When my brother got a divorce 12-odd years ago (he’s 10 years older than me) the catalyst was the puppy he’d bought. I think this stuff is fairly common, you know, it was one toke over the line (Sweet Jesus!) and his ex-wife had enough.

(She was also a scathing bitch, so I was more than happy to see her go and reclaim my name. Her name was ALSO Rebecca and she took my last name when she married my brother. This effectively meant that there were two of us in the family, and she was the far nastier one).

The puppy was a German Shepard who came with a high pedigree, with both of her parents police pooches and my brother adored her. But he travelled a lot, and without a wife-y at home to help with the dog–Stanzi is her name–he couldn’t care for her. So, as many animals that my brother and I adopt, she moved in with my parents.

She grew from a neurotic puppy into a highly insane dog, climbing onto my mother’s lap–all 90 pounds of her–at the vet’s office and during thunderstorms, hiding from me whenever I’d come home, and playing ball with a devotion I’d never seen before. Our previous dogs had always been of the sweet but stupid variety, but not Stanzi, no never her. She continues to be freakishly clever and my parents have had to take all balls (except those attached to family members, of course) and hide them from her. Because if given a ball, she will play it relentlessly and obnoxiously.

If a ball is not available, she will bring whatever twig, rock, or toy over to you, sit down in front of you patiently waiting, her eyes darting back and forth between you and the ball, anxiously waiting your toss. I found out recently that this is a hallmark of Shepards, the police dogs are given not treats for good behavior, but ball-time. Something in their brain is hardwired to love this simple game at all costs.

It seems that however unlikely this may be as I don’t have The Sex with dogs, that Alex was born with a couple of these Shepard genes. While Ben also loved balls when he was a toddler, he would merely line them up exhaustibly, becoming mad and frustrated when the balls moved out of line (why he didn’t choose something less, oh I don’t know, ROUND, is beyond me).

Not Alex, though, Alex loves balls with an intensity I’ve never seen before. Maybe they remind him of his days at the boobs, or maybe he’s just destined to be a rugby player, I don’t know. What I do know is that I have a miniature Stanzi living in my house, bringing me balls pretty much at all waking points of the day.

He’ll crawl up to wherever any of us are sitting and depending on the size of the ball, it will either be clutched in his hand, making a twack noise–he looks like a wee pirate– when he determinedly crawls to wherever a Ball Player sits, or pushed in front of him as he crawls, bringing it dutifully to one of us. Alex then hoists himself up on one of our legs, ball in hand, or next to him and throws it in our laps.

Once we have possession of A Ball! he sits down with a diapery-plastic thump and crawls about three or four feet back, turns around, opens his legs and yells “BAAAAALLLLL!” The joy oozing from him at this point is palpable and honest.

Whomever his latest victim is will, depending on the ball size and weight, gently toss it to him or roll it towards him. He will scoop it up, hoist The Ball! over his head and whip it at us. This game of catch continues until Ben, The Daver or I get sick of playing, or until he has to go retrieve another ball (he has many). Then he will find his next victim and play with them until they are tired of it as well. Rinse, repeat.

What shocks me the most about it is that he’s actually really good at this game. The child born of a mother who has, in the past year alone, fallen through a door stone cold sober, broken a toe while making a peanut butter sandwich, sprained her ankle while walking down a flight of stairs. It’s safe to say that I am not coordinated. Nor, really, is my eldest (although he’s better than I am, but not by much) and The Daver is not exactly a ninja himself (sorry The Daver).

This leaves me with two viable opinions as to how Alex got to be so coordinated:

1. He’s actually someone else’s child and there was a horrible mix up in the nursery. Someone else has gotten my child who now stumbles into walls, crawls in horrible pathetic circles instead of a straight line, and pretty much will always look drunk.

2. Some previously unexpressed bundle of genes has expressed itself in Alex, and he may grow to be some sort of sports player (and not on the Special Olympics, which is probably the only place that the rest of us would qualify for. And I assure you that even there, we’d all get our asses kicked).

I’m not quite sure which of those options is correct, but since Alex wasn’t out of my sight much during his hospital stint (his insistence, not my own), I’d venture a guess that between this fact and the fact that he looks almost exactly like my father (shut up! Ew!) he’s probably my son.

