On Saturday, after an arduous day trying to entertain two small crotch parasites, I sat down, at long last, to a nice egg white omelet (pointless aside: don’t you HATE it when people call food “nice?” Like I could have been eating a MEAN egg white omelet or something).

After devouring approximately half of it, I realized what this Prankster needed: MOAR CAKE. (also: moar cowbell and moar vodka, but again, something that’s neither here nor there)

Happily, I remembered that just last weekend, The Guy On My Couch, Ben, had, upon my pathetic request, made me cake. It was especially delicious cake and I nearly bounded in to the kitchen to cut myself a piece.

Hrms, I thought to myself, that cake looks a little bit…soggy. Oh well, I thought, it’s probably soggy with MOAR delicious.

Overcome with my brilliant idear, I cut myself a piece, licking the frosting from my finger. Hrms, I thought, as Daver and Ben talked about something incredibly boring like life on Mars in the other room, that tastes a little, well, FUNNY. It’s probably my broken taste buds, right? I mean, you can’t chug hot sauce day in and day out without having something rot. Like my taste buds.

Not-quite-soothed, I stood there, trying to connect two misfiring synapses, a conclusion elusive. Something wasn’t quite…right.

But…what? I rolled the piece of frosting around in my mouth, thinking.

After several minutes, standing in the kitchen, blinking stupidly, I leaned down to smell the cake.

Rotten.

It was rotten.

I spat out the piece of frosting and immediately guzzled antibacterial hand gel. Ugh. I was probably going to die from poisoned cake. What an inelegant way to go.

So I did what any potentially dying person would do: I went to Target. Figured my family would want to some food in the house as they mourned my untimely death. I waited for the bright light, the singing of angels, the fiery pit of hell to open and swallow me whole in Aisle 6. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

I had, thankfully, eluded Death’s cold embrace.

The following day, I woke up to no wracking stomach pains, no feverish death bed, a little disappointed. I had, after all, eaten poisoned cake. I should’ve at least ran a fever so I could mope about the house, bitterly bemoaning my fate, shrieking WHY GOD WHY? at random intervals. But…nothing.

Eventually, I got bored and decided that what this Prankster needed was MOAR MOVIE. I don’t typically like movies, but once in a blue moon, I’m all MUST.SEE.MOVIE. So we rented the last two Harry Potter movies and prepared the big television downstairs for our invasion.

As Daver was hooking up the DVD thingy, I realized that what stood in front of me, what had to be moved, was a lamp. You probably own this very same lamp.

I call it the Boob Lamp.

Many, many years ago, I lifted the Boob Lamp, attempting to move it, and slammed it into the ceiling of the basement, where it lived. That shattered the boob, into a ton of plastic bits, but, rather than dump the thing like I should’ve, it remained in the basement, a lone, sad lightbulb shining blindingly.

Last night, when I was all IT’S MOVIE TIME, Y’ALL, I stupidly ignored my self-imposed “don’t touch stuff” rule, grabbed the boob lamp, and lifted it. Not taking into consideration the height of the basement ceiling. Or, really, my propensity toward breaking shit.

I stood there, thinking about delicious cake, and deliberately smashed the lamp into the ceiling. For the second time.

This time, however, there was no boob to protect me.

The cake long-forgotten, I stood there, now bathed in the shards of a broken lightbulb. I stood there dumbly, blinking shards of glass into my eyes, as Daver and Ben ran around, getting vacuums and cleaning up after me.

(insert blinded by the light joke here)

I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be dead by now. If you need me, I’ll be hiding in a hole somewhere, trying to evade Death.

Hey, Aunt Becky,

I have a problem. All of my life I’ve thought of myself as straight, but now I’m starting to doubt myself. I still want a husband and to have babies, but I’m also thinking about girls too. I don’t want to say anything to my Mom because even though I know she wouldn’t care, I’m so unsure I don’t want to upset her if it’s not really necessary. I just don’t know what to do or who to talk to to find out what I’m really feeling.

Confused

Here’s the thing, Prankster – sexuality exits on a spectrum and we may feel anywhere from completely straight to completely gay. Sexuality is also something that doesn’t have to be labeled – you might be bisexual, homosexual or straight, but you can also fall somewhere in the middle. You like who you like.

So my advice is this: explore your feelings (SAFELY) and see where it takes you. Maybe you’ll end up married with a wife and babies. Maybe you’ll end up with a husband and babies. Maybe you won’t. You don’t have to decide right now.

