Now, you didn’t really think I had cured cancer, did you? If I had, my face would be plastered on pretty much every magazine cover, I’d have multiple bookings on Good Morning America and Larry King Live, and the world might award me a Nobel Prize. No, I haven’t quite cured cancer yet, but I’m pretty sure I will. In the words of my high school Guidance Counselor, Mr. Duffy, I just need to apply myself more.

Sure, I’ve applied myself to certain worthwhile pursuits, convinced of my own inherent genius without so much as a glance at the facts. Why, this one time I almost became an artist! A veritable child prodigy! Another time I nearly became a culinary genius, which, despite how they make it look on television is no easy pursuit. Sure, I’ve failed more times along the way than I can count; becoming a nurse instead of a doctor, having a child rather than a trained monkey butler, getting pregnant against all odds, facing the hurdles of autism and death, marrying a man in lieu of traveling the world while simultaneously curing both AIDS and poverty. And fatness. Don’t forget fatness.

But one of these days, I tell you, I’m going to finish curing cancer.

I just know it.

I know that print media is going the way of the condor, or so I keep being told, but to me there’s nothing better than a nice quiet morning and a newspaper to rifle through. Well, okay, there are a lot of better things than that, namely a “nice quiet morning,” but I digress. I just don’t find reading newspapers online as appealing.

Partially it’s the site design. It’s like being fucked in the eye with all the blinky-glary-picture stuff being thrust into my eyes, and partially because I am a crotchety old person who doesn’t quite like to navigate through the clunky pages. I find it far less appealing, but I suppose I’ll have to get used to it.

What fascinates me the most is not the articles–no–what I find amazing is the way that John (or Jane) Q. Public reacts to them. Because now most of the stories come complete with a nifty comment box. And we all know that comment boxes + anonymity = assbags.

Newspapers seem to bear a good deal of the burden of this, often bringing out the loud and the stupid (why do they so often go hand in hand?) (I say this ironically. I am, after all, the person that posts something nearly every day here), and I have a field day reading it. The infighting and the general moral superiority to all other commenters just makes me giggle, seriously, if you want a good laugh, grab a bag of popcorn and pop open the comments box at the end of an article.

So as not to elicit the hatorade from the particular article I was just plowing through, I’ll spare you the linkage. This particular article was followed by the commenters ripping into each other about the nefarious use of Tylenol in schools. Apparently–according to some–Tylenol is a fucking gateway drug. Bwahahahaha! No, seriously. Someone thinks this. Several someones.

(Completely unrelated, but related: if they do manage to ban Vicodin, I am moving to the moon)

Blogs get it too, of course, as you have no doubt noticed, although it seems more muted on one hand and more personal and horrible on the other. Less infighting and more personal attacks.

The more readers your blog gets, the more expectations are placed upon the author. The greater the expectations, the greater the let down when the blogger has a particularly bad day or bad week and isn’t writing up to par. This is one of many things–like how a simple non-platinum coated front door can cost hundreds of dollars–I don’t understand.

Okay, I get the part where no one likes a whiny, cry-baby, because shit people, you may be complaining about your cock-bag ex-boyfriend while other people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water! Or adequate health care! How dare you complain when some people have no legs! NO LEGS, Aunt Becky, you horrible bitch!

Perhaps they do not know I find “bitch” to be a term of endearment.

Before you accuse me of moral superiority (which, hahahaha! Just TRY and make that charge stick), trust me when I tell you that I have read posts on a couple different bigger blogs that have made me see red. It’s all I can do to not scroll down to the nifty comment box and pop in some awful, trite, I’m going to come here and rip you a new poo hole because you fucking suck crap. I’ve always managed to stop myself, close the window out and carefully unsubscribe.

The Internet needs more hatorade like I need someone to drill into my skull and pour cherry Jello inside. I mean, what does coming over to spew nastiness about actually accomplish? A feeling of moral superiority? You want moral superiority, go turn on Maury. Or Jerry Springer. Trust me, a half an hour of that should make you feel like a king among men. You’ll be patting yourself on the back for your decided lack of recessive genes and your amazingly normal family for weeks.

As bloggers, we put ourselves out there and invite you in to come see what we have to say. We dust off the Welcome Mat and offer you a tasty beverage while complimenting how amazing your ass looks in those pants (have you lost weight? You look amazing!). But do we have a right to be angry when you spit in our lemonade and throw eggs at our door?