Which means that I have quite the future ahead of me sitting on the sidelines (freakishly like my past!) and watching as my youngest plays all types of sports.

Maybe I’ll never understand his love for sports, maybe it doesn’t matter because I love him and that’s enough for us all, but hey, at least I’ll get a good tan.

Every Spring, Saint Charles does a junk-day in which they pick up (for no charge!!!) all household materials/crap hidden in the unused part of your basement that you’ve been saving for God knows what. I don’t know if this is more of a universal thing, it probably is, but since I am quite boring and have never REALLY lived anywhere else, I don’t know.

The week before the stuff is collected, people tend to start putting their stuff out on the curb. When I was younger, this made for some most excellent garbage picking. The neighborhood gang and I would traipse around the blocks looking for, well, stuff and things. I’m not sure that my parents were overly thrilled the years I brought home an earwig infested dog-house or the gallons of paint I found, but to their credit they never said a whole lot about it.

Once I hit the teenage years, the prospect of garbage picking was deemed “lame” mainly because I’d discovered this really neat thing called “money” which you could use to exchange for goods and services. My allowance was hefty so I had no need to rummage through other people’s stuff anymore.

This is not to say that I don’t like scouring thrift stores: I totally do, but there’s something different between standing in full view of whomever threw the stuff you’re looking at out and being able to examine it on your own. As with most of the stuff people tend to leave on the curb, there’s always the wonder of WHY they threw it out in the first place that makes me not really want it.

Guess I’m becoming an adult.

So, last Sunday Alex, The Daver and Benny were playing outside with the throng of neighbors that I am fortunate enough to have and love and I decided to get a start on moving our crap to the curb. I really only put out the bigger stuff because the bags ‘o’ crap get shuffled over to the Salvation Army (pretty much weekly). I do most of the manual work around the house, which includes checking for critters that may have made their way into our garage. I don’t actually have a penis, but this sometimes surprises even me.

Our junk day is tomorrow (Saturday) and this must be marked in the datebooks of each and every junk collector within a forty-mile radius, because by that time (last Sunday afternoon) the scads of pickup trucks with makeshift sides on their truck bed were out in full force.

This pleases me me greatly, of course, because I am somewhat of a recycling nerd. I’m thrilled by the green aspect of all of this (and I was long before it was hip to be green) and I love knowing that whatever I put out will (mostly) go to good use.

No idea what the use is, but I’m sure it’s better than sitting in my garage night after night. Pretty much anything is better than that.

While I am in the process of hauling stuff out of the garage and onto the curb, some dude missing most of his teeth and genes (mayhap the missing link?) comes screeching to a halt at my curb and starts vigorously going through our stuff. I have no problem with this, save for it being mildly uncomfortable because here I am, teeth and genes intact, dropping my crap on the curb for someone else to take.

What annoys me the most is that while he is shuffling through some of the boxes I put out (electronic stuff that even I don’t understand) the papers and plastic that are in these boxes drift lazily down to my grass where they remain until he leaves and I pick them back up. I’m cool with you taking my stuff, Mr. Missing Link, I’m not cool with you spewing the trash about RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE.

*ahem*

I’ll never really know where these people come from although I’d guess either Middle Earth or Aurora (made famous by Wayne’s World), and while I’m glad that they are saving stuff from rotting (or not) in a landfill, there’s something about them that makes me sure to lock my car at night.

The most HILARIOUS email exchange I have ever had the pleasure of joining in:

Becky

Seeing that our significant others will be accompanying each other on a
pedal-filled rendezvous this evening, I hear (through an astonishingly
tall, brown-haired, Italian grapevine) that you had an idea to counter this.

So you say that you and I should hang out tonight to balance the
universal scales? So be it.

Give me the info: will you be in the city tonight, and if so what time?

Don’t feel that we have to get together tonight. We can pull this card out any time:
‘œBut you went out biking with Barb/Dave! That totally gave us license to have a torrid, passion-filled love affair at a hastily reserved motel that rents out by the hour!’

They will have no choice but to agree. And so our master plan gathers momentum.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

RS

And my reply:

RS'”

My love, my life, my only true one’¦ Of course there will be a
passion-filled evening (well, okay, 30 minutes'”but it’ll be a HOTT 30
minutes) at a roadside motel so long as I may indulge my craving for Spicy
Red-Hott Cheetos at the same time’¦so burn-ey, so good-ey.

