You’d be shocked–and probably dismayed–to learn that there are a number of companies who want nothing more than to have me put my seal of approval on their product and then TELL YOU ABOUT IT. I’m personally shocked that any company would want anything to do with me, but you know.

Marketing to Mommy Bloggers is the new black, donchaknow? While I appreciate that many people do enjoy writing about the newest hot luscious cleaning apparatus, there’s a very real part of me that would feel kinda oogly about the whole thing.

It’s just not my bag, baby. It’s not to say that if a cool product was given to me, I wouldn’t endorse it, but I don’t think I need to do the work of a marketing company for them. Not without more compensation than a $10 product.

But I digress.

Occasionally, an opportunity to review something DOES come my way and while I am to fat (currently) to jump on it, I certainly THINK lazily about meandering towards it.

Like my friend Chris’s book: Pacify Me: A Handbook For The Freaked Out New Dad. First, he’s a friend and how fucking cool is it that I have a friend who has written a book (okay, I have a couple friends who have written–and published–books because they are cooler than I am)? And Part B, I sort of owe him*.

While we ladies have such humorous books as Naptime is the New Happy Hour and Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay (also written by a friend because I tend to keep friends that are cooler than me), not to mention the Girlfriend’s Guides (to everything kid-related), dads are kind of given the short end of the stick.

Okay, let me rephrase that: Dads are TOTALLY shafted.

I guess the transition to fatherhood is supposed to be seamless or something, which is such fucking bullshit. Sure, the dudes don’t (presumably) get stretch marks or heavy boobies, but still, going from 0 -> 1 kid is a Big Ass Deal. Don’t let anyone tell you differently, because they are lying and if you believe them, I have this Nigerian Prince I know.

Fatherhood, is a Big Ass Deal.

Sometimes, you need a friend along the way to humorously guide you along while making obscure references to movies that I’ll probably never see because I am not a dude. Luckily, The Daver (who has approximately 3 minutes of free time each week) plucked Pacify Me out of my hands the moment I unwrapped it. He swears that “it rules” and “he wished that he’d read it before our babies were born.”

Dave was planning to do this review for me, but he’s also planning on building me flower boxes I’ll build myself and considering buying a new hose I’ll need to go buy. Like I said: he has no free time.

It’s a great book, a light, fun read, and I’m pretty sure every dad I know would get a kick out of it. So, you want a copy, you clamor? OF COURSE YOU DO.

Leave a comment and I’ll randomly select someone for whom I will BRAVE THE POST OFFICE FOR (I have a phobia, okay?). I’ll even fake his autograph! Consider, o yee who will win this, as a freebie Father’s Day gift! No need to go buy another ugly tie! Win, WIN! Contest ends June 14 at 11:59 PM.

If you don’t win (boo!), his book is available on Amazon. He also blogs over here at Daddy Needs Some Alone Time.

*I’m building up to something here. My 7th grade English teacher would call this “dramatic foreshadowing.” She would also be horrified that I referenced her in my blog here because she was a HUGE bitch, but what can you do? Free country and all.

And hey, you’re still here? Why don’t you go vote for me? You can vote EVERY DAY until July 6 at which point I will stop shamelessly begging for votes.

I’m in the running for Funniest Blog and while I won’t win, I will hassle you to vote for me. Because you can vote daily and that rules the school.

——————

As part of the requirement to get into nursing school (other requirements at my school included: a general bad attitude and the disregard for others), I had to enroll–and pass–Anatomy and Physiology I and II. And as part of A & P I and II, we had a weekly lab practicum. In addition to a nifty cadaver and an actual skeleton (now they are often made of hard plastic), my professor had somehow acquired a brain.

Now and again, he’d pull it out and leave it on the front lab bench. It would float there in it’s glass house, suspended in a clear yellow liquid almost as though it were another member of the class, nodding along. Because my professor had a great sense of humor, he’d labeled it years before with a fading sticker that read: “Abby Matter.”

It was a nerdy Young Frankenstein joke, he explained when I asked, wondering if the name was of the brain’s previous owner.

So to pay tribute to him, I have begun the process of labeling all the entries that involve me whining about Amelia’s encephalocele “Abby Matter.”

In a valiant effort to distract myself from myself, I tried my daughter on solids this morning now that she is the same age as my son’s were when they tried solids for the first time. I was sad to note that the formula, unlike breast milk, does not digest those simple carbohydrates the same way, so the longer it sat, the more it stayed the same.

