Does anyone else remember that old phrase that goes something like, you’ll remember every insult you recieve but almost none of the compliments? (Did I make that saying up?) Even as someone who suffers often from a chronic case of Foot in Mouth-itis, I am here to tell you that it’s 100% true.

And the worst offenders are the unintentional slights, because for some reason, those remain with me to this day, where I play them over and over in my head (only on bad days). The blatent “I hate you’s” and “You’re ugly’s” and “Did you even make sure that your clothes matched today, Becky’s” are usually dismissed outright.

But who can forget such stellar comments as those delivered by frenemies? I vividly remember a couple of months after I had delivered Ben, I was out with one of my few Mommy friends. She casually mentioned her weight, which matched mine, so I said so (as a rule, I very seldom mention my actual numbers to anyone but Weight Watchers), to which she replied “Yeah, well, it looks better on me.” Ouch. Haven’t seen much of her since then.

Or how about the one I heard when I was picking Ben out a toy? This one’s a doozy, because I’m STILL unsure of whether or not this was intended to be rude. The comment was something like “It would be so easy to spoil my child,” which may or may not have implied that I was spoiling my own. I STILL DON’T KNOW AND IT DRIVES ME INSANE.

I’m equally guilty of doing this myself: I’ll never forget my mortification when I casually remarked to a Movado employee while I was picking out my engagement ring, “Yeah, well, heart shaped diamond engagement rings are SUPER tacky.” Oops. She was in line to inherit her mothers. That was a dick-move on my part.

Sunday, Dave mentioned that he would watch the baby overnight for me so that I could get some (much deserved) rest. Since we’re working on getting him into his crib (yeah, yeah, yeah, smirk away, assholes. He’s been in his (now with added broken motor!) swing since birth. I am a horrible excuse for a mother AND a terrible cook. It’s a friggin’ miracle anyone married me.), this came as a welcome and much appreciated break for me.

Alex rewarded Dave for his generousity by graciously sleeping 5+ hours in a row, which at this point we’re calling ‘sleeping through the night.’ I wake up more rested and refreshed than I’ve been in years. So I rewarded myself with a nap. It was like a sleep-binge and I adored every moment of it.

Later that day, Dave mentions how “easy it was to listen for him,” which translated in my greedy head into “I’ll take the baby another night, Darling Wife” (what it REALLY sounded like was “what the hell are you complaining about, woman! This kid is SO EASY and getting up all of the time is NO PROBLEM AT ALL!). I giggled wickedly, as I knew that lightening doesn’t often strike in the same place twice.

So he agreed to do it for one more night (although it took some convincing and reminding him of HOW DAMN EASY HE’D SAID THAT IT WAS. Motherfucker.). Last night, Alex displayed to his father just how “easy” it is to listen for him overnight, by promptly waking up every 1-3 hours. Hilarious but unfortunate (mainly because this means that the baby is not likely to start miraculously sleeping through the night).

Dish, now people, dish for poor, sleepy Aunt Becky. Come sit on my couch here (pats seat conspiratorially) and tell me a story about something you unintentionally said to someone that was inadvertantly nasty OR something someone has said to YOU that made you feel like dog poo, but without meaning to.

(This one’s for YOU, Ashley)

After Ben was born, I went back to school coincidentally where my best friend was going. As we both needed a similar elective to help us further our degrees, we were thrilled to sign up for one together: Music Appreciation. The class met ungodly early, but since I had a vast knowledge of music thanks to my years as a concert cellist, we figured it would be a blow off class. We were not let down.

The first couple of weeks passed without incident: we showed up with Ashley dragging my tired ass into the room (SO not a morning person. I owe you, dude.), sat in the back, and proceeded to write notes back and forth in our notebooks. The teacher was, for some odd reason, terrified of us and would nervously rearrange her stack of papers whenever we tried to speak to her.

It took probably a whole month before we noticed the person sitting in front of us, only because one day, in a fit of exhaustion, we blearily tried to sit IN HIS ROW. We didn’t have assigned seats, of course, but this pimply rat-faced boy was territorial over HIS SPACE. Having been summarily corrected by him as to where HE sat, we slunk back to our row and took our seats. It was then that it all began.