I will be in Oak No-Park this fine evening and am looking for a swarthy,
hair-covered manly man to fufill my deepest desire'”to rub petrolium jelly
all over my naked body and slip-and-slide across the hardwood floors of
Dave’s apartment. Butt naked.

I will be available sometime after 8:00 this beautiful nippley spring day,
so that we may consumate the hardwood floor with our glistening bodies.

God, I need to write romance novels.

I will call you this evening in preparation'” we’re gonna need.

*10-12 lbs cotton balls (the blue-colored ones ONLY)
*4-5 rooms Vitamin D milk
*Osco (possibly Savon) brand petroleum jelly- 50-60 kgs
*A socket set (silver)
*5 gallon jug of Crisco (NO SUBSTITUTIONS)

And so the master plan is set in motion’¦

Becky

And his:

My love, my joy, my sweet ecstacy’¦

Firstly, I was thinking along the lines of twenty-five minutes of HOTT
LOVIN, but for you I try and hold on for those last five minutes.

Your list of supplies, while a good start, is missing a few standbys:

-An unopened package of Depends undergarments (we will place this on a stool
in the corner and continually laugh at it, for they are diapers’¦for
grown-ups)
-A 40 pound bucket of orange juice concentrate (because, as we all know,
orange juice is very, very healthy)
-Two sharpened broadswords (the huns are coming and they’ll be taken off
guard when we unleash the might of our weapons)
-A Prince CD (preferably Purple Rain, but the Batman sountrack will do’¦I
guess)
-Anal Cum Leakage (My favorite porn about men who can’t stop cumming’¦and
the women who wouldn’t have it any other way!)
-A soccer ball full of banana cream (Because, obviously)
-the spare tire from a 1981 Dodge Pinto (Guess where this is going to go. No
really, guess.)

I also think that we should send out an e-mail to invite a chosen few to
watch. We should entitle it: ‘œYou’re invited to cum to our orgy!’ Look but
don’t touch.

Hehehe.

RS

Oh and as always, the request line for you to tell me something you’re dying to know more about is up and running. Holler in the comments if you want me to tell you the story of whatever burning question you might have for me.

—————

The running joke here at Casa de la Sausage has always been that Alex is trying to kill me. We’ve joked about it since I was pregnant with him, and I think it’s pretty apt. Alex’s aggression makes me look like a wee pussy-cat (not a Pussy Cat DOLL, however) and makes me giggle, since I’m still bigger than he is. FOR NOW, I must remind myself.

This was proven to be completely true last night. But, because I am a nice Aunt Becky I’ll start at the beginning for those of you playing along at home.

When I was pregnant with Alex, I was sicker than I’d ever been before from Crohn’s, from hangovers, from anything else ever. I had a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum, which I had not had with Benner or I may not have had another one. I was very, very sick.

Finally around 20-odd weeks later, during the glorious second trimester, it abated somewhat, and was replaced with such severe depression and anxiety that I could barely function. I also ended up in L and D because I thought that my water had broken.

Turns out that thankfully I had just peed my pants, which may not be the most glamorous diagnosis, but I assure you that my mortification was very, very minor when I got this diagnosis.

With the third trimester came a whole new set of problems. Did you know that sometimes your ribs spread when you’re pregnant? I sure didn’t. But it hurts like a fucking bitch. It also made sitting up for any stretch of time completely impossible, so I spent much time laying on my side.

At 32 weeks, I gracefully did the splits when I was washing the kitchen floor, something I have never, ever done before and wound up again in L and D for monitoring. Then my Crohn’s kicked in and I became possibly the most miserable person on the planet.

35 weeks found me back in L and D because I thought, once again, that my water had broken. Again with the peeing of the pants. Suddenly the old castor oil induction started to sound pretty damn good. As did a coat-hanger (to break the amnionic sac).

36 weeks found me back in L and D because my darling son had, for once in his uterine life, taken a nap. This child was so active that I could fulfill my hourly kick counts in about 10 seconds. He just never stopped going.

Finally at 38 weeks, I called and begged my doctor to induce me. My Crohn’s was acting up majorly, my ribs hurt every time I took a breath (I would guess in my professional opinion that he actually broke a couple of them). The pain went above and beyond a minor inconvenience.