I wish you luck, mah Prankster. It’s going to be an awesome journey for you!

Hi Aunt Becky,

I don’t really have a question I just need to get this out. My five year old  told me tonight that a classmate has been grabbing my child’s butt while they wait in line at school. My child hasn’t told anyone but me because they aren’t allowed to speak while they are in line.  

I feel sick for my child but also for the other child involved.  What the hell is this poor kid exposed to that grabbing ass at school becomes okay?  I need a drink but at this point I’ll settle for a (nice, clean) hug.  🙁        

Sincerely, 

Heartsick

Dear Heartsick, first things first: HUGGGGGGGS!

Now, onto the depressing bit. You need to report what happened to the teacher and/or principal. Like you said, you don’t know what’s going on at home – maybe it’s nothing or maybe it’s something. Either way, this should be reported.

Here is the Band Back Together resource page for child abuse and the page for child sexual abuse.

Child abuse is rarely faked, so it’s important to take any allegations of abuse seriously. If a child comes to you with claims of abuse, call 1-800-4AChild to report abuse or get help.

I wish you the best, Prankster. I’m so sorry.

—————

Pranksters, it’s time for YOU to help! What advice do you want to leave for these posters?

Also: feel free to submit any questions so I can poorly answer them. The link is at the top of the screen!

I’m kind of a Mac whore (I suppose you could just say I’m kind of a whore, but that’s not a warm fuzzy, now is it?).

I own Big Mac, my desktop, the new iPad, an iPod, a MacBook Pro, and, of course, my i(CAN’T FUCKING)Phone. With the exception of my i(DON’T KNOW HOW TO)Phone, I love them all.

Hell, I even love my i(YOU’RE A SUCKER)Phone, although I have my days where I want to downgrade to a Not-Smart phone, just to be different than the rest of the world.

That, however, is neither here nor there.

When people started jabbering on about “Siri,” I honestly thought they were talking about Siri Cruise. I really did. I didn’t ask because

a) I don’t really care about Siri Cruise

and

2) I figured it would make me look like MORE of an idiot than I am. Which takes a LOT of work.

Anyway, I didn’t buy the new i(AM AN ASSHOLE)Phone when it came out. I have an i(fuck you)Phone 4, and really, there was no need for a new one. I mean, I’m always buying new technology (oh, how Old Aunt Becky would laugh at herself now), but that just seemed excessive.

Now that I learned what Siri is, I’m pretty sure I’m reversing my decision.

Siri can be my nanny!

Or my personal blogging assistant!

I just can’t wait to ask that bitch where my pants are.

What would you ask that bitch Siri, Pranksters?

P.S. Can you ask her where my pants are for me? I seem to have *ahem* misplaced them.

Photos by the illustrious iHubby.

My neighbor growing up was my best friend. We’d play American Gladiators together after we watched women’s wrestling for hours. She also had everything I ever wanted.

Like a Nintendo.

My parents were, as I’ve previously mentioned ad nauseum, teak and fine china people. They were the original wooden toys people (after, of course, the pioneers and the Amish) and would’ve been pretty happy if I played that weird hoop game or made things out of piles of sticks. I’m pretty sure they, at one point, bought me a wooden doll. Yeah, you read that right: I owned a wooden doll. Is it any wonder that I’m as maternal as a sack of rocks?

(answer: no)

When I begged them, year after ever-loving year, for a Nintendo, they scoffed at me: Video games? I should be reading a book by candlelight or sewing my own clothes or churning butter. Not rotting my mind on video games!

It bears mentioning that my older brother spent his days and nights playing Zork on the computer.

So Nintendo? I had no stinkin’ Nintendo.

Which meant I spent an inordinate amount of time at my best friend’s house, begging her to let me play one level – just one level. She, delighted at the sudden shift in power, would tell me, hail noes until I got up to leave, and when I did, she’d suddenly develop an interest in playing.

Eventually, my parents bought me a Sega Genesis, so while my friends were teaching Mario to fly with those stupid fucking raccoon wings, I was playing Echo the (Asshole) Dolphin. There went any interest I had in becoming a dolphin lover.

Today, I don’t like games. Can I blame my parents for that? Probably not. But while Daver and Ben sit on the couch at night playing games on their (not so) Smart Phones, I sit and actually watch television. My parents probably DID have a good hand in making sure my attention span was greater than that of a gnat. Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad!

