Alex wanted me to take a moment and remind the world that everything is better with barbeque sauce. Guess he’s a momma’s boy after all.

And my PSA for the day is this: if the urge to eat an entire loaf of cinnamon bread overtakes you, it’s best not to fight it. Although probably not WITH barbeque sauce. That’s just too much.

Oh, and any tips out there on telling an 18 month old about a new baby coming? I haven’t found any books that aren’t stupid, and I could use some assvice.

“Gah, these shoes don’t fit.”

“Well, at least you HAVE shoes. Some people don’t even have shoes, Becky!”

“I know this, but MY feet hurt NOW.”

“Becky, some people don’t even have FEET. They just have worn down bloody stumps of legs that they have to walk on to go to work every day. Can you imagine how THAT feels?”

I knew someone who was more than willing to remind you of how good you have it while other people suffered unimaginable and unspeakable tragedies. I’d call him a friend, but it’s really not what he was, and his purpose was valiant: sometimes it *is* important to remember how fortunate you really are and be reminded of how crappy things can be.

Other times, you just want some freaking sympathy.

I’m fortunate, I suppose, that I have two leading ladies in my life (my mother and my mother-in-law) who will both stop at nothing to remind me, while I whinge on and on about something as trivial as sleeping properly (I have insomnia while pregnant), that there are always people who are worse off than I happen to be.

Those people happen to be: THEM.

Most of the time I can ignore this, although after years of being +1 as a child, I’m particularly sensitive to it. A childhood riddled with illness (on my part, I was a sickly kid) only punctuated by a mother who often would take to her own bed whenever the puke began a-spewing, because she was “afraid she would get it, too,” tends to make one overreact to this as an adult. (She never got the stomach flu, ever).

Nowhere is this more evident than when I have a baby.

Because both my mother and my mother-in-law have had children (obviously) and because those children who married (The Daver and myself) began to produce heinous babies (much like our baby selves, if legend is to be believed), babies do happen to be something that they do have experience in.

No sooner do I exclaim that I’m “having a hard time walking” after delivery because “my son’s head gave me 4th degree tears and I nearly bled out,” than does one, then the other chime in with one of these two nuggets:

1)”Well, *I* didn’t have an epidural when I delivered YOU.”

or

2) “Well, *I* had a C-section. I didn’t walk for DAYS afterward because I had a HUGE ABDOMINAL INCISION.”

Not really the “Okay, honey, I’ll have the nurse bring you your pain pills now” I was hoping for.

Even more frustrating comes months later, after having had no more than 2 consecutive hours of sleep a night for the preceding (pick a number, any number) months. Without bothering to take into account the tears that are spouting from my eyes (without being punched!), the puffy black circles under my eyes, and the fact that I look pretty much like I was run over by a truck named Alex, the moment I say, “I’m so tired,” before bursting into hysterical tears, it’s time to play Whose Pain Was Worse again.

I’m met with any number of response, none of which happens to involve what I want to hear, “Yeah, Alex is quite a handful. You look like ass. I’m sorry you’re struggling so very much. Do you want to give him back now?” Or really what I needed to hear: “It will get better soon, I promise.”

No, what I hear are things like this:

“Well, (insert YOU or Dave here) were AWFUL BABIES. You cried ALL THE TIME. I almost went INSANE.”

Then they look back smugly at my puffy, tear-stained face and wait for me to say…I’m not sure what they want me to say, but I have a feeling that what they really want is some sort of apology or recognition for the horrors of infant hood that they experienced with Dave and I.

Problem is, have you ever tried to feel sympathy for someone who has gone through something similar to what you’re going through while your wracked with such terrible PPD that you are honestly thinking suicide is probably the best bet for a good night’s sleep? Especially when that sympathy is for something that happened 28 or more YEARS AGO?

It’s damn near impossible.

Were I to have this same conversation now, after Alex has been sleeping through the night pretty regularly since about 11 months of age, I could try and at least PRETEND to feel sorry for them. We could cluck, commiserate, and move the hell on with our days.

With (crosses fingers furiously) a new baby on the horizon come January, I know that this is bound to spring up again, and while I’ve tried to steel myself for it, I think it’s high time for me to mention my quandary to them.