Amelia was…not thrilled by the idea. Maybe she was picking up on the grimace I was no doubt making as I tried to feed her the paste-like rice cereal, maybe she just has better sensibilities than her brothers, but she was less than thrilled by the entire experience.

What I have not been talking about, though, is that Amelia’s Early Intervention interview with the therapists begins on Friday afternoon. I am less than thrilled by this idea, even though I keep reminding myself over and over than so many kids have problems so much greater than hers and that I should just shut the fuck up.

The marked rigidity of her limbs could just be a further sign of her awesomeness and her readiness to take on the world, but I’ll admit to you, Internet, that my heart breaks a little every time I see the strange Frankenstein way she uses her arms sometimes. Is this something? Is this nothing?

I’m just not sure.

I’m just not sure.

Now to those of you who are worried that I might be merely posting boring pictures of my garden, let me assure you that this is exactly what I am doing. But (always a butt with me), just like a shitty after school special, there is a moral. Although, not in a Jerry Springer Let’s Have A Moment way.

Also, can you vote for me? Please? Pretty please with a nutsack on top? It will help my fragile ego churn out less boringest posts. Vote here and here and here. I’ll make out with you.

The first link is to a brand new award that someone cooler than me nominated this blog for.

And I want to hump them for it. Thank you.

First, let me show you my rose bush:

Okay, so this is my climbing rose bush. I planted it last year in the midst of my miscarriages as I find gardening to be nearly as cathartic as beating people senseless with my fists of fury. Because gardening means less jail time!

Felonies or not, this rose bush is insanely awesome and healthy looking. It’s far bigger and better than it should be.

But wait…what’s that pipe say? I can…hardly…make…it out.

OH EM GE.

My rose is fracking radioactive!

So that’s the way it is in my family.

Like many other kids on the autistic spectrum, Ben had various and sundry food issues. For probably 3 or 4 years, he’d eat nothing but his White Food Diet. This included AND was limited to: saltine crackers, graham crackers and oatmeal.

Ben was the only kid I knew who had to be forced to try a Chicken McNugget or a slice of pizza, and while you’d probably say to me, “Aunt Becky, why didn’t you try to make him eat something more healthy?” I’d tell you, Gentle Reader, that I’d already tried in vain. That kid food, Gentle Reader, was my best bet for getting him to realize that stuff outside of his diet was a-okay and wouldn’t cause him to explode (or whatever he thought would happen).

Food Issues just became a normal everyday part of my life and we learned to deal with it. Sure, it was (and still is) frustrating, but what can you do? Ben is loads better now than he once was.

Ben says, “Stop, in the name of FOOD.”

Alex was born when Ben was five and by then, many of his eccentricities had been worked out and turned into mere quirks (thank you Occupational Therapy!). Unlike his brother, I have a distinct feeling that Alex would have happily crawled from the womb and found his way up to the boob to eat, had I not been so easily able to expel him through my magnificent pushing prowess.

Alex + Food = True Love

Like clockwork, right about 4 months of age, Alex began to take a decided interest in table food, and the first time I put a spoon with my low-cal, super-fake-sugary yogurt and dipped it into his mouth, he was enraptured (I know. By YOGURT. Ew). I quickly dashed to the store and bought him some full fat, no fake-sugar yogurt, which he devoured by the 6-pack.

(also, could Alex and Amelia look any more alike?)

I.was.thrilled.

I had grandiose ideas of having dinners that didn’t taste like cardboard! Dinners that had VARIETY! Dinners that I might be excited to eat! Dinner time, thanks to some peer pressure, might actually cease to be a nightly battle!

Did someone say BACON?

Not so, little grasshopper, not bloody so.

What I hadn’t taken into consideration when I happily pulled my cookbooks from their dusty shelves, is that Alex is the most willful person you have ever met. So the minute the Terrible One’s (now followed by the Terrible Two’s) reared it’s ugly head, food was a battle once again.

Without the sensory issues, but with the iron clad will of a thousand tons of platinum, Alex will simply refuse to eat. He can be presented with the most succulent, delicious morsel of filet, and if he is a particularly obstinate mood (which happens to be 99.9% of the time), he will throw it angrily to the dogs. Or at my head. It’s a battle of the wills with Alex.

Simply put: I’ve given (mostly) up. Not because I really want to admit that I’ve been broken by a two year old whom I outweigh by over 100 pounds, but because I’m just too tired to care. You don’t want to eat? Don’t eat then.

Dinners are once again made of cardboard, the cookbooks gather mold and moss, and I just sigh melodramatically whenever I imagine the foods that other kids will eat. With Alex, it’s not a sensory thing, it’s a control thing and I’ve heard somewhere this is common with toddlers.