But my children, God love them, they love their games. Video games, to be specific. And I’ll begrudgingly admit that video games have come a long way in the past (mumbles) years.

What kills me, though, is this: with all of the awesome games out there these days, my kids still want to play fucking Mario games. Or Sonic games. The shit that was around (mumbles) years ago when I was a wee crotch parasite.

Not only that, the kids love to WATCH those old television shows. The ones my parents forbid me to watch because, like video games, television rots your brain. I was allowed to watch an hour of public television. A day.

But my kids? They’re in love with some creepers “Super Mario Super Show” from the 80’s. And the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. Stuff I never saw. And thank GOD for that, because holy creepers, Batman.

You’d think that with all of the newer television shows with LESS creepy characters, they’d opt to watch them. But no. They’re watching stuff that both Daver and (older) Ben watched. I’d have probably watched them too, had I not lived with hippies.

Now, I’m thinking that the kids need some wooden dolls or that hoop game or some sticks for Christmas.

Seems only fair.

Now as much as I USE technology, I’m also fairly inept.

(stop laughing)

My computer, Big Mac, he* gets updated once every blue moon, when some piece of software I use to check my email has become defunct. Other than that, I use this picture as my screen saver, which is probably depleting the life of my computer every second it’s on there:

But I don’t care. See how MAJESTIC it is?

*weeps*

*weeps*

*weeps*

Anyway, like the rest of the world, I’m on Google Plus. Which is touted as “The Better Facebook,” which I suppose it is, only until it develops it’s OWN Farmville and my friends start asking for spells to make their crops bigger. The next time that happens, I’m demanding that the person behind that request come the fuck OVER to my house and help me with MY garden. My FOR REAL garden.

(also: I love you, Pranksters, because every time I bitch about Farmville, 400 of you send me requests for crops or pink cows or whatever on The Facebook. It’s proof that I know the BEST people on the Internet.)

So I’m on The New Facebook and I use it occasionally to do things like say, “I’m so happy this isn’t The Old Facebook,” and “Isn’t this better than The Old Facebook?”

Other than that, I use it about as much as I use The Facebook. Which is to say, hardly ever.

But because I hate Skype more than I hate John C. Mayer, I heard about this newfangled thing you kids do called “Hangouts.” The New Facebook hangouts.

TELL me that doesn’t sound dorky.

Anyway, with the Band Back Together Board (for the non-profit, NOT like a Skateboard or an ACTUAL piece of wood), being in separate states, we use The New Facebook Hangouts for our board meetings. We USED to use Skype until we realized we needed to be able to conduct ACTUAL business rather than, “OMG YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE IN A DISCO.” Or “NICE FREEZE-FRAME FACE! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Seems unprofessional.

Anyway.

So we launched the new site this weekend, which meant that the 80 of us that work behind the scenes (SHOUT OUT TO MY HOMIES, THE BRAINS!) were all running around like Chicken Little. Or maybe that was just me. So on Sunday, we had a Google Hangout for about 10 of us.

I started the hangout because obviously, and slowly people popped in and out. It was pretty rad. I mean, MAH FRIENDS IN ONE SCREEN? What could be better?

(answer: pony on roller skates)

But I neglected to do one important thing. One VERY important thing. I didn’t make our hangout private.

So every 10 or so minutes, random old men would pop into our chat, causing us to frantically block them. It was an awesome game of WHO CAN BLOCK FASTER?

What made it WAY awesomer is that one of our Brains, Sarah, got stuck chatting with some guy from Egypt who told her she was “beautiful like the moon.” When I stop laughing, I’ll let you know.

My only regret is this: we didn’t see a single naked wang.

What is the world coming to when you don’t see a SINGLE NAKED PEEN while on The Internet?

*wrings hands*

WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE WANGS?

/end hand-wringing

*all of my technology is male. I have Frank, my iPad, John, my iPod, and Larry, my iPhone. That way I can say, “I’m hanging with FRANK tonight,” and it sounds illicit – also cooler than “I’m playing on my iPad.”

Designing a site is about as easy as teaching my washing machine to sing “Whoomp! There It Is!” Actually, now that I think about it, teaching my washing machine might be easier. Just ask my coffee maker, who’s been singing “It’s My Party” since last summer sometime.

The minute computers are turned into anything but email machines, I get flustered. Or, I should say, I start tonguing my Xanax bottle and hallucinating random animals singing an A Capella version of the ABC’s. That’s more like it.