I don’t expect that it will lead to tearful apologies or hugs or anything remotely maternal from either of them, as that’s not the way either of them happen to behave, but I want them to realize that what they are doing is NOT helpful. If it’s infuriated me so very much that I’m already dreading it, I think that the adult thing to do is not to look the other way (like The Daver suggested) and change the subject. If they’re not going to change what they do (and I sincerely doubt they would) and are going to continue to look for sympathy from me during this time, they should, at the very least, know that they’re upsetting me.

But I don’t really know how to handle the situation and to diffuse it without screaming at them, which is simply Not Done in my family. I’d love to yell, “If you’re looking for sympathy, you can find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis,” but I do like my familial gatherings sans drama.

What would you do, if you were me? Any and all suggestions (besides telling me what a trite bitch I am being) are welcome. Would you pull a The Daver (it doesn’t bother him, mainly because it has nothing to do with him) and ignore and redirect or would you make mention that this is bothering you?

And then dish, lovers. Tell me what kind of +1 people do to YOU.

Before I was fortunate enough to meet The Daver, I tended to be attracted to and date guys that were Smugly Superior. Honestly, in Becky-Land, that’s an characteristic of people I’d date: dudes who were Full Of The Rightness. Didn’t matter about what. Didn’t matter whether or not I was more schooled in whatever it was they were trying to argue with me about. They Were Right. And if They Were Right, then I Was Wrong.

If I were to remark on the lovely sky blue pink sunset (incidentally, my favorite color on the planet), each and every one of them would somehow come up with a way that the color of the sky was actually, Becky, green. (I may be colorblind, but I am positive I’ve not seen a green sky).

I’d mention that I happened to like that new Britney Spears song only to be shot down (sadly, not in a blaze of glory) about how stupid and vapid pop music was, and how what I really should be listening to is Peter Gabriel.

But nowhere was my Wrongness more clearly illustrated than in the selection of movies.

I’m not much of a movie person, this much is damn certain. I don’t know different producers, I don’t know geeky facts about obscure movies, and I only know actors because I enjoy nothing more than some time with a good gossip rag. And what’s even more offensive to some is that I DON’T EVEN CARE.

That’s right, my friends, I don’t care about movies.

My tastes run from fluffy to action movies, and at no point in time do I ever enjoy watching hard-to-find foreign films, no matter how many nekkid boobies I get to see. I’ll watch the same movie multiple times (although never in a row) and not be the slightest bit put off if I know how it ends.

I don’t need to watch a movie to feel sad about the world or to make me think and question my system of beliefs. I don’t generally want to feel like slitting my wrists after seeing a movie, I absolutely refuse to think about what the character was thinking after I’ve seen it, and I can think no more suicide inducing thought than to have to talk about the movie ad nauseum once I’ve seen it. I’ll never get most movie references without a clue-in from someone, I’m okay with never debating which version of Romeo and Juliet is best (Oliva Hussey vs. Leo DiCaprio?), and you’d probably never want to play trivia games with me. I’m oblivious at best.

I guess I like my movies like I like my one-night stands: quick, to the point, and without need to revisit them.

But my Haughty Group Of Boyfriends would insist that I did actually like movies, and in that vein, they’d drag me off to the movie store to pick up the newest French movie. Without a care that it was not subtitled and that neither of us spoke a lick of French. On the days without a Movie Agenda, I’d wander around the store while they scoured the racks, and my suggestions to rent Weekend At Bernie’s 2 were always shot down.

It’s probably safe to say that for about 10 years, I never picked out a movie to watch by myself, which sounds far more depressing than it should. When I’d say I didn’t care, it’s because I truly didn’t give a shit. Sometimes I’d sit and watch movies with my boyfriend, other times, I’d take off and do something else.

The only lasting impression that I have of the whole situation is a general dislike for sitting around and watching movies. A handful of times a year, I have an urge to watch this or that with The Daver, but overall, it’s with much teeth gnashing and nail sharpening that I agree to do so. I prefer to do pretty much anything else: watch TV, play solitaire on the computer, read books.

And I can’t really say for certain that my Smugly Superior ex’s are really and truly to blame for any of the dislike I feel, who knows if that’s the case or not?