So, I say, fuck it. I’m tired of trying to sneak broccoli into mac and cheese only to have one of them notice and refuse it. I appreciate that Jessica What’s-Her-Face wrote a cookbook that suggests great ways to get kids to eat their veggies, I say great. Good for her. My kids? Will notice.

Perhaps this is my comeuppance for dressing the kid like a hot dog.

Someday, they will broaden their horizons and until then? They can eat like freaks. I’ll fill in their nutritional gaps as best as I can with Carnation Instant Breakfast and vitamins.

Alex and an edamame regarded each other for a time in silence. ‘Who are you?’ Asked Alex. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.

It seems that in addition to my color blindness, I have also inherited a vast fortune of guilt. It doesn’t matter what it is, if it’s possible to feel badly about something, I do. Hell, I’ve been known to feel badly about things that are IMpossible to feel guilt about.

Let me put it this way: if I am in a store, and I see the rent-a-cop whizzing by, certain to arrest some flagrant shoplifter or teenage smoker, my initial thought is not, “Man, sucks to be YOU,” but “OHMYGOD, DID I DO SOMETHING WRONG? Is it possible I shoplifted while maybe I blacked out in the tampon aisle?”If it appears obnoxious to you in print, I assure you in person it is much worse.

For someone who is as sensitive as a toad, this is odd behavior, but it’s MY odd behavior, dammit.

But because I am usually half-way up the cross about something-or-another-like-that-chocolate-chip-cookie-I-ate-while-I’m-supposed-to-be-dieting, when someone else attempts guilt as a motivator or as a way to make me feel worse about something, I get fucking furious.

On Sunday, I was sitting around wondering why The Internet wasn’t entertaining me like it should be and sort-of missing The Daver with all my heart and soul, the doorbell rang. My neighborhood is full of kids and I have kids of my own, so while I find the ringing of the tinny bells annoying as fcuk, it’s a necessary evil.

I was feeding Amelia a bottle so I carried her to the front door, hoping it wasn’t The Mormons whom I just didn’t have the energy to fend off. When I opened it, I saw a kid of indiscriminate teenage to twenties age. My heart sunk as I saw the pamphlet in his hand.

Kid: “Hello, ma’am, I’m conducting an experiment and my goal for the day is to talk to 150 nice people. Are you a nice person?”

Aunt Becky: (looking around for a hidden camera) “Uh, I guess?”

Kid: “Your neighbor 2 doors down is a nice person. I just talked to her. I’m just trying to meet nice people.”

Aunt Becky: “Uh. Okay.”

Kid: “It’s my assignment, to see if I can meet nice people.”

Aunt Becky (dim lightbulb lights up. Oh, so this is like those bags of flour kids in high school had to carry around to act like they had babies. Note to Child Development teachers: a bag of flour is nothing like a baby.): “Okay.”

Kid: “blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Aunt Becky: (nods head apprehensively. She is no longer listening because she is bored shitless but trying to be nice. Having an assignment of going door-to-door sucks balls.).

(she looks around for clipboard to sign to say that this kid talked to her)

Kid: “So, if you’re a nice person, and obviously you are, I’m selling magazines. The first prize to whoever sells the most is a trip to ….(ed note: somewhere boring). The second prize is $5,000.”

Aunt Becky now notices that the kid is probably closer to her age than she’d thought.

Kid: “I’m planning on going to ….(ed note: some school I’d never heard of) and I’m going to put the $5,000 towards school.”

Aunt Becky now calls bullshit. This is no college kid.

He thrusts the magazine card at her. “Would you like to buy a subscription?”

Aunt Becky thinks that her subscription to The Atlantic is due to be renewed soon, so she looks to see if it’s on there. Surprise, surprise, it’s not. There is, however, a subscription to Diabetes Monthly.

Well thank God.

Aunt Becky: “Nah, I don’t see anything I want. Thanks.”

Late 20’s Loser Selling Magazines Door-to-Door: “Well, if you don’t want anything, you should do what I think is the best idea. You should give a subscription to …(ed note: some children’s hospital I’ve not heard of). So the SICK, DYING kids can read magazines.”

Aunt Becky: “Uh yeah, NO THANKS.”

Late 20’s Loser Selling Magazines Door-to-Door: “Come on, not for the DYING SICK kids? They want magazines!”

Aunt Becky firmly shuts the door, laughing.

——————

I may be full of guilt, but I was not born yesterday.