When he was born, he was quite a demanding asshole. He nursed 14-20 hours a day, sometimes as much as 18, and while that sounds awesome to someone like me who had convinced herself of her inability to breastfeed, I assure you that it got old very, very quickly.

In fact, until he was 10 or 11 months, I couldn’t safely go anywhere without him for more than an hour. I’d go out only to get called back by The Daver who couldn’t take him screaming for me anymore.

Until he was 11 months old, his intense need for me to be at his beck and call like a wee ickle dictator who poops his pants persisted into the nights. Where he would be up every 1-3 hours looking for a breasticle snack.

Alex’s first year and all his time in the womb I consider to be a write-off. Great kid, sweet personality (mostly), you really don’t want to get on his bad side or you will hear about it for the rest of the day. I love him fiercely and would gnaw off my own arm if I needed to for him. He’s great, really, he is.

But last night, last night he proved to me once and for all that this bitch better start watching her damn back.

I’d gone up to bed around 11pm and was laying there reading with the fan blowing in the mostly cool spring air (I have this thing about needing air blown onto my body while I sleep. And since I can’t hire someone to do this, I’m stuck with a box fan), when I started obsessing about something I had needed to get done on the main floor. I knew that I’d probably done it, because I almost always do it, and I’ve never found that I’ve forgotten to do this, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Eventually I realized that I had better go and check to make sure I’d done this task or I wouldn’t be sleeping for awhile, as my mind would churn like a broken record until I was certain. You thought I was being funny about this OCD stuff, didn’t you?

I heaved my aching calves (not the cows, dumb-ass. I’ve repeatedly petitioned for a calf of my own, but Dave won’t hear of it. Nor will he hear of a baby cheep–chick–, a goat, or a parrot) out of bed and when I opened the door to our bedroom, I was hit by a wave of…something.

It smelled like…something familiar. But what was it? I trouped downstairs sniffing the air (I have an amazing sniffer) and began prowling through the main floor. Not coming from the garage, the garbage can, outside. While I was sniffing and trying like hell to place the scent, it dawned on me.

What I was smelling was gas! Not farts, I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed for farts, but natural gas.

My house reeked of natural gas!

I hurried over to the stove (the one source of gas on the main floor) and sure enough, one of the burners was tipped slightly on, which over the course of several hours had filled up the house with natural fucking gas. I hadn’t noticed it sooner because I’d been sitting in it, so my nose had acclimated to it, but since our bedroom had been well-ventilated and I’d come from there, the smell had bowled me over.

Who the hell had been so stupid as to leave the burner partially fucking on?

My darling son, Alexander, who pulls himself up on the oven door and fiddles with the knobs is who. I didn’t realize because I am a complete moron, that he could actually tilt them to do anything at all.

Needless to say, there are 4 large knobs now sitting on my counter, only to go back on when we need to use a burner.

I’m thinking that the dog kennel that we have in the basement, unused by the dog that lives with us, is going to come in very, very handy. Until he hits puberty.

—————-

Any of you have near misses like that? Anything that you should have probably kicked the bucket for but somehow escaped unscathed?

Now, you didn’t really expect your Aunt Becky to sit idly by while her crazy roommate oozed craziness all over the place, now did you? If you did, well, shame on you. Because if you don’t know me by nowwwww……

Hah.

Aunt Becky puts the AGGRESSIVE in Passive-Aggressive, you know.

———-

When it means butterfly and I first met, she told me that since she was bringing dishes to our room, I didn’t need to bring my own. And without knowing just how fucking nuts she was about her stuff, I listened.

Mistake #1

Aunt Becky: 0

It means butterfly: 1.

A couple of months into our precious Maxi-Pad experience (this is what Stimps and I called our floor), after I’d been using her dishes to eat my delicious vittles on, and immediately washing afterwards, she blew into the room one day in a complete tizzy.

She immediately began yelling at me about not washing HER dishes quickly enough, which stunned me into momentary silence. Back then and to this day, I unfailingly make sure that dirty dishes are taken care of. It’s just something that I do. The only one who had not washed the dishes for days on end was her, not me.

I sat there and listened with a look of horror on my face for sure, and as she continued ranting at me about it, I began scheming.