First we noted his high-waisted stonewashed black jeans (occasionally white) and his cheap vinyl windbreaker. The hair on his head hung past his shoulders in what would have likely been beautiful curls, had he ever bothered to wash it and/or use product in it. Instead, it curled greasily around his squinty rat-like eyes and only accentuated his parchement complexion. This whole situation may have actually been circumvented had the following not occured.

After having a musical score passed out to show the class (most of whom had never seen one.), the lecture continued while the score circulated. Ashley and I began a conversation in earnest about the newest Coach purse collection (the teacher was too scared to tell us to shut the fuck up).

While debating the merits of leather versus vinyl, Rat-Boy angrily swivels around in his chair, located directly in front of Ashley and furiously whispers, “WHERE’S the SCORE?” to her.

Completely baffled by what he’s asking her (remember, now, we are discussing PURSES not music and have yet to see the score), she stammers out a “Whaaat?”

Since he’d probably been up too late whacking off into his music appreciation text book while playing Everquest in his parents basement, he was a little testy with her when he demanded yet again, “WHERE’S the SCORE!!?!”

Finally the lightbulb of comprehension flickered dimly over my own head as I understood what he was asking: he wanted the MUSICAL score, not ask us about sex (get it? Scoring? Having the sex?)! I gestured to the other side of the room, where people were listlessly looking at the score, and pointed it out to him. He seemed mollified and swiveled his scrawny body back around.

It was so ON.

Every class, we studied him, every aspect of him: the way he shuffled, his white stained hightops circa 1986 (yes, really), his varying shades of black jeans, the amount of dander on his back, the way he tried to set himself apart to the teacher as a true lover of music (and then the way she brushed his unrequited love off). Our notebooks, which had previously only been filled with gossip and drivel, were now filled with elaborate color coded charts and graphs that documented his every move. Days that he was absent, we were crushed. When he arrived, we celebrated.

One day, an eagle-eyed Ashley noticed that he had a new backpack. A new MONGRAMMED backpack. J=Jaassoon A. D=Dinkinnnnnnssss. What did the “A” stand for??? We spent weeks coming up with the answer. My vote was for “Americus” and Ashley’s was for “Aloysius” (pronounced Allooooiiiissshhhuuuss). To this day, I suppose that we’ll never know.

What I do know is this: on the last day of class, Ashley and I headed into the cafeteria to grab some greasy breakfast and Jason was there. In a fit of boldness, I asked him if he’d like to eat with us (keep in mind, I’d been too shy to speak with him before as he made my heart go all aflutter. No, not for serious.), and he did. We had breakfast with my imaginary boyfriend that morning, AND I NEVER SAW HIM AGAIN (sniffs wildly).

Oh wait, yeah I did, the following semester. He’d gotten a stupid looking bowlers hat and was wearing an Einstein t-shirt.

What? I’m NOT obsessed!

Tuesday’s are my weigh-in days for my online Weight Watchers thingy, and despite having now lost 10 pounds, every Monday night I sit in fear of the morning’s number. Like it will have magically gone back up 10 lbs IN SPITE of having diligently stuck to the diet. I also offer up some silent prayers as the scale blinks and thinks about how to ruin my life for the week.

Methinks I need a new hobby. Or at least, some Valium.

———————

If I am going to continue in this whole “trying to post everyday” thing without actually talking about my lunch or my bathroom habits, I am going to need some help. This is where YOU come in: what do I write about? Don’t be shy, ask away (or at least give me some subject matter to write about. I can only talk about myself for so long before I start to get nauseous.). I assure you that I am the least modest person on the planet, so very little that you could either say or ask would be off limits.

—————————–

Something I’ve wanted to throw out there for a long while is this: do you OR should you comment on every blog that you read? I try to do so, just so the author knows that those site hits on their Site Meter aren’t just from spambots or whatever. Plus, most people who have public blogs tend to enjoy having an audience, so I’m happy to oblige.

“Mamamamamama”

“No, Alex! Say Dada, Dadadadadada!”

“Dadadadadada”

“NO Alex! Say Ben, Benbenbenbenben!”

“Babababababababa”

“NO Alex, say Mamamamama!”