I was born Tuesday.

The Daver works one of those jobs where he’s ALWAYS working. I don’t mean that in the flip sort of oh-my-God-I-have-to-work-until-6-PM-AGAIN kind of way; I mean it in the very real you-better-never-get-attached-to-the-idea-of-a-spouse way. It took quite an adjustment for me, who had been used to the idea that a job came with occasional overtime, but overall, after you clocked out, you were done.

Not so for The Daver’s job. At any moment in time, and I do mean ANY moment, work can send an email and he will have to drop whatever he’s doing and go fight some nerdy fire. Most often this occurs when I am having a meltdown or the kids are driving me insane (perhaps the two are related?) or at the MOST inconvenient time possible. I had to physically pry Dave’s Blackberry from his hand while our babies were born.

I used to be infuriated by this. How DARE they take him from me when I am having A Moment? How could they POSSIBLY know when the worst possible time to require the eyes of ONLY Dave was? Anger gave way to a quiet resignation several years ago and I now merely roll my eyes when work takes up one of my weekend days–the only time I am able to get shit done–and move the hell on with my life.

But the prospect of losing the hour of help each day that I have another human being who is capable of taking care of one of the children left me cold and in dire need of a meaty hug. I often can only get through the day knowing that by 7 or 8, I will have another set of hands to take over for me, should I have to do something as inconsiderate as taking a poo.

I know, how DARE I have to move my bowels?

In a stunning fit of brilliance, Daver asked my sister-in-law to come stay with us while he was away. This meant that now, rather than having to wait until late evening or weekends to Get Stuff Done, it’s now possible for me to go and plant the hydrangea that I couldn’t resist purchasing even though I had no real spot to put it.

(hello run on sentence! How I’ve missed you!)

It’s entirely safe to say that I have gotten more done in the past few days than I have in months. Years, maybe. I’d tell you what I’ve done, but you might die of boredom, so I will merely leave you with this cautionary tale.

The people whom we’d bought our house from three and a half years ago weren’t what I would call House People. They finished my basement and replaced all the doors, but didn’t see fit to trim the 3 lilacs in front or try and tame the Rose Bush of Doom in my back yard. This was made worse by the people whom they had bought the house from who were House People. Specifically, they were Landscaping People.

Bought, I’m sure when the bushes and trees were tiny, every single inch of the front of my house is neatly landscaped with variations of trees and bushes. Aside from a couple of the squat evergreen type-y bushes, I like it all.

Problem is that landscaping like that requires upkeep greater than simply watching as it overtakes the yard. So I inherited quite a mess when I moved in. The rose bush I eventually tamed could likely have been in the Guinness Book of World Records for Least Beautiful Rose On The Planet.

The whole house had taken on a look of being owned by some creepy recluse who was happy to have all of the windows covered by overgrown shrubbery.

Lest the people who drive past think that I am that creepy recluse (shut up), I’ve made a weekly effort to trim that fucker the fuck down. And I’m not sure that you’d notice, but the 12 or 13 bags of lawn refuse would say differently.

On Saturday before Dave left, he gave me the afternoon off so that I could take care of some business in the yard. Including taming this bush-tree thing that was beginning to resemble a koosh ball on speed.

But because I am short, it’s no easy feat. It requires that I essentially get the whole tree into a bear hug and pull down branches to trim several feet of length off so that it stops scraping against the house. As I was in the middle of doing this, I realized that with every lop of my choppers, I was being coated in a fine dust of…something. After I’d done most of it, I realized that the dust-stuff was causing my chest to erupt in a delicious constellation of hives.

And because I am not only stupid but a masochist too, I finished the damn job before I went inside to survey the damage. I lubed up my burning, itchy skin with some topical cream or another (thankfully, I was NOT allergic to that, although this would have made the story funnier) and tried to think non-itchy thoughts.

About 20 minutes later, we had to go across the street to a birthday party for Alex’s friend Zach. Praying that 20 minutes was enough time for me to look less diseased, I prepared for the best and eventually, thanks to the anti-itch cream, forgot about my delicate oozing chest situation.

It wasn’t until we showed up at the party and I began to receive decidedly cold looks as parents shooed their children away from mine did I realize that perhaps something was wrong with me. After I had Daver check for bats in my belfry (none present, sir), I was stumped. Then, sheepishly, Dave pointed out gently that maybe my weeping, red, crusty chest might have something to do with the looks I was getting.

He was right and we left immediately. To prove that I never learn my lesson, upon surveying that I had missed a patch on the bush of crusty, itchy doom, I grabbed my loppers and hugged that bush right up, further intensifying both my sheer stupidity and my histamines.