Mistake #2

Aunt Becky: 1

It means butterfly: 1

What she didn’t know is just what a shitty person I can be if provoked. And I ASSURE you that getting up in my grill about something I didn’t even DO WRONG is the last thing you’re going to want to do to me. If I’d done it, I’d have owned it, but since I didn’t, I got seethingly angry.

Rather than lashing back at her which would have just made her erupt in ugly fat tears, I decided to get even that night, when she had night class.

I waited until she left for class, grabbed Stimpy and got to work. I took every single plate of hers and licked it. I licked it, I goobered on it, and I put it back dripping with my saliva knowing that it would quickly dry in the warm Chicago fall weather.

Then I found her toothbrush and took it into the bathroom and bathed it in the toilet water for about 5 minutes.

Oh yes, yes I did.

Ain’t NOBODY done fuck with Aunt Becky and get away with it.

Aunt Becky: 3

It means Butterfly: 1

Another week passed, and it means butterfly went back to the farm for a weekend sure to be full of cow-tipping and outhouse peeing, and my mind began to churn. What else could I do to this fucking bitch?

The answer came in the form of my friend Mikey, who’d come up from Geneva to hang with me for the weekend. It means butterfly liked Mikey, so she agreed to let him sleep in her bed when she was gone. Mikey decided that the proper course of action was to wipe boogies on her pillow case. I didn’t know that he’d done this until she came home and accused me of doing this within 5 seconds of her arrival. She was nuts like that.

Hehehe.

What she hadn’t realized is that had also, throughout the weekend, farted on her pillow countless times.

Aunt Becky: 4 5

It means butterfly: 1

I’d like to sit back and tell you how much I regret being such a bitch to it means butterfly, and how I would never, ever do anything like this ever again but it would be a lie. Once provoked, I’m a complete bitch.

Dave is so going to come home tonight and smell his toothbrush for evidence that I peed on it. Little does he know that what I really did was to pee on his pillow.

——-

Dish time for you, my loves. Tell me what the most vindictive thing you’ve ever done. And if you’re GOOD, I will tell you what I did that is missing from this list.

Hehehe.

You can find me here monthly.

Catch you on the flip side, bitches!

Have you ever met someone who you could just tell was slightly…off? You know what I mean, someone who is perfectly okay on the exterior but underneath is someone completely different?

What sucks the most about these people is you never can tell if it’s you being bitchy or it’s them being insane. It means butterfly was that kind of person, not outwardly mean or cruel, but drove just about everyone who met her insane. And I never knew if I could REALLY complain about her, because was she really bad? Or was it JUST ME?

She was addicted to the computer far before I was, and as such, she never, ever went off her chat program. She talked to Dave constantly on IM, no matter what I was doing. Even if I was having The Sex.

One day, after class I ran back to my room hoping that she would still be in class but no, there she was hooting and cooing at the computer screen. I informed her that I would be napping, hoping that she would leave for an hour or so, but no, she sat there clacking away on the computer.

Maybe it’s me, but I can’t handle that kind of noise when I’m trying to sleep. Once I’m asleep, it’s all good and I can totally sleep through anything. But going to sleep, I need quiet. Well, this day, it annoyed the fuck out of me that she wasn’t taking the hint.

So I sat up furiously and said, “It means butterfly, I am TOTALLY buying you a quieter keyboard for Christmas!”

Well I’m sure that my tone was decidedly angry, it didn’t warrant what she did next: burst into tears and ran into the hallway, presumably to tell on me. This pissed me off even more, because I hate nothing more than the guilt of making someone cry, so I got off and flounced off to Pashmina/Stimpy’s room where I vented.

I could still here it means butterfly crying from there, and I felt bad, but not that bad.

We both pretended it had never happened.

Several weeks later, during the end of October, her boyfriend came up to stay with us, as SIU closes it’s campus during Halloween due to some previous riots. For a whole week.

What I was expecting when Dave showed up is a fumbling nerdy guy, probably 350 lbs, glasses and back-ne. What Dave was is a skinny Metal Head. A cool one. I liked him immediately and wished that HE were my roommate.

(and no, this Dave is not The Daver. I would never allow a penis that had been inside of it means butterfly to be inside of me. I do have standards, afterall).