“Mamamamamama”

No thanks to my mother, who at the time when I was a (oops!) baby worked on the dangerous/criminal floor of the nearby mental instituition, my first word was “Fuck,” which is still one of my favorite words ever (followed closely by “googley” which just cracks me up. Say it out loud, all drawn out….hilarity!). I said it in front of my highly conservative grandmother, which left my mother stammering, red-faced and embarrassed to explain that what I had ACTUALLY said was “Duck.”

Ben’s first word was “Tock-tock” after the grandfather clock that he spent many hours as a baby, walker abutting it, staring at in wonderment (is that a word?), oogling the pendulum and it’s constant back and forth movement.

Dave, my guess, first said something wholesome or another like “Christian” or “Crusader.” It’s purely speculation on my own part, but as the phrase goes, if the shoe fits…

Poor Alex, with all of us desperately vying for our names to be his first word, is going to grow up thinking that all of our names are “NOMommy,” “NOBen” and “NODaddy.” I think that we all need a new hobby.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to press the Play button on the tape player in his bedroom to try and tap into his subconsciousness. What is on the tape, you ask? Oh, nothing, really… okay, it’s just an audiotape of myself saying “Mommy” over and over again.

I turn the tables on YOU, dear reader, what was YOUR first word? (and if it’s a good enough story/word, I’ll send you an awesome prize (because who DOESN’T like mail?)…and no, it’s not an autographed picture of myself).

I didn’t get the nickname “Super-Becky Over-Achiever” for nothing. Not only did I love (nearly) every moment in school (even when it was a degree that I could have cared less about), I was constantly in competition with myself to get the best grades possible in each and every subject. At the end of it all (besides having the degree in a field I hate/d), I graduated summa cum laude, which made me prouder of myself than I’d ever thought possible, until I realized that I should have graduated magna. I might have, had it not been for an uncalculated error in judgement on my part.

When I got pregnant with Ben, in order to stay on my parents insurance, I had to remain a full time student. At the not-so-gentle urging of my mother, I signed up for some softer, easier classes that I could glide through, so that I could better focus my time on getting my life in order. I chose four classes: three in literature and the last in something that I foolishly assumed would be a cake-walk: Jewelry.

I suppose somewhere amongst the pregnancy hormones, I assumed that I since I adored jewelry, this would somehow translate to being able to create it. What I neglected to take into consideration is that I do not have a single creative bone in my body (nor was I able to use either diamonds or platinum, which should have been my tip off that I was in the wrong place). The creative genes had solely taken up residence in my brother who earned a degree in both creative writing/poetry and photography (for reference, I switched majors halfway through my degree in Bio/Chem due to the looming possibiltiy of single motherhood and wanting to provide for my child something other than Ramen noodles) and had left me out to dry.

But naively, I figured that by immersing myself into it, the particles of creativity would pass through the room by osmosis. Heck, maybe THIS could be what I did with the rest of my life! I had grand visions of making my own line of fantastic jewelry, so amazing that people would literally line up at my front door clamoring loudly for my wares. I would be like Donatella Versace (but less Muppetty, of course)! Like Picasso (but female!)! Or that guy that does the “Real Men of Genius” Bud Lite commercials! But with jewelry as MY medium of art.

(serious brilliance here).

I am all to sure that an audible pop was heard, the sound of my creative balloon popping as I sat down in front of my first square of metal. I was struck, of course, by absolutely nothing whatsoever. Save, of course, for the desire to run screaming away from this hell of my own creation.

I could, I suppose, blame the teacher, who was for all intents and purposes, a complete sea hag of a woman, frustrated by her own life and inadequecies and determined to take it out on the student that showed the least amount of aptitude for jewelry creation: me. This is not to take the blame out of my court completely, as I did treat her class as a blow-off, and showed absolutely no creativity or interest whatsoever. One might argue that I knew that I was fighting a losing battle and giving in seemed to be the path of least resistance, because, of course, that would be the truth (of course, that would be doing a great disservice to the fact that my life at that point was genuinely a complete shit sandwich and I still wonder how I got through those horrid, dark years). I think, however, it was a combination of both factors, magnified by our differences in personality.