I’d say something like “you live, you learn” but obviously I do not.

————–

What can you not ever manage to learn, Internet?

One of the weirder phobias I have–aside of my fear of tomatoes touching my food–is that I’m terrified of fish. I don’t mean that if I see an aquarium, I’m going to break out into a cold sweat and start crying, no, even I’m not THAT insane.

But since I can remember, my parents have been taking us to tropical places–I know, poor baby, right?–and along with tropical places = snorkeling.

When I was 4 or 5, my parents bravely took us to Mexico and in a stunning fit of idiocy on their part, they left my brother and I to swim alone while they leisurely relaxed in a cliff-type thing above us. Out of sight, out of mind, I think, was the idea. Having three kids of my own, I understand the urge. But I’m still unsure what the fuck they were thinking to leave a 14 year old in charge of a 4 year old in the ocean.

Because my brother promptly ditched me to go and strut his lack of muscles in front of a couple of bikini clad babes.

I could swim, though, so I just waded into the water.

What happened next has been replayed over and over in my mind for the next 24 years.

The fish, accustomed to friendly humans who might feed them delicious treaties, swarmed me. Since I wasn’t underwater myself, I couldn’t see their beautiful swirling colorful fins. Instead, I saw a bunch of black THINGS just swarm me.

I screamed so loudly that pretty much everyone at the beach–including my lazy parents– came running. Maybe they thought I’d been half eaten by a Jaws-like shark, or perhaps I caught sight of a fat hairy dude in a Speedo. Who knows.

All that I do know is that for years after this, I had to force myself to go into the ocean, shaking and terrified, every time we went on vacation. The fear would subside the moment I was under the crystal blue water, but up until that point, I’d be silently shaking in my swimsuit.

Our last family vacation happened in 2000. My brother–recovering from a nasty divorce and full-on taking every bad feeling out on me–was 30, I was 20. My parents made the grave error of leaving us alone to share a room where we fought like it was 1999.

This is likely WHY this was our last vacation as a family.

One of the days that we were there in Cozumel, we went to some renowned beach to get some snorkeling done and generally laze about the beach. By this age, I can assure you, I wasn’t upset that my parents didn’t watch me swim. In fact, I welcomed the opportunity to get the fcuk away from everyone else and have some relative solitude in the waves.

I’m a decent swimmer, so once I got past the rocks and coral at the mouth of the beach–where, of course, in my normal good gracefulness, I fell and cut the shit out of my foot–I got pretty far away from the lip of the beach where I could get in and out of the water. This beach wasn’t really full of sand, you see. It was more the coral and other stuff that will cut a bitch (like me) up.

But I relished the soft whooshing of the ocean in my ears as I snorkeled about, following a family of yellow and blue fish around and trying to forget the hysterics of the morning. My brother had called me a worthless piece of shit for the 437th time that hour and I crumpled into a pile of tears outside of our villa. The 5,000 feral cats who’d been following me about swarmed me as I cried. It was strangely comforting.

It was wonderful to feel so free. There’s something so comforting about the soft lull of the waves, the ability to be a voyeur into another world, and after my initial fear, I am always reluctant to get out of the water.

Out of nowhere, as I was admiring a particularly delightful looking puffer fish, my body caught fire. I was electrified, my body searing in pain and I began to hyperventilate.

I popped my head above water to see if I’d run into some electrified fence (I was in pain and terrified. I know how dumb that sounds now), nothing. I forced my face down under the water to see what I’d obviously run into. If it were a school of jelly fish, then I’d do well to make sure to swim AWAY from it rather than into the swarm. Still, I could see nothing.

I swam choppily back toward shore, hyperventilating and panicking, now noticing just how fucking far away I was from the beach. I looked down at my arms and legs and saw with horror that I was now a mess of criss-crossed red welts, from my legs to my arms and my chest.

Finally, after what had to be at least two hours (read: 3 minutes), I grabbed hold of a ladder and hoisted myself shakily up to the beach. I sat at the edge of the cliff-type, surveying the damage and trying to catch my breath, crying heavily. I was breathing so shallowly that I was starting to white out, and using the last bit of my common senseI crawled back away from the edge, lest I fall to my watery death below. This time, I really could have used a chaperone.

I passed out for I don’t know how long, and when I woke up, the welts had turned to bleeding blisters and I had uncontrollable goose bumps without being cold and a good case of the shakes. I was now officially fucked up.