Since I was in the bottom bunk, and they shared the top one for his visit, I jokingly told them that they could not have The Sex while I was underneath. Our bed swayed alarmingly if you so much as breathed on it, and I knew that if some humping was going down, I’d never get to sleep.

And ew.

It means butterfly was not a very attractive girl, and I already had to watch her pillowy body flop around the room, and I did NOT need to think of her having The Sex.

One night, during this time, I went to sleep, headphones on and grooving to some Slayer (or something. I don’t remember), when I started to feel something…moving. My bed was suddenly rocking back and forth. This displeased me so much that they were doing gross things to each other ABOVE ME that I grabbed my stuff and went to sleep on Stimpy/Pashmina’s floor.

And boy was I pissed.

I spent the rest of the week sleeping on another friend’s floor (A BOY!!) and occasionally popping into my room to get supplies (mainly cigarettes). During one of my brief stops into MY OWN ROOM, I came to find it means butterfly frantically tearing through our room, throwing my stuff around while shrieking and crying. She got so upset about this that she barfed in the garbage can in the bathroom.

I asked her what the hell she was doing and she screamed “LOOKING FOR THE GODDAMN REMOTE! I CAN’T FIND IT!”

She tore up most of my room looking for the damn thing, which she eventually found in her own bed.

Why she had convinced herself that I had somehow stolen her remote and hidden it somewhere when I hadn’t been in my own room in hours, and ESPECIALLY since she flipped out about leaving the TV on the wrong channel, I had never used her TV again.

I guess that was the end for me. I couldn’t handle walking on eggshells around this country bumpkin of a girl with no life and no winning attributes at all. I couldn’t stand her, couldn’t handle all of her control issues, and didn’t really want to do it anymore.

I all but moved out, moved home at the end of the semester, and only thought of her again when Stimpy and I would get together and make fun of her.

———-

5 or so years pass, and on my wedding day, my bridal party and I went to the salon to get our hair and makeup done. I was on complete edge, running on adrenaline, and freaked the fuck out.

My mother had showed up to get her hair done completely wasted and I promptly cried off all the makeup that had been applied. The makeup artist was so sweet to me, redid it all, and talked me down (along with some of my girls, of course).

When it was time to go to the church and put on the pouffy white dress, so I hopped off the salon chair, gabbing with Stimpy and Ashley and this girl walks by. Literally the last person I’d expected to see on MY WEDDING DAY was right there. I’d have frankly been less surprised to see Vincent D’Onofrio or Anthony Bourdain walk in together, with their dicks dancing in unison to a Janet Jackson song.

That’s right, it means butterfly was there, at the salon, on my wedding day.

We said perfunctory hello’s to each other, I explained that I needed to go to MY WEDDING and had to leave, and I haven’t seen her again.

I can’t, however, pass a bottle of wax without remembering the day that she burst into Stimpy’s room with her used wax to display how much hair she’d gotten off her lip.

Fucking Sasquatch.

I was suitably hung over the morning after I’d moved in, and since I had tried to block out the worst of the decor in my new room, I’d almost forgotten where I was. That is, of course, until I opened my eyes and all of the colors swirled together into one gigantic mess. Reality came crashing back in, so I got up, smoked a cigarette alone and decided to see if the rest of my floor was so creepy.

I walked in the square shaped hallway all the way around until I got about two doors down from my own, where the door was open. I popped my head in and said hello to the two girls sitting on the floor. They promptly invited me in, where I noticed an ashtray and became overwhelmed with glee.

“Can I SMOKE in here?” I asked them happily.

“Sure,” said the taller of the two. “We don’t smoke, but you can.”

So I scrambled back to my own room to grab my smokes, and when I returned the taller one bummed a smoke from me. We both smoked cheerfully as we talked, unaware of how often we would repeat this ritual for the next ten or so years.

The tall one who had spoken to me first is my friend Pashmina, aka Stimpy, and the person responsible for the Dave-Becky Union, and I shouldn’t need to tell you that we became instant friends. I also shouldn’t need to tell you that I desperately wished that I’d lived with both of them, in surveying their less cloying decor and wishing it were my own.

We chummed around together for the rest of the weekend, Stimpy, Her Roommate and I, and on Sunday night, when we were sitting on Stimpy’s floor smoking yet another cigarette, my roommate, it means butterfly walked back in lugging a huge thing of water bottles.