Considering you get exactly what you pay for when you click to a new blog (think a sea of gigantic zeros as far as the eye can see), do you have a right to be cruel when you don’t get what you want? Or what you think you deserve?

I’m asking you, honestly. My friend Trish wrote this about authors handling negative reviews, and I’ve been rolling this around in my brain since then. How should bloggers handle it presuming a) they are not making money from said blog and b) they hadn’t asked for the negativity?

The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it.

That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear.

-Stephen King, The Body

I’ll be back tomorrow with more pointless drivel. Today, there are too many things I can’t talk about here anymore that I can’t seem to escape. Even in writing. I don’t mean to be deliberately cryptic, it’s just not my story.

Let me distract you! Look! A cute baby picture!

Further proof that she is Her Mother’s Daughter (kind of, but not entirely like His Master’s Voice. Remember that ad?).

This is designed to make you feel old. This was almost 4! years! ago!

Alex showing his displeasure at having his hair washed. Because I am a huge jerk who wants my children to be clean.

xoxo.

Love to you all. Thanks for being there.

(God, am I REALLY talking about feelings and love? BLECH)

P.P.S. Tell me something cool. No, really, I want to hear about your stuff-n-things.

One of the things I am terrible at, besides, of course, flagrant overuse of commas, jumping in and out of tenses like it was my job (ed note: it is not my job), Misusing Capitol Letters, and generally making people uncomfortable with the assumed familiarity that a nickname like “Aunt Becky” brings, is updating my loyal Internet Army about things I’d previously whined about.

It’s not that I don’t HAVE updates or think to tell you of them, it’s just that without collecting several things to update you about at once, the post becomes even more boring than normal. If my blog reads “and then (dot, dot, dot) and then (dot, dot, dot)” even I become irritated.

—————–

The Internet was both shocked and appalled that someone who has Crohn’s disease (or maybe NOT Crohn’s disease) would try a weight loss drug like Alli. And I was shocked and appalled that after cutting out butter as a food group, the scale zoomed up 12 pounds. Seemed mighty suspicious.

(my scale is broken)

But, because I’d tried Weight Watchers and found it to be too much work for someone barely sleeping and barely able to cook–thanks to a certain squally infant (read: The Daver)–I decided to go with Alli. Against the better judgement of many of my closest friends in the computer. Alli trumped a tapeworm (and since regular diet and exercise wasn’t cutting it), so I took my first pill with great trepidation.

I sat there at my computer for the first couple of hours, waiting for the butt-butter to liberally pour out of me. My diet wasn’t terrible to begin with–shockingly, I look as though I polish of boxes of Little Debbie every night–but everywhere I went I was told to not wear white pants (Thankfully for eyeballs everywhere, I do not own white pants), wear a panty-liner and to watch out for flatulence with particulate matter.

Terribly anticlimactic for me when absolutely nothing at all happened.

Save for this: I awoke the following morning–mornings are notoriously bad for my guts around these here parts–and waited for the spew, the pain and the cramping (this happens without Alli). It was only when I felt absolutely no pain whatsoever that I realized that I really HAD been in constant serious pain before this.

Day after day, I hesitantly popped the blue pill–waiting for the inevitable agony–and noticed that for the first time in many years, my guts felt oddly normal. Not like they were trying to eject themselves from my body cavity through my belly-button or like they were imploding. I’d never found anything–even Demerol–that controlled the pain I was in, I just sucked it up and dealt with it. Because what else CAN you do? Chronic pain is chronic pain and you get used to it.

So the drug that was supposed to induce terrible cramping, diarrhea and seepage made me…better. I swear on a stack of Bibles that I have never been more baffled.

I will admit before you, o! Internet, that I have indulged in some fattier meals and paid the price. The price was shockingly low, truth be told, and I’m not sure if it’s my particular GI anatomy or that I’m used to this pain, but I did pay. The oil, if you read in the wise comments I got on those posts, I should tell you, comes out of your body looking just like…oil. Neither here nor there, honestly, but sort of amusing.