At the end of the semester, each student had a meeting with her in which we showed her our creations. I had a sad, sad, sandwich baggie full of half-finished, stupid looking silver and brass creations that no one in their right minds would have worn. The bracelet weighed conservatively about 3.5 pounds, and would have broken the wrist of the wearer in a short couple of hours. The pendant was so full of sharp corners that I would occasionally draw blood while sanding it down, and may have actually performed open heart surgery if ever worn (true story, while attempting to dispose of it very recently, it punctured a garbage bag, spewing it’s contents all over the kitchen. I guess this was it’s final act of butchery).

This begs the fact that asthetically not even a blind person would could be fooled into wearing them, well, unless said blind person had exquistely bad taste. Adding insult to injury was the fact that I was so allergic to the metals that we were given that I literally had to scrub my arms down after working with it with Phisodex and pop copious amounts of Benedryl just to ward of an anaphylactic reaction.

I approached this meeting with the Sea Hag with both trepidation and resignation. Half of my “creations” were never completed. The other half only half-heartedly constructed. I knew that I had fucked up and was willing to own up to it.

She started off after briefly surveying my pathetic stash with “I should give you a ‘D.’ But I’m going to do you a favor and give you a ‘C.'” If she’d expected me to protest and grovel at her feet (do Sea Hags have feet?), she’d picked the wrong person. I knew that I’d fucked up, but unlike what she’d probably thought, my fatal flaw was to have signed up for her class in the first place.

I walked out of there full of nothing but relief that it was all over and no one would ever ask me to meld a piece of silver to a piece of brass ever again.

I rarely thought about this class again over the last couple years of my college degree, aside from snicker about how stupid I’d been to sign up for something I knew that I could never do. Until graduation time rolled around, and I realized how closely I’d come to graduating with highest honors. Only THEN did I see the error of my ways.

Guess I should have plead my case, afterall.

After the Great Condo Fiasco of 2005, we have been a bit gun shy about decorating the new house. Although I may not necessarily LIKE the colors that most of the walls are painted, none of them are as horrific as the Houses of the Holy orange of our bedroom in said condo. Most rooms are tolerable, especially now since the main floor bathroom is (mostly) completed.

I’ve inherited (thanks, Dad) a genuine fear of hanging pictures because OHMYGOD IT MIGHT MAKE HOLES THAT I HAVE TO SPACKLE! If there is something beyond the fact that I now do not vomit when I see the 3!!! different prints of wallpaper clashing mightily, I am now not afraid of spackle (I did, afterall, spackle most of all 4 walls. Oh, the damage that the wallpaper inflicted upon those poor walls). Since we are entertaining, I decided to both frame and hang many of the pictures we have been waiting to hang (waiting for what, I’ll never be sure..a bus to come, a train to go, or waiting around for a yes or no, I’m pretty sure that I was waiting for someone else to do this for me, but no one volunteered, sadly enough.).

Unfortunately for anyone who happens to walk into my home, the walls in the hallway now look as though pictures of my family have been vomited all over the walls. It makes us appear to be completely narcissitic and self-absorbed, which may be the case (2 blogs!! Oh, SNAP!!) and all, but yeah, it’s overkill.

I need to remedy this situation post haste, but am unsure how to do so. I don’t have any sort of eye for decorating houses and typically rely on bright and bold paint colors to mask this. Painting is, though, for now out of the question completely, so what to do? I’m dying for my home to be well put together and flow nicely, but have no real way of making this a reality. I love funky stuff, but I have no idea where to get stuff like that (and no, sadly, I was lying about the Miller Lite signs in my living room. They’re actually in my bedroom. Classy, I know). My family is FULL of useful people, so of course I have an interior decorator that I can invite over, but she’s OCD and might explode unless my home is perfectly cleaned.

How do normal people do this sort of thing? Any ideas?

In a glaring moment of either sheer stupidity or amazing brilliance (I’m blaming sleep deprevation here), I have offered to host Thanksgiving Day at my home this year. Brilliance because then I am not required to travel with two children in a car AND bribe someone to come by and take care of our menagerie for several days. Stupidity because I abhor cooking (true story: in kindergarten, my class was required to submit a recipie off of the top of our heads for a class cookbook. You know, “a room full of milk” and other such hilarious units of measure. My contribution was simple: Call China Light, order food, pick up in 20 minutes. To this day, this remains my favorite recipie, bar none) unless it is baking. I adore baking.