I rolled my eyes, as we’d already spent quite a bit of time in my room mocking her stupid decorations and my misfortune, got up and went to see her. It appears that even then I was stupid and masochistic.

When I finally rolled back to the room, I greeted her as warmly as I could and she told me that she was making a book for her boyfriend, Dave, who went to SIU. I sat there, rooted to my desk chair while I watched her gather supplies, wondering what kind of book someone would make for a 19-year old dude.

Construction paper, markers, and stickers. A butt-load of stickers.

Stimpy and her roommate came down while this was going on, as I’d begged them to come and rescue me if I didn’t come immediately back. It means butterfly greated them somewhat cooly, but fascinated, we all took a seat to see what the hell she was doing. It was like watching a rhinoceros at the zoo, waiting to see what it would do next.

It means butterfly began to decorate page after page of colorful construction paper with different things that she and her boyfriend had done. No, not like “We had butt sex in the back of your Pinto” but “Remember when you got lost coming to my house?”

I began to wonder just how old her boyfriend REALLY was, because although I was newly single–having just walked in on my boyfriend of two years with an ugly UGLY! friend of mine–I didn’t ever see myself doing something so stupid for a dude. And if I did, I’d imagine that he would run away screaming, rightly so.

She spent a good couple of hours on this book, so we left to go grab coffee and smoke, and when I returned, she was on her computer chatting with her boyfriend. This was before I had an IM program, before I knew what one was, and before I thought that it was a handy way to talk to someone.

At this point, it sounded so stupid. Pick up the fucking phone and call him, I thought.
But there she sat, clacking away on her keyboard and occasionally hooting at stuff that Dave said.

When she saw me there, she took a moment to talk to me about the room and her stuff. Because I was a dude–not really– myself, I didn’t come equipped with a bunch of decorations and other frilly shit. I’d packed some clothes and some booze, hastily mixed in together.

She informed me that I was welcome to use any of her stuff, including her body wax (for waxing, not for sculpting), her lotion, her computer, her clothes, anything I wanted I could use.

But not really.

One day I did happen to borrow her lotion, and didn’t return it to the right spot in her drawer (it was in the teeny drawer, but not precisely where she’d left it–a millimeter or so to the right) and she had a fucking fit. OH! The HUMANITY!

Then she refused to talk to me for a couple of days.

A couple of days later, a friend of mine was over and turned on her television, which caught all of 4 channels (she was too cheap to pay for cable), and apparently my friend didn’t leave it on the right channel when she turned it off. As you can imagine, this was a big.fucking.deal. for no reason whatsoever, it’s not like the channel was secret or something.

But to it means butterfly, this was the end of the fucking world.

Over the next month or so, I realized that she never left the room except for to go to class. And because her classes were earlier than mine, she’d come back as I was waking up to go to class AND NEVER LEAVE. She’d go to the cafeteria to get lunch, and BRING IT BACK. AND THEN TALK WITH HER MOUTH FULL.

I never, ever had the room to myself. Ever.

It may surprise you as I’m pretty open and frank about myself, but I do happen to like a small bit of alone time each day to be, well, alone. It’s not like she sat and talked to me while I was there or anything, but she did talk to her computer. Oh yes, yes she did. Her boyfriend would IM her and she would sit and coo at THE COMPUTER.

I wanted to die.

I had brought some posters with me from home; a Pink Floyd one, a Janis Joplin one, and I had thus far been too lazy to put them up. It just seemed like too much work. So one day, it means butterfly asked me if she could put the posters up for me, and because laziness always wins out when it comes to me, I agreed.

When I returned, I nearly swallowed my tongue. Now my side of the room was also covered in colorful plastic tablecloths, and my posters were all hung at deliberately tilted angles. And one of her stupid posterboards was now dangling from my corner of the room.

Shit, I said to myself as I thanked her. Now I’m NEVER going to get laid! It looks like Crayola came and barfed in my room.

Shit.

So, I have a quick-ass question for all of you, my sweet internet friends. I ask you because most of you have blogs of your own and I genuinely want to know what you’d do.

Let’s say you came across a blog that is fairly new, but is almost the same name as your own. It’s got a couple of letter variations to it, but it’s pretty much almost your blog’s name.