Eventually, my mother found me and helped me back to a towel and gave me a medicinal pina-colada. The rest of the vacation–including the following day which was a snorkeling boat cruise sort of thing–was uneventful by comparison. If that horse bucks you and all that good boo-yang, right?

—————

What’s attacked YOU, Internet whom I love beyond compare?

A couple of months ago, Dave informed me somewhat delicately that he would likely be sent to London to do something-or-other-complicated-stuff-that-I’m-too-stupid-to-get, and after my initial temper tantrum, he asked me for some advice on what to do while there.

You see, Internet, you didn’t know your Aunt Becky was a Continental World Traveller, did you (unless you read my 100 things about me page, which might have boasted my worldliness)? That’s right, *I* have been to Europe. Twice!

I was only 13 or 14 when I went, so the advice I could give Dave was probably not as current as anything I might want to do, oh I don’t know, say NOW. I wasn’t old enough to do anything hipster or funky-fresh. I ate where my orchestra told me to eat. I got stuck wearing neon-yellow sweatshirts with my name on the arm.

See, Aunt Becky circa 1995, age 14. Wanna make out?

(I should note that this picture was in an album, and the picture DIRECTLY above it is a picture of the large asses of two of the chaperones. It’s labeled: “Bitches and their fat asses.” Some things, I see, just don’t change)

I wracked my swiss cheesy memory to tell Dave something, anything about London. I remember all the other parts of England we visited with much more clarity. Like Bath. And the Lake District. All that I could remember about London proper was getting stalked by a group of men as we walked through a park. This was not the first time in Europe that I was followed around by creepy molesty-type Uncle Pervy’s.

Perhaps they liked my rockin’ sweatshirt.

All I could say to Dave who was going on and on and on about the Sushi restaurant in his hotel was that I wouldn’t eat sushi there. When hard pressed to explain myself, I couldn’t really save for that I remember the food over there being…different. Dave, the ever-quantifier, wanted to know what “different” meant as apparently I was not the only person who warned him about the food.

It took me until last night, as I was spraying my roses with pesticide (the rose-pesticide part is completely unrelated) to pin it down. Dave sat there outside with me, Amelia on his lap and it dawned on me how to put it in his terms.

“Okay, I got it,” I boasted. “The English? EAT MARMITE. Voluntarily.”

We shuddered in unison.

(Ben is half-Australian and was born loving the horror that is Vegemite. All I can say is that HE’S WELCOME TO ALL OF OUR PORTIONS because obviously. I don’t trust the judgement of anyone who eschews ice cream but loves something that tastes like vitamins. Also: BLECH)

Dave left this morning, promising to bring me back something “cool” from London. The last thing, I told him, that I’d bought from London was Use Your Illusion II (dude. Rad), so I was sure he could come up with something as cool. Like the entire Burberry store.

I have a feeling that I’ll end up with a tin of Altoids, purchased at O’Hare under the guise of being for me, but already half-eaten. Because, he’ll explain, he knows I don’t like them anyway. But I won’t care. I’ll be too happy that he’s home again.

Look! Kids!

Further proof that my eldest is the.best.kid.ever. He BEGS to change diapers. No, seriously you canNOT borrow him.

Amelia is now big enough to go into the Exersaucer. Say it with me now: What.The.Fuck?

Alex being, well, Alex. Aside from a nasty case of antibiotic-induced diarrhea, he’s feeling tip-top.

I’m lonely already, Internet. Will you be my husband?

Per my insurance company, I had to remain a full-time student while I was pregnant with Ben. Taking the opportunity to enroll in some fluffy classes like “Intro to Shakespeare” and “Intro to World Lit” and my biggest mistake in judgement “Jewelry,” I shlepped my ever-widening ass back and forth to school. The death of my grandmother weeks before this took place meant that I had a car that I didn’t have to borrow to drive, because I was full of The Trash.

As I turned the corner on my way to school one evening, I heard a loud bang and suddenly the car was harder to steer. The car in question was a Escort or something and not an old school Corvette without power steering or something, so this was highly peculiar.

At the soonest place I could turn off, I did so, into a subdivision of new construction houses, each looking exactly like the other. It reminded me of a science-fiction novel or something, like a Group Intelligence or something. Stranger in a fucking strange land.

I pulled my car over to the side of the road, still unsure of what had happened.

I pried myself out of the car with my arms and shuffled pregnantly over to the other side of the car. What greeted me was a completely flat back tire.

Fuck, I swore to myself. I didn’t have a cellphone because I had a pager instead (hey, don’t judge. My pager was all kinds of gold and sexy. And no, I was not a drug dealer) and the nearest gas station was several miles out.