I haven’t shat myself, ruined any pants (white or otherwise), and I’m not exactly sure if I’m seeing results. Like I said, my scale is broken, and I stupidly stepped on it a week or so ago while very bloated and noticed I’d gained a pound and a half. I moped about for awhile afterward and vowed to get the hell off the scale. It does me no good.

So there you have it. I am pretty pleased with it but cannot honestly tell you if I have seen results. I have no desire to be a slave to my scale, and I know soon enough my body will realize that it doesn’t desperately need my fat stores to feed a baby or nourish a fetus. Time will tell.

——————–

Earlier this week, my agents schlepped off my book proposal to the first round of publishers in the first of many months of “hurry up -n- wait.” The beauty of agents is this: not only do they know what to do, you aren’t rejected YOURSELF. I am not subjected to the “You suck ass” rejection emails, and the few rejections I have been sent (by my agents) have been ridiculously flattering.

I realize I sound not terribly excited and I know that’s weird, but like I said, I won’t hear anything for MONTHS. I’d much rather be excited about my new site design or this fantastic bottle of blueberry flavored vodka Daver bought me.

Another one of those “time will tell,” “laughter heals all wounds” stupid platitudely bullshitty statements that serve to annoy most people.

Like me.

—————-

Thanks to your votes, I made it into the top 5 Funniest Blogs, a title I know full well that I do not deserve. But I’m ridiculously flattered that I made it there and from here on out, the top 2 will be determined by a stealthy secret panel of judges. Actually, they’re not stealthy at all, they’re listed on the site somewhere, but I don’t read fine print and besides, what does it matter who these people are?

Cake Wrecks will somehow no doubt win both spots.

(I am super pumped to go through those posts and remove my pleas to you to vote for me. Because I felt like a total assbag begging you. Shit, I *still* feel like an assbag)

———————-

Amelia is still working on rolling over which means one of two things:

1) She gets flipped onto her belly and becomes furious and indignant about it

B) She isn’t sleeping because all she wants to do is “roll, roll, roll.” Indignantly. She is obviously my child.

Her scar, rather than shrink like everyone seemed to think it would–which, in hindsight, makes very little sense to me–is expanding rapidly towards her forehead. I am no longer sure the hair in the back will easily cover it, but this is okay. Hats, oh hats, they will become our friend.

Although my brother seems to think that a scorpion tattoo would be even cooler.

The stretching of said scar has shown that I was correct: there is another fucking stitch back there to be removed. Awesome. Even creepier is that you can now see her skull implants. Which, yeah.

Anyway, before someone pipes up with, “AT LEAST SHE HAS FEET! HOW DARE YOU COMPLAIN WHEN THERE ARE PEOPLE WITHOUT FEET!!!” I’ll end this post with an adorable baby picture.

Maybe green and sparkly won’t be her first choice in headgear. Can’t win them all.

It must have been December or maybe January as we inexplicably when I cradled my arms around my rolly-polly belly and said tearfully to The Daver words I would yearn to eat later.

“I just” *sniff, snort, hiccup* “I just want him to love me best.”

(there is, of course, a reason for this. Autistic kids, The Internet informed me, are sometimes like Siamese Cats. They choose a person and that is Their Person. Everyone else doesn’t matter. Ben chose several people, of whom I am not #1.)

(can you blame him?)

It was a prophetic choice of words, and it made me wish that maybe if I said things like, “I just want to poo off 60 pounds this morning” or “I just want to have an unlimited supply of Diet Coke,” it would magically come true. Suddenly I would awake one morning as a swim-suit model, chugging gallons of Diet Coke.

Sadly no, but do any of you remember the Monkey Paw story? Based on the blank looks I get when I reference it, I’ll give you a brief overview: this magical monkey paw was given to a couple who had recently lost their son, with it, they could make three wishes. But because I don’t read the fine print, all I can remember is the wife, wishing their son would come back to life.

He does, but as you might expect of someone who had just been sleeping the eternal sleep, he wasn’t who he was. The moral, of course, is “be careful what you wish for.” Maybe I should have heeded this advice. It might have spared the waning fragments of my sanity.

But I said it, and I got my wish in spades. I’m sure, of course, this was merely magical thinking, but it worked. And my son was born a Momma’s Boy ™. He nursed every hour for 12 months, spent the first 11 months of his life waking up overnight 3-5 times, and recoiled in horror when anyone else dared to try and touch him. Including, of course, his poor father.