What I do know is this: every time I tell someone this omission, I’m met with an almost unanimous “You don’t like MOVIES?” and a subsequent eye-rolling so loud that I can practically hear the pop.

So what do people scoff at that you dislike that most people do not? I know I’ve previously mentioned my hatred of all things sandwich, but I’m curious (and I have a short attention span) as to how universal this reaction is.

Since I’m now unable to really do the haircut/color thing that I normally do when I’m in dire need of a change (pregnant Aunt Becky = Oompa Loompa + Short Hair = Pinhead), I’m going to revamp my blog. I’m going to hire a graphic designer and tweak the shit out of this.

I bring this question to you, dear reader: in an effort to provide a list of things I want/don’t want, I need to figure out what is irritating to the reader. So, lovers, what makes a blog design annoying?

The Horrifying Gods of Teething are making damn sure I regret never, ever being bitten on the nipple while nursing, making sure I regret being slightly pleased by Alex’s non-Jack-o-Lantern-type smile for the first 12 months of his life. I’m getting paid back for every time I ever sneered at a bottle of Ambesol, and friends, let me tell you this: payback is a BITCH.

Earlier this week, I was feeling pretty rung out, dragged through the muck, and buried by my cat in a pile of soiled kitty-litter. I tried to pinpoint why, and finally decided that my thyroid must be out of whack (neglecting to remember that well, actually Becky, my thyroid is GREAT during gestation. It begins to suck when I come down with a nifty little ditty I like to call “Post Partum Thyroiditis.” And yes, my people, it is as sexy as it sounds. I HAVE A GLANDULAR PROBLEM, PEOPLE).

I trundled off to my endocrinologist (can I just tell you how decrepit I feel admitting that I have an endocrinologist? I HAVE A GLANDULAR PROBLEM, PEOPLE!), certain that my TSH would be off the charts, insane, and I would require a heaping double helping of my already ridiculously high dose. My trusty nurse friend called me to report that actually, Becky, my thyroid was behaving magnificently.

It was then that I turned my previously blind eye to the toddler standing before me, ripping apart the cords from my laptop, pulling each and everything I’d ever put in my kitchen out of the cabinets, while simultaneously laying on the ground, screaming for “kitty” (his term for wanting to watch YouTube videos about, you guessed it, cats) while banging his ample noggin against the Pergo.

I think I might be suffering from a mutant form of Asshole Toddler-itis.

While he’s never really been a model sleeper (I will not go into it here, for fear that other pregnant women may read this and hyperventilate), only ceasing to get up every 1-3 hours at the ripe old age of 10+ months, and his napping schedule would have you convinced that I was addicted to crack during my pregnancy, he used to go down for his pathetic naps pretty easily.

Blankie, bottle, bed, DONE.

Now, I know better than to think that The Way Things Are Today is the same as The Way Things Will Be Tomorrow; I’ve had kids and am not terrifically naive, but I was not really expecting that he would suddenly have to scream himself to sleep as though he was being poked by the fire of a thousand burning suns. And yet, my eardrums tell another tale.

It appears that he’s taken his Willful Level from the top of the charts to 11, leaving his 20 week pregnant mother and his harried father scratching our heads. What do we do now? Can I drop him off at the Toddler Shop and take a quieter loaner model home for several weeks, while Alex’s attitude is readjusted? Can I build him a wee house outside to live in where he cannot destroy anything else I own (I’d bring him out meals and change his diaper–don’t worry)?

And more importantly, will this ever end?

I’ve been preparing for The Sex Talk with my kids since, oh I don’t know, about week one of Ben’s life or so. It’s always been expected that with my background in nursing and my dabbling into virology/bacteriology the task of embarrassing the bejesus out of our children When The Time Comes. I have a powerpoint planned, honestly, with plenty of disgusting images of genital warts, gonorrhea, chlamydia (o! the search terms that will come).

If they’re gonna hump anyway, I might as well make them DAMN aware of the risks.

Anywhoo, when I got pregnant with Alex, I realized that pulling out a picture of a wart covered weenis was probably overkill, considering he didn’t even know that he himself had testicles. It didn’t matter, at age 5, he wanted to know where babies come from.

Fair question, considering he knew he’d be a big brother soon enough.