Plus, thanks to Nat’s refusal to give me so much as a dime–he was still convinced I’d gotten pregnant to trap him. For his money or good looks, I asked him when he accused me. He didn’t like that answer–meant that I had no money whatsoever on me.

Stupidly, I’d not paid attention when my father tried to teach me how to change a tire, preferring, I suppose to groan and examine my nails while huffing about how I NEVER needed to know such a STUPID thing, DAD. Now, I was regretting it. Sorely.

I opened the trunk, an exercise in futility, I knew, because even if it had the proper things that one needs to change a tire, I was too large and in charge to sit on a curb and get a busted tire out. If I’d managed to get into the proper position, I knew I’d never get back up again. I’d be stuck in that creepy subdivision with the houses all the same until I birthed my baby, some months later.

I tried to reason that maybe this was for the best as it would prevent me from shoveling more bagels into my mouth, but even then, I knew I was full of shit. I needed help.

I began walking down the sidewalk, breathing a bit heavily from the panic that had now set in, and looking desperately for a house that had Real! Live! People! in it. As a child I’d noted that when people were home, they usually had their garage doors open, so I peered at each closed garage door as I passed it, my impending doom growing.

Finally, about a half a block down from my crippled car, I spied some wee pink bikes in the front yard of a house. Certainly whomever lived there had children and people who had children certainly wouldn’t slice and dice a pregnant woman to chunky pieces in their bathtub!

Still, though, I was nervous. I wasn’t used to relying on strangers for help, but I saw no other option. Waiting there for someone who knew me to stop and help was as futile as trying to win a limbo contest in my largened state, so I steeled myself and went to the front door.

I rang the doorbell and when a man answered it, I breathily spewed out the whole story. When I’m panicked, I tend to rush my words, speaking in one long word in a much higher than normal voice.

“Hi, um, my car broke down, and um, the tire blew out and um, I don’t, um, know how to fix it. And um, I need, um, help.” I squeaked out.

He looked at me, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring. Could he be angry at me? Did I know him or something? Had I spit in his cheeseburger at some point?

I stood there dumbly, mouth agape and catching flies not knowing what else to do. If he said no, which was fine with me, I’d just go onto the next potential serial killers’ house. He was under no obligation to help me and we both knew it.

Finally, after summing me up, he rolled his eyes at me. He rolled his eyes, sighed deeply as though I was probably the most worthless piece of shit on the planet, and stepped outside, mute. He muttered something to his daughters to stay inside as he gestured that he was going up the street, and walked down the driveway toward my car.

When I sense that someone is upset with me, the stream of words that come out of my mouth goes to 11, and I began to babble earnestly.

“My car, you see, sir, is just down there and I just need someone to help me put the tire on it, and that’s all. Hahaha. I was on my way to school and I just blew a tire and hahaha, now I don’t know what to do because I don’t know how to change a tire.”

He walked a steady clip ahead of me, and I trailed behind like a chubby puppy, still spewing words like diarrhea. Finally, we reached my car and I showed him the spare donut tire in the trunk. He looked at me again, rolled his eyes so far back in his head, I swear they made a chink noise, and eyed me like the moron I was. Disdainful of my very existence.

Thankfully for us both, he took only a couple of minutes to pop the old tire off and put the new one one. I spent most of those minutes thanking him profusely. He didn’t have to help me, he owed me nothing, and yet he helped, I babbled on and on and on. Every now and again, he’d stop, seething, and give me another awful, withering look.

The man who hated me for I’m-still-not-sure-what finished putting the tire on and stood up. I thanked him with such honest sincerity that I nearly cried. I might have cried a little. Shut up.

He glared back at me, clearly angry at me. He grunted an assent, rolled his eyes at me once more, and walked away, hands balled into fists at his side.

I stood there, confused. What.the.fuck just happened?

Tuesday night found me gnashing my teeth, feeling overwhelmingly sorry for myself while sitting on the couch crying, “Oh noes!” Nothing was technically WRONG, but for some reason the first Early Intervention interview (for those who have been there: it’s the paperwork one) threw me through a loop.

That and the idiotic thing I did where I went back and gathered up all of the insurance/doctor notes/crap I’ve been sent since Amelia was born and threw it into a folder. Glancing down at it while I was doing it was as advisable as looking at an MRI of your child’s grey matter.

So there I was, prostrate with self-pity and overall stupidity, crying my ever-loving head off.