Every other year, we’ve diligently travelled up to Wisconsin to visit Dave’s grandmother in the nursing home and eat somewhat frightening turkey and stuffing. She never remembered who actually I was, I’m sure that I was just some blurry young thing to her but she always remembered Ben and looked forward to hearing him sing his Greatest Hits Album (including, but not limited to “Ring of Fire,” “Working Class Hero,” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”). She passed on this summer, which effectively let us off of the hook for Thanksgiving, which meant that Thanksgiving proper was free to be filled with such goodness as ordering junky pizza and drinking a 30 case of Miller High Life by ourselves.

Until I opened my big, fat, trap, and suggested that we could host this holiday. We have a tentative menu, which guarantees that we will waste approximately $60 on a piece of meat that will summarily be ruined by my minstrations. Thankfully, however, I am planning to make several pies that will hopefully overshadow my obvious shortcomings as a chef.

I have begun the process of getting my house back in order (after my recent bout with sleeplessness coupled with my wonky thyroid, I am starting to feel like a reasonable shadow of my former self), which is no small feat. While I am completely aware that the 4-6 people who will come by for Thanksgiving will neither notice nor care that Alex’s teeny clothes are now perfectly folded, organized, and stacked in fancy blue bins, I feel it is necessary, therefore it is (somewhere, Dave is cradling his head in his hands in frustration). It’ll be several weeks (a.k.a. Thanksgiving Day) before this process is completed, so on and on I will plug away.

But I have something completely special up my sleeve for this joyous day, something that no one (save for my husband, and now, The Internet) will have seen coming. Something that will be a new holiday tradition at my house: Schweaty Balls (if you are completely confused right now, go down and watch the SNL skit on this page. It’s about a minute long and worth every second. And no, I am not a teenage boy.)

After listening to me tell the baby over and over “It’s a Schweaty family recipie” and laughing completely by my lonesone, my husband suggested that I pull this stunt for the holidays. I am going to make some sort of ball-shaped cookies (no, not THOSE balls, silly), and put a index card with “Shweaty Balls” next to them.

When someone comments on them, Dave will begin the straight man monologue that he is so good at (about the balls feeling good in your mouth, ad infinitum, ad nauseum), which will surely send me into spasms of laughter. Hell, he’ll be lucky to get my ass back to the kitchen, women! after I have made said balls, as I will be too busy laughing at them. Since my family raised me, they will be expecting these sort of antics from me and laugh along side me, but the real treat will be seeing my uber-conservative in-laws react (the more that I think about this, the more I am convinced that marrying me was an elaborate retaliation method designed to drive his parents insane. I got back at my parents by smoking cigarettes (because in my home, everything else was just fine to do, so long as I didn’t smoke pot in the living room. Ah, hippies), and he got back at his by marrying a crude, crass, pre-marital sex-havin’, loud-mouth woman.), not because I don’t like them, but because I think that someday, they are going to have to learn precisely who their son married, Schweaty Balls and all.

I’m fairly certain that I was An Asshole for my first Halloween. I have no sufficient proof of this, but I was one of those annoyingly colicky babies (according to family lore) who spent most of her first year screaming. Similar, no doubt to Ben, who I dressed as a Bumblebee for his first Halloween. Whether it was because he realized just how stupid he looked or because he was just An Asshole, I’ll never be certain, but he screamed so loudly that I began to call him a Grumblebee.

In fact, he screamed while being a Tiger, The Cat In The Hat, and finally settled down when we bought him a respectable minature NASA suit. It may have been due to the exhorbatant cost of said suit (damn you Pottery Barn Kids, and your adorable, yet unaffordable wares!) or because he was dressed as something that finally made sense, but he seemed quite content in it. This suit lasted for 3 years, until this year when he suddenly realized that he had options, and in choosing to exercise his free will, asked to be Darth Vader, much to my dismay. I make no secret that I dislike Star Wars, but if he’d had to be ANYBODY from the movies, I would have hoped that he’d have chosen to be Boba Fett. But 6 does as 6 pleases, so Darth Vader he was. He was (insert applicable adjective here), but I have no proof of this, as he was moving too quickly for us to get a suitable picture. 6, it also appears, has it’s own agenda.