The brilliance and perhaps the best part of having my kid be on the autistic spectrum when it comes to these sorts of things is his detachedness (it’s also what makes me want to pull my hair out when I want a hug from him). It makes the telling of these sorts of things a snap, because he has very little emotional response. He accepts things at face value and comes back later on to ask any questions he’s thought of.

Ben is such a literal person, that we decided that the best manner to explain where babies come from is a book. This book.

Diligently we read this with him each and every night, carefully explaining such words as “anus,” “labia,” and “ovary,” and he soaked it up like a wee sponge. The only thing that ever seemed to vex him was how the baby got from the inside to the outside. No answer seemed to assuage his curiosity, and eventually he decided that the most likely exit point–despite my assurances that the baby would come out of my vagina–was through a cut in my belly button.

Well, now that THIS was taken care of, he set about really LEARNING about the baby makin’ crap. And the best way for Ben to learn anything is through singing, so the songs that he would come up with had a decidedly hilarious subject matter.

This one was my favorite, sung in no particular tune:

“There was an egg, sitting in the fallopian tube and a sperm came along and BAM! there was me!”

Thankfully for my delicate sensibilities, I didn’t have to ever explain HOW the sperm from the dad got into the body of the mom, because seriously, he would tell everyone he ever met about that. He just seemed to accept that the sperm somehow got there and that was that.

It went a hell of a lot smoother than the inevitable Sex Talk will, that’s for certain. And I hope, at the very least, that by the time we do have the Sex Talk, he will have outgrown the singing to learn. Because if not, I may shrivel up into a puddle of goo if I have to hear him sing about, “Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochetal bacterium Treponema pallidum, and it’s primary form is a chancre.”

What kind of sex talk are you planning on having with your children? Any?

When I got married three years ago, it took me a good long time to reach the conclusion that I was going to change my name. It’s not because I felt like it was a super-antiquated tradition, or because I would now feel like The Daver’s property, not really.

Problem is, I liked my name the way it was. Becky Elizabeth Sherrick.

It had been my name for 25 years and I was rather attached to it. Plus, when I had birthed Ben, I’d given him my last name as one of his two middle names, so it was the one real link I had to my son.

Practicality won out, and once I deduced that my family would have three different last names to contend with, I decided to change my name along with my marital status. I would become Becky Elizabeth Sherrick Harks.

Despite Ben’s 4 names on his Social Security Card (and later, Alex’s), the administration refused to allow me to add a name without removing another. So, choosing between my last name and my middle name it was (unless I wanted to hyphenate, which I didn’t).

In the end, I dropped the Elizabeth and moved the Sherrick to the middle, adding the Harks to the end.

For ages, I still thought of my new last name as the rest of my in-laws names, not a name that belonged to me. Within the last two weeks, I noticed something strange: I now had begun to associate the name with me. It was now MY last name.

For ages, I didn’t understand how divorced women didn’t immediately go back to their maiden names. It made no sense to me, as I had far more pride in my maiden name than I had in my married one, so I always assumed I’d seamlessly return to who I was before I was married. Now, I’m just not so sure. Would I keep my name or change it back?

So, your turn, lovers. Dish. Did you change your name? Would you? Would you change it back? Were you as fucking conflicted as I was about changing your name?

Am currently potentially dying right now. Have been suffering headaches for weeks now, but it’s especially bad today. Extra Strength Tylenol farts in my general direction.

Any advice?

While my parents did manage to instill a number of values in me, namely, a love of all things Jam Band related as well as a supreme taste for tofu (you cannot begin to tell me that tofu is not an acquired taste/texture), they neglected to teach me how to select a greeting card. I’m not sure that my parents ever, in all of my life, sent anyone a card.

It’s not necessarily a BAD thing to not have been taught at a young age where and when and why and how to send a card, really, it’s not, but it leaves me completely without a frame of reference as to the proper etiquette for such things. Do I send a Christmas Card to everyone in my address book, or just those who will send one back to me? Do I bother sending birthday cards to people who don’t send me one?

I’m simply not sure.

I suppose that part of the problem is that I really hate to shell out $4-$8 on cards that will undoubtedly be thrown out with the wrapping paper and bows, knowing that if I were in the same situation, I’d rather have a magazine or two rather than a card.