While it might sound perfectly lovely to some, and it was for awhile, I couldn’t go to the bathroom without him having a fit. When I say fit, I don’t mean a mild tantrum, I mean that he would scream, and cry and scream and cry the moment I left his line of sight until I’d come back to soothe him. I often considered making a cardboard cut out of myself to stand as a dummy so that I could possibly wash my hands in peace.

Maybe I should have.

Anyway.

The older he’s gotten, the more likely it is that he will take a shining to someone else. He’s very close with his father. He adores his older brother and sister. He loves my mother, his “Gummy.” Other people he likes, but can often be slightly reserved in their presence. It’s turned from something that made life intolerable after awhile into a mere quirk of his personality.

Alexander (whom we often call Jay) is just a Momma’s Boy ™.

This, of course, has taken a hilarious new turn.

Now, while Alex is awake, I am not able to hug or cuddle with either of the other men in my house. Amelia, he’s okay with but should Dave dare to wrap his guns around me, Alex is the Holy Ghost times twenty (somewhere, my MIL is smiling and she knows not why).

He’ll quickly run up and try and ensconce himself between our legs. Once there, he will try to peel us apart as though we were a gooey pair of stickers, and should we hesitate in breaking our embrace, he shrieks. And Alex’s screams could double as a dog whistle an eardrum rupturer. He’s THAT shrill and loud.

At first, thinking that he just wanted in on the lovin’, I’d swoop him up and squash him in. He’d wrap a spindly arm around me and use the other to push his father (or brother) away, yelling “NO DADA!” or “NO EWE!” (he calls Ben Ew. Which I think is “you” because we’ve never called anything “ew” before. But we don’t call Ben “you” either. I guess the moral of THAT story is that kids are just weird.).

Oh no, Alex doesn’t want ANYONE but he or his sister to lay a finger on his precious mother.

Because I know this is only a phase he’s going through, we all find it pretty funny and charming. I remember being a wee one and being entirely convinced that I would grow up to marry my uncle. Any ladyfriend he brought around after I made my mind up, I was immediately An Enemy. Didn’t matter how many times I was told that I couldn’t marry an uncle, I wouldn’t listen.

Nobody better lay a finger on my mother.

I just feel sorry for his future wife. There’s no way this can go well for her.

—————————

Now I have some business to attend to, but don’t worry. It’s not crazy boring. Only KIND of boring.

See, over on that sidebar is a page called “Link-a-Licious.” As you might deduct from the name, o! brilliant Internet sleuths that you are, that page is my blog-roll. It’s insane. It’s unruly. And it needs a hair cut and dye job, desperately.

So this is where YOU come in. Do you have a blog? Do you comment here? Do I know you? Do I WANT to know you? (I probably want to know you) Does your link work properly or have I completely messed it up? Leave me your link.

Also: I am on Facebook if you are so inclined to want to read more of my pointless shit. My name is at the bottom of the blog.

ALSO at the bottom of my blog, hidden neatly away there so that no one can find it (hello pointless!) is an RSS button, should you want to subscribe. Do not ask me what that means. All that I know is that this is a really fracking stupid place to put a button *grumble, grumble* and I cannot wait for my new design.

I am on Twitter! Because who isn’t? My name is “mommywantsvodka*” and we should totally be BFF!!! Triple exclamation points for triple the fun!

And how cool is this? I didn’t even pay her to write this.

Lastly, I need some prayers sent for a friend of mine. The details aren’t mine to share, so I won’t, but please PLEASE keep my friend in your prayers.

*My name is NOT “mommy wants vodka.” It is Becky Sherrick Harks.

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.

Happy Fourth of July, Internet. May all of your sausages be perfectly cooked.

We’re not really a fourth of July kind of family. Not a one of us cares for jello molds or bean dips–two of the things I highly associate with the holiday–and since Illinois put The Ban On Fun when the outlawed pretty much every single firework, even Sparklers are forbidden. SPARKLERS.

Yeah. I know. We impeach our crooked governors, run a toll road system I cannot understand to save myself, and outlaw fucking Sparklers.

