there was very little I could do about it. He was too fucking fast for me, that little asshole.

(note: these are the days when I dreamed of taxidermy-ing him into The Perfect Dog)

Eventually, we’d get him back in the house only to repeat the cycle ad infintum, ad nauseum.

Fortunately for us, we live in a really nice neighborhood and no one really gave us hell for it. It wasn’t as though we could do a whole lot about it (save for patch our back fence, where he’d happily escape) and we did what we could. It’s a Shiba Inu thing, The Internet told me, which made me feel loads better and the only reason that ickle shit head isn’t gone, doggie, gone.

One of the last times that he bolted, this happened. I hate to be an ass, but go back and read it and come back here.

Do-dee-do-doh-do-dee-do.

(hums the Jeoprady song)

Oh wait, what’s that? A cute sibling picture while I wait? Don’t mind if I do.

Man, you’re a fast reader. I was gonna put more pictures here, but okay, moving on.

That was last October and for some inexplicable reason, Auggie stopped bolting. I’d say it was the Fear of God that I put in him, but anyone who knows me knows that’s a load of crap. The only person in this house afraid of me is Ben, and that’s because I’ve convinced him I’m psychic.

(also: how awesome is that?)

What I left out in that post was how ridiculously upset that made me. I don’t mind people being pissed at me for doing shit on purpose, but damn, I was trying to FIX the fact that Ben had let Auggie out. So not my fault. But I came home and cried my head off (see, I do have emotions other than, I Want A Fucking Cheeseburger and I Want A Fucking Nap).

So, a couple of weeks ago after school, Amelia happily napping in her swing (so glad I bought a crib for her not to sleep in), Alex happily destroying the hell out of my house, Ben brought over my Crusty Neighbor’s granddaughter. She’s been here before and she’s a huge brat, but this was before The Curious Incident With The Dog In The Daytime.

Honestly, this little girl was so unpleasant last summer that I really would rather her not come over–she’s also several years younger than Ben–because I don’t care to have to discipline someone else’s kid so that she can have the afternoon off. Plus, her grandmother was a huge bitch to me, and while I’m not pinning her voodoo doll likeness with straight pins, I’m not exactly baking her batches of cookies.

I sent them back outside that day because Amelia was sleeping and I didn’t want them to wake her.

But that brings me to my question, and it’s an honest one: should I overlook my own feelings on the matter so that Ben can play with his friend inside my house? I certainly don’t mind if they play together, but I’d prefer not to have to be the one in charge of her.

Tell me honestly what you think. What would you do, Internet?

I do almost all of the manual labor around my house. (Some might argue it’s because I’m really a man, but that’s neither here nor there. But rest assured that if I had a penis, The Internet would be the first I’d tell. And then I’d write my name in pee in the snow. Because, hello, AWESOME!)

It’s not a judgement statement and I’m not all “OhMyGOD, I do EVERYTHING around the house” *flings hand to forehead dramatically* because I don’t care much. Or I should say, I’m used to it.

(TOTAL aside time, here’s what a man I am: a couple of years ago, some creature got into our garage at night. And when I realized it, I ran out there brandishing a broom while Dave and Ben watched from the door, eyes wide as saucers. I think I grew some chest hair that night.)

Problem with this division of labor is the fact that I am a total klutz. I am so ungraceful that I make (insert another word for klutz here) look downright normal. I’ve broken a toe making a sandwich, broke the front door by falling through it (completely sober, I should add) and successfully done the splits for the first time while 36 weeks pregnant after washing the kitchen floor.

So it comes as no real surprise that I hurt myself a couple of weeks ago while taking out the garbage. I’m not even going to lie to you and tell you that it was a heavy bag, bursting at the seams, nor did I do so to save Little Timmy from a burning building. Hell, I didn’t even rescue some adorable kittens from a tree while I did so.

No, during a perfectly ordinary garbage-bag-throwing-into-the-big-container- sexy-fun-time (I am totally kidding about the sexy fun time), I managed to throw out my back. The lower part, you know, by the coccyx? After several days where I crankily moped about the house having to ask my willing reluctant husband to do such things as “bring me the baby” or “take out the garbage” while he rolled his eyes at me, it miraculously got better.

It was a friggin’ Easter Miracle.

So, it was NOT The Awesome to wake up a couple of days ago with the flaming pain making me whimper when I moved my foot or rotated my body in any way. Of course, this is while Dave is lying about the house, sick as a dog with The Rota. Made me feel almost bad to require his germy, pathetic help.

But finally, after hobbling about my house like an old woman, I called the damn doctor (his real title! The Damn Doctor). And now, let’s just say, Internet, I won’t be complaining about going back to visit him.

Not after he gave me a script for some muscle relaxers and, wait for it, wait for it…

Delicious, sweet, nectar of the Gods, VICODIN.

And let’s just say, Internet, that I am now stoned out of my gourd (Dave is home with me so don’t worry, sweet Internet, I am not in charge of my kidlets alone and high as a kite). I don’t really know where this post started or where it went. It probably made very little sense, but hey, I know I’m not raging against the machine. Which probably would be more entertaining. Because who DOESN’T like Internet Rubbernecking?

Oh, and to those of you who will be coming over this weekend for The Big Party? I am TOTALLY not sharing my pills. And Aoxomoxoa is TOTALLY wicked when you’re high. Also: very hard to spell.

So, what’s on YOUR mind today, Internet? I promise to be highly entertained by anything you say. Or what do YOU want me to tell you about knowing that my internal filter is completely off?