And an even bigger piece of my Problem Pie is that I’ve yet to find a line of cards that really SAYS what I mean. Sure, birthday wishes are generic, I know, but I want a card like those somecards E-Cards. I want something that says, “Happy Birthday, Your Balls Have Excess Skin,” or “Happy Birthday, Be Glad You Don’t Have Herpes” or something else.

Problem is, most people I’d send this to might be horrified by it. I’d laugh my lack of balls off if *I* got this as a card, but I’m fairly certain that I might be in some minority.

Sympathy cards present an even bigger challenge to me. I went out this morning with toddler in tow to pick out a card to send to Steph’s parents, and like most things in my life, I was only half able to concentrate on what I was doing. Motherhood has definitely honed my ability to do 4,000 things at once, but not without sacrificing quality here and there.

In picking through the myriad of sympathy card hell, I was struck again by how much I fucking hate sympathy cards.

I now present to you Aunt Becky’s reasons That She Hates Sympathy Cards, Bullet Form:

*Many of them are deeply religious, and while I know that enough people do derive comfort in Biblical Verses, not everyone does. And even if people ARE religious, I can’t be sure of which way they lean, and who wants to offend someone dealing with a death in the family? Besides, I’m not uber-religious myself, so I’d feel a little wonky sending something like that.

*99% of the cards are covered with misty pastel watercolor flowers. Which is so unlike who I am and what I represent, that I couldn’t send it in good faith. Besides, it often makes the card look cheap, which I can assure you by checking the backs of the cards is not the case.

*The fonts are annoyingly cloying. It’s like the You’re Dead, So You Now Have The Taste Of A 90 Year Old Cat Lady. Sadly, most of the sympathy cards that I’ve bought are NOT for older people, so the schwoopsy-poo font is just irritating.

*The cards never, EVER say what I really want them to say. I can get by with the canned “Happy Birthday!!!!” greetings found on birthday cards without wanting to go homicidal, but the sympathy cards make me insane. Certifiable, even. They’re all “deepest condolences” and “deepest sympathy” and my favorite “only memories remain.”

And I think that’s bullshit. It doesn’t BEGIN to say how I feel about the loss of this person. Here’s a sample of what it SHOULD say, if I wrote it:

“FUCK. I’m so damn sorry for your loss. I puked when I heard the news. Shit. Fuck. I’m so fucking sorry. I want to beat someone up with the unfairness of it all. Fuck.”

Mildly inappropriate doesn’t begin to cover it, now does it? But death in general is at the very least, mildly inappropriate, and I don’t think that any misty pastel flower scene with ties-up-loose-ends Biblical verse really begins to cover that.

Until I get off my lazy butt and make my own damn inappropriate cards, I suppose I’m just going to be stuck scouring the shelves for cards that don’t begin to say what I mean and trying to make do with them.

Or maybe I just need to find somewhere else to buy better cards.

What do you, fair Internet Reader, hate about greeting cards? What would you say in one that you designed yourself?

One of my best friends died this February at the age of 26, leaving behind two young sons. Her death changed me nearly as much as having her in my life did, and I find that no matter how hard I try, I’m unable to write about her very much. It’s not because I don’t think of her because I do, daily if not longer, but I’m too afraid to write about her.

What if I get it wrong? What if I try to tell the most important story I can think of and it’s all wrong? I can’t bear to think of not doing it right for Steph, so I don’t do it at all.

But I want to tell you.

I want each and every one of you to know who she is, who she was, and what she meant to me. How she was one of the best friends I’ve ever had. And how there is now a gigantic hole in my heart now that she’s gone. I want you to know how things will never be the same now that she’s gone from the world.

And I will.

I got word this morning that her older brother died yesterday; died of a freak accident, so my stories today will have to wait for yet another day. He died, leaving behind a wife and two small kids, leaving behind parents who have buried two adult children in a little over six months.

He died, and although I’m not an uber-Christian, I like to imagine that he’s meeting Steph up there in Heaven. I like to imagine that all of the loved ones that I lose down here are hanging out together and waiting patiently for the rest of us to join them, one by one. That’s how I find comfort in her death: imagining a day when we can all be together again.

And sometimes, sometimes it makes me less angry that she’s not down here with all of us.