(we were left, I should tell you, with those things you throw at the ground that make a satisfying ‘POP!’ Yeah. Pathetic, I know)

Sure, we’re close enough to Wisconsin that should we care to, we could easily pop up over the border for some contraband fireworks and a visit to the Best Thing In Wisconsin (besides House on the Rock and the jaunty “You Are Now Leaving Wisconsin” sign you see when you’re whizzing back into Illinois)

(Wisconsin and Illinois have a long standing feud, for those who wonder why I’m picking on an entire state. Wisconsinites hate we FIB’s–fucking Illinois Bastards–for driving too quickly and habitually wearing pants. Where we Illinoisans hate Wisconsinites for their love of both the Packers and The Brewers, both of which are seen as inferior to the Bears and the Cubs–or Sox–respectively).

The single Best Thing In Wisconsin besides leaving it is this:

That’s right, The Mars Cheese Castle. If you’re ever in the area, I suggest, nay INSIST that you stop by. It’s truly a place above the rest. For instance, while there, I noted a nice block of cheddar cheese, encased in wax and made to look like a can of Bud Light. It brings a tear to my eye when I think about it.

But this weekend, because we don’t want to be Annexed to Cuba or wherever it is they banish people these days (Wisconsin? I kid, I kid. I couldn’t resist. And besides the gentle ribbing, I do actually like Wisconsin. Half the plaques affixed to Dave’s arteries are thanks in no small part to the sausages and the cheese and the butter farmed right there. So it’s a part of the man I promised to love, honor and repay, that wily state), we’re hosting a party. A SAUSAGE party featuring a multitude of delicious encased meats.

Dave is taking the eldest sausage and heading out to buy as many encased meats as he can fit his grubby hands around. Hot dogs, brats, cheese brats, meat sticks, wee breakfast sausages, bacon, and (likely) cheese. It shall be a feast in which I pass out fistfuls of Lipitor with the buns and ketchup.

Since his (grumble, grumble, grouse) father has not called or picked him up in three weeks–lest you feel sorry for Ben, he’s pleased as punch by this, as are we–Ben will be there and likely covered in ketchup.

Alex will happily fling cupfuls of water at our guest while somehow managing to simultaneously bean them in the head with any number of large balls. All of which he calls “purple” as I think he is as color blind as I am.

Amelia will show off that she is no longer the embryo I’d thought she was by rolling around on the floor. She doubles as a lint brush! I’m sure our guests may choose to borrow her to remove the copious amounts of cat hair from their clothes.

(when did she get so old?)

Amelia may also voice her displeasure of learning precisely what being a member of our family involves. She is, no doubt, at the tender age of 5 months, plotting her escape to find her Real Family, as she, like me, was no doubt switched at birth.

(Also: I scream just as loudly when Dave gets into MY face)

Happy Third of July, Internet! If you’re local and care to join us for an encased meats extravaganza, drop me a line.

Your comments in my last post had me rolling on the floor, seriously, I might have cried a little (in a good way) when I read them.

—————

My trolls often accuse me of one of two things:

1) The Most Boring Person On The Internet

#B) A fucking idiot.

The first I refuse to cop to because I may be dull, but I ASSURE you that I cannot possible be the most boring person on the Internet. Number B is true, as you well know, I have never denied being a blithering idiot. If the Stupid Shoe fits, I’ll gladly parade it around town.

I guess I’m just amazed that it only took my son 7 and a half years to realize it.

See, this summer I was looking forward to. This is the first summer that Ben hasn’t been enrolled in a summer camp, partially because I didn’t care to send him back to the hippie Nut Ban! school, and partially because I was all set to enjoy having my eldest home. Our relationship may not be traditional as I’ve previously stated, thanks to his autism and my own moronism, but we do like each other.

Suddenly, though, I’m questioning the validity of my prior decision. Sure, it’s nice to have someone who understands me when I speak but that means that I have someone who understands me when I speak. Especially if I say something like “God-fucking-damnit, I am SO MAD at (insert relative’s name here).” Suddenly, his wee voice pipes up with, “Cocksucking assholes,” just to be supportive of me.

I kid, I kid. Don’t go all Maude Flanders “Think of the CHILDREN” on me.

I never say “cocksucking.”