What would you do? Would it annoy you? Or would you just try to remember that imitation is the highest form of flattery?

(I’m not finding it flattering, btw).

Edited to add, I would be shocked beyond get out if this were something that the other writer came up with on her own. For serious. Mommywantswhiskey would not be something I would be annoyed by, nor would Mommywantsabeer, or even, Mommywantsvicodin. But this is far too similar to be a coincidence.

Now before I get to the meat -n- potatoes of this post, I need to be clear about something. Although I never got along with this person myself very well, it had much more to do with our obvious personality differences and not because she was a bitch. She was not a bitch then, she’s probably not a bitch now.

She’s a nice girl, just not my kind of girl (do I ever really like nice girls?).

———-

My brother and I are 10 years apart, him being the older of us, so when I was 8 he went off to college in the big city.

When it came for my time to choose a college to attend, because I am highly unoriginal, I chose the same school. A couple of months before school started, I got a letter in the mail that was decorated with butterfly stickers and written partially in crayon. Figuring it was from my young cousin, who shares a name with me and at the time thought that I was perhaps the coolest person on the planet (she has since wised up), I tore it open.

It was not a letter from Rebecca, no, it was a letter from my future roommate in college, whose name meant butterfly (if you really are dying know her real name, go check the last two entries and/or the comments. I don’t really want to broadcast this, as this is the first time I have broken my “let’s not talk about people who don’t read this rule”). She lived somewhat locally and suggested that we meet up for lunch at some halfway between us location.

I sent a perfunctory reply (without the stamps or crayons, of course) and we eventually settled on meeting at a Friday’s. To make it a little easier on my nerves, I dragged my friend Evan along.

At the appointed time and location, Evan and I showed up and took a seat. A couple of minutes later, it means butterfly arrived and sat down with us. I can only remember two things about this meeting:

1. She smelled like raw meat

2. She had the sort of personality that is really sweet and nice superficially, but you can see underneath that there is something…else, underneath. Like she might bite you or something if you fucked up.

This was not perhaps the most encouraging meeting I’ve ever had with someone I was about to share a shoebox with, but hey, she didn’t seem like a serial killer, which I considered a bonus.

Several months later, the time to pack up and leave for school dawned upon me and I shoved everything I was going to take with me into my friend Scott’s purple Neon and he drove me downtown and helped me move in.

The weekend that I moved in happened to be one that it means butterfly was gone, presumably back home, but she’d already moved in. This afforded me the chance to snoop through her stuff without her there.

What I found….disturbed…me.

She was an absolute girly-girl, and although I have a tendency towards being slightly girly, underneath that I’m all dude (without the dangly bits). I’ve been called affectionately “a dude with boobs” and I think that fits. Her side of the room was covered in what later I learned was colorful plastic table cloths, and over that were some poster-boards covered in magazine clippings.

Like phrases and stuff “Play With Fire, Skate on Ice.” And pictures of hot hunky guys. Cut from magazines. I knew this because I’d done the same thing to decorate my locker in Junior High, before I realized how dumb it looked.

But there were 5 different poster-boards strewn about the room, hanging from walls, hanging from the ceiling, hanging everywhere and annoying me. Then I saw that the back of the door was covered in what looked like cellophane but more iridescent and sparkly, and upon closer examination, realized that she had started to write cute little phrases on it. Quotes from Jewel–the singer not the store– mainly about love and happiness, kittens and puppies.

Her desk had a calendar on it that, I shit you not, had Precious Moments people-creepy-things on it. She was obviously a 50-year old trapped in the body of an 18-year old.

I was quite underwhelmed and a little bit nauseous.
At this point in my life, well before I had kids, well before I was a mother or a wife or a homeowner or a nurse or even your Aunt Becky, I was probably more of a rocker chick than anything else–minus the minked hair and gravelly voice. I smoked often and happily, drank whiskey, and was known to dabble in The Pot.

It became excruciatingly obvious that she was nothing like this. And yet, in the tradition of making people who have nothing in common, live together in a teeny room, she was to be my roommate.

“Shit,” I said to my metal friend Scott, “FUCK! What now?”

He looked sympathetically at me, put his arm around me paternally and said, “Vodka. Lots and lots of vodka.”

That night we drank to my new roommate and the disaster that we both knew lay before me.