Despite playing Whack-A-Mole (bonus Children Edition!!) prior to heading out Trick-or-Treating, it went smashingly, and the kid got even more candy than he’d gotten last year.

In order to regain my hurt feelings of control (WHY couldn’t he have been Boba Fett? Boba Fett is AWESOME!), I decided to dress my youngest in what can only be described as “additional therapy fodder.”

Introducing…

The Halloweiner!

(and no, those cuts are actually NOT from a bar fight, just a fight with his own fists of fury).

I was once accused of being “socially-uncaring” by Ben’s father, which was especially hilarious considering he did (and still does) work for a company that manufactures parts for a superfluous home appliance. He works as tech-support. At the time of aforementioned accusation, I was in nursing school. When I pointed out the obvious discrepency, the only other poo that he could fling in my direction is that I preferred to listen to something other than NPR while in the car, didn’t pour over the works of Michael Moore, and I disliked sitting around talking about the sad state of the world, because well, I don’t like to be depressed unnecessarily.

(and I wonder why I broke up with him).

(no, no I don’t)

———————-

Growing up, the radio at my house was always tuned to NPR or WFMT. It was like living in a dentist’s office. To this day, I still have a vast appreciation for classical, as I played concert cello for many, many years. I cut my teeth on Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and can still recall watching the film version while I stayed home with chicken pox in the first grade (and that wasn’t the first time I’d seen it). To say that I grew up a bit twisted would be the understatement of the year.

(as a complete aside, the NPR skit on SNL actually took my breath away, I was laughing so hard. It’s_just_SPOT_ON.)

The older I got, however, I began to realize that one didn’t actually NEED to listen to music that made them either feel badly or required too much thought. Sometimes a song is, afterall, just a song.

——————–

Yesterday, I dragged my poor, sweet husband out to buy Britney’s new CD, because if you’re going to go the absolute opposite direction from NPR, Britney may be it. I genuinely think that this may be the first time in history that I’ve bought a CD on the day it dropped, and I am not disappointed. It’s a quindessential pop album. Her voice is absolutely overprocessed and almost electronic on some tracks, but you know what? I can dance my ass off to it (very, very, very badly, but it’s MY living room. Someday I will fufill my life’s goal of learning The Robot. Sadly, though, it’s not today.), and some days, that may be all that I need.

(besides, between the fact that the baby seems to dig it AND loves Diet Coke, my husband may have just reached new levels of horrification at the whole nature versus nurture debate. And that my friends, is priceless.)

It is with great pleasure to inform The Internet at large (as though anyone but me cares) that despite my wonky-assed thyroid (19.34, n: 0.34-5.6), I have officially lost 10 pounds. This puts me closer than I would have thought to my goal of 15-20 lbs down by Christmas and back at my pre-pregnancy weight by Alex’s first birthday (which is 28 pounds from where I stand today).

While I am cautiously optimistic, I don’t honestly expect that last goal to be met. I find it easier to be proven wrong later in the game if I have braced myself for it (this habit of mine drives The Daver insane). Doesn’t mean for a moment that I won’t do everything in my power to achieve it, but we all know what God does when he hears our plans: he laughs.

I want to do something for myself to commerate this goal being met, but I’m not sure what I should do. I’m going to get a cute haircut and sasstastic highlights (+ upkeep, which I suck at, but am promising The Internet that I will take care of it. I COULD NEVER LIE TO YOU, DEAR INTERNET.) when I hit my goal (that is, if I don’t shave it all off in frustration to thwart the yanking hands of my young son. Which would give me a striking resemblance to pinhead right now, which would effectively ensure I’d never get laid again.).

What should I do (besides what I really want to do, which is sleep for 14-18 hours. Because, hahahahaha. Yeah, RIGHT.)?

(I cannot go tanning, hate people touching my feet, dislike massages in general, and don’t want to go purchase fat clothes BECAUSE THIS WEIGHT IS COMING OFF WHETHER OR NOT IT WANTS TO.)

God, I’m really high maintenance.