Ben’s autism, while it makes for many various and sundry irritations and fixations, makes it very hard for him Not To Follow The Rules. He is a very precise, Germanic kind of child, the sort who scolds me when I say “fuck” or “shit” and the day when I dare to not load my plate after I eat, I will certainly be stoned to death by him. When I dare to tell him to go to his room at bedtime, he often creates elaborate lists of The Rules so that he may….I don’t know what he does with them.

I also recieve notes that say things like “Why Does Mom Make Me Go To Bed When She Doesn’t Have To Go To Bed:” check box:

• Because she said so
• Because she said so

So that’s the way it is in my family.

But I’m wondering if maybe this whole “let’s all stay home together” stuff is a bit overrated. You homeschooling parents out there, you deserve a fucking medal and a parade in your honor. No doubt. I don’t know how you do it.

It doesn’t seem to matter that right before school ended, I bought Ben another 30 (yes, that’s right thirty.) Magic Treehouse books, when I suggest that he might stop following me around so that he can read one of his many books (he’s rereading them in numerical order, naturally) they’re now BORING.

Since he accidentally knocked a glass of water onto my keyboard and didn’t tell me about it, he’s banned from the computer indefinitely, and the television–although he would probably trade his siblings for it–is not something that I allow him to sit in front of, rotting his brain cells.

Maybe I should rethink my parenting strategy to allow a hell of a lot more movies and video games and a lot less hovering around me, trying to prove how wrong I am at life. Because now my son has discovered what a freaking moron I am and isn’t afraid to tell me all about it.

Ben: “What time is it?”

Becky (not looking at a clock): “Um, maybe 9:15?”

Ben (in his best ‘you’re a freaking idiot voice’): “I don’t mean to be mean or anything, but….it’s actually 9:26.”

Becky: “Why did you ask me if you knew the answer?”

Ben: “I wanted to see if you were right.”

Becky (headdesk)

————-

Ben: “Where’s my swim suit?”

Becky: “It’s next to….the…uh…couch?”

Ben: “Hahahaha. You said couch!! Hahahaha! It was on the CHAIR. HAHAHAHA!”

Becky (clenches hands into fists) “Serenity now. SERENITY NOW.”

—————-

So, it’s only July 1, I noted sadly on the calendar (two weeks until my birthday, Internet! Time to get prepared for the party you’re throwing me!) and already I’m seeing a noticeable increase in the size of my stripe of grey hair. My hair is either going to fall out in a frazzled halo around me or I will become a Distinguished Grey 28 year old.

Serenity now. SERENITY NOW.

—————–

How’s YOUR summer going?

Aunt Becky: ‘I *so* don’t get this song.’

The Daver: ‘Wait, isn’t this America?’

Aunt Becky: ‘Yeah…or maybe it’s ‘Chicago.’ The 70’s had a lot of bands named after cities. Either way, what the fuck do they mean- ’25-06-24′? That makes no sense.’

The Daver: ‘What are you *talking* about? It’s ’25 or 6 to 4′!’

Aunt Becky: ‘…’

The Daver: ‘You know, like 3:35 or 3:26 am.’

Aunt Becky: ‘…’

Aunt Becky: ‘It is not!! There is no way!’

The Daver: ‘What the hell did you think it meant?’

Aunt Becky: ‘I don’t know…maybe a combination to a lock or something? No, I refuse to believe this song is about a time of day.’

The Daver: ‘And a locker combination makes more sense to you?’

Aunt Becky: ‘No! That’s why I *said* that I don’t get this song, dumbass!’

The Daver: ‘It’s about smoking dope, Becky.’

Aunt Becky: ‘I refuse to believe that in all my years being a pothead that I never could figure out that this is a drug song. I have a sixth *sense* about this crap! I mean ‘Lake Shore Drive….get it ‘L.S.D’?’

The Daver: ‘Are you still bitter that you couldn’t do the ‘Dark Side of the Moon’/ ‘Wizard of Oz’ thing?

Aunt Becky: ‘I cannot discuss this with you. You wouldn’t understand. You were off being ‘good’ while I tried to determine the best liquid to put in my bong. Creme de Menthe was a hands down favorite.’

The Daver: ‘Fine.’

“…”

“…”

(three days later)

“…”

Me: ‘Is it really 25 or 6 to 4?’

————

What song lyrics have you completely screwed up, Internet? I know that I cannot be the only one who thought that Radar Love = Red-Eye Love.