I went to bed a couple of hours later with my head pounding (I’ve been having a string of headaches. Which led, in part, to my Pity Party) only to be woken up at odd intervals by my son, who was flipping around in his crib in the next room.

I woke up The Daver to have him go in there and move Alex’s crib away from the wall and to check on the ickle dude. Why I sent Dave in there and not me, I don’t know.

He’d gotten a bug bite overnight on Sunday and woke up Monday with a small lump on his face. By Tuesday afternoon, it had begun to swell slightly. I’d pumped him full of Benedryl, Ibuprofen and Tylenol to pull down some of the swelling, and he’d gone into a deep sleep.

(aside: Thank you Benedryl for awesomely putting my kid to sleep)

We’re not alarmist sort of parents, we don’t take our kids to the ER for fevers of unknown origin unless they’re incredibly high (the fevers, not my kid. Because if my kid is high, he should be sharing), and I rarely call the doctor to schedule anything besides the well-child visits.

Dave shuffled in to Alex’s room where he found our son flopping about in his bed. After his record 3 hour nap that afternoon, it wasn’t terribly shocking that he was up at 1 AM. In a stroke of divine luck (not Divine Brown), Dave picked Alex up. The kid was burning up.

Well, fuck. The insect bite that we’d ignored was now making him sick as fcuk.

I heard Alex calling “Let’s go see Mommy. Let’s go see Mommy” so I knew he was up. As Dave changed his diaper, I went to give him a kiss. The sight before my eyes made me tear up with non-self-pitying tears. Alex now looked as though he’d been thoroughly beaten. His left eye was nearly swollen shut, bruised and pink and his cheek looked like he’d been smuggling marbles.

I sighed, went back upstairs to put pants on, wiping tears from my eyes (he looked THAT bad) and got dressed. Dave woke Amelia up. It was Hospital Time.

Choosing to go to the ER at the hospital that Mimi had her surgery because they boasted a pediatric ER, we headed off.

We got there, parked, and trundled in, looking as bedraggled as we’d ever been. We joked that they were going to call CPS on us after seeing Alex’s face. Alex was cheerful, though, more so than Dave or I, and Amelia just looked dazed. Pleased by my choice, we walked down a deserted hallway to get to the ER.

Score, I said to myself. It looks DEAD here. Perfect.

As we rounded the corner, we came to a line. Of people. Fuck. At the head of the line was a lumpy Jabba-The-Hut-I-Have-No-Angles type woman who was robotically taking names and entering them into a computer. Everywhere I looked, every chair, every available surface was covered by sick people.

We checked in eventually, where I confused the receptionist by asking if there was somewhere that I could sit that wasn’t full of contagious sick people. Alex had something, but it wasn’t spreading. She was unable to knock her remaining 2 synapses together and just stared vacantly at me.

Okay, then.

An hour went by, Amelia got reswaddled and fell back asleep while Alex continually grabbed my hand and yelled “let’s GO Mommy” every time we went back near the entrance. I tried to avoid touching any surfaces and breathing deeply. After that hour we still hadn’t been seen by triage, so I went back to the dazed receptionist to see what the wait was like.

When she said 3 hours, I nearly decked her. Information that might have been useful when I checked in.

At 2:30 in the morning, we were back on the road, headed to another hospital. The beauty of living where I do is that it’s not insanely populated. While there are people who assumably need ER’s, a wait like 3 hours is nearly unheard of.

We checked in to hospital #2 and were barely done putting the bracelet on Alex’s arm before we were whisked back to a room by a nurse. 10 minutes later, we saw the doctor. 5 minutes after that, we had a diagnosis and some antibiotics ordered from the pharmacy.

The longest part of the second hospital visit was waiting to make sure that Alex didn’t go into anaphylaxis from the antibiotic shot (he’s never been on antibiotics. Which, now that I think about it, explains the massive diarrhea today. Anyhow, moving on). For 20 minutes, we crawled the halls, looking into each room for Happy’s (the pain chart faces).

It was great until I realized how fucking heavy 30 pounds is and that one of the rooms we were peering into had a corpse in it. Then I felt kinda voyeuristic.

We left, sans anaphylaxis, with strict orders that should this not improve, Alex will be admitted for IV antibiotics. Which sounds like hell. Unless they sedate us both. Then I could totally get behind it.

He’s better today than yesterday. He’s a little less puffy and looks even more like he’s been in a wicked bar-fight (you should SEE the other guy! Yuk-yuk-yuk).

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How are YOU today? Any good hospital (boner) stories for Aunt Becky today?