And yet I get tasked (read: task myself) with this shit. It’s the REAL Bad News Bears.

For the past eleventy-five-niner months, I’ve been working on redesigning Band Back Together. It turns out that WordPress kinda balks at having more than 2,000 registered users, 2,000 posts and 300 pages.

(to answer your question: GO WITH WORDPRESS FOR A PERSONAL BLOG. Blogspot is the SuperCuts of the blogging world)

But we’ve been redesigning Band Back Together since I can remember. Which means I’ve been constantly bombarded questions like, “BUT WHAT ARE THE OBJECT PERMISSIONS? WHAT SHOULD WE DO?” Questions like that make me go all, “lalala, pumpkin pie is NOT delicious, lalala,” because I’m just not equipped to answer them.

The new site launched this weekend, which, I was all RAD, NO MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT PERMISSIONS, but then, I got MORE questions about permissions. And objects. And objects WITH permissions.

I spent the weekend fantasizing about photoshopping Avril Lavigne’s neck, severed, and spurting a veritable blood fountain. Don’t ask me what she did to evoke my ire, but I think it’s a song about skaters or complicated, or complicated skaters. Either way, it hurt my vagina to listen to.

But we did it.

And this week, I’m battening down the hatches and preparing for more objects and permissions and answering questions I know nothing about with “um…C?” because that’s what you do when you don’t know. You SOUND like you know the answer. It works out well. (lies)

So now, I am off to tongue my empty Xanax bottle and pray that no one asks me about permissions for at LEAST an hour. Or Avril Lavigne’s head is comin’ OFF.

Go see my purdy work on Band Back Together. Then? Tell Your Aunt Becky how YOUR weekend was.

Ben’s post is live up on the anti-bullying rally over at Band Back Together.

Please, Pranksters, send him some love.

Bobbing and weaving in time to the music in her head, she bounded over to me.

“Mama,” she smiled largely, the winning smile that I just know she’ll be using on her future dates. “I wanna watch more Tuff Puppy.”

“No Baby-Pants,” I laughed. “Not tonight. It’s bedtime.”

“Okay,” she stretched her smile as widely as she could. “Can we watch more Tuff Puppy on SUNDAY?”

“Sure,” I giggled at her inflection and emphasis. No one is gonna say no to this kid. “We can watch it on Sunday.”

“OKAY,” she broadcast to the whole house. “THANKS MAMA.”

She bobbed and wobbled off to get her diaper changed before bed.

I sat there, looking after her, bemused and amazed and more than a little bit teary.

It’s coming up on her third birthday. To think this tiny tot with an attitude the size of Texas was once the very same baby whose life I prayed for. Who’s head I wept into. Who’s tiny feet I once held onto like they were lifelines to a world in which no NICU’s, no PICU’s existed. It’s hard to reconcile that these are the same people.

Yet they are.

For her birthday this year, I will celebrate. I will buy a monster of a cake and we shall eat it, sharing it happily with anyone who can be bothered to brave the frigid January air. This year, we will celebrate.

And maybe, just maybe, I can let the ghosts of my past, who still haunt my present, be silent.

If only for a day.

I’m kinda feeling low today. I’m hoping to snap the fuck out of it and come back and actually string words together, instead of posting one of the creepiest videos ever.

Also: Other, Better Shit I’ve Written (a.k.a. I Get Around):

10 Ways To (Not) Entertain Your Kid On An Airplane. I have a feeling the comments will be troll-worthy.

7 of the Most Baffling Products Aimed At Parents

Holly Daze

And a repost of an old favorite: When “He’s My Dad” Makes Everyone Feel Awkward

We Mommy Bloggers get a lot of shit.

Not just because we have a dumb name (I mean, MOMMY BLOGGERS? It sounds like some sort of weird disease or exotic insult), or because we’re all angling to get free shit, but because we’re talking about our KIDS! Online! Without their consent!

(all together now)

*wrings hands*

WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?

/end hand wringing.

I get what they’re saying. I do.

If you spend all day, every day, discussing the most intimate details of your kids life, well, that’s maybe not okay. So we each do our best to write things that WILL be okay when our children stumble across them someday. I mean, as we’ve learned, the Internet is a small, small place and whatever you’ve written WILL be read eventually by the one person who you don’t want to read it.

That’s a no-brainer.

I’ve never kept what I “do” under wraps in my family. I don’t necessarily broadcast it to the small crotch parasites because they’d be just as likely to try and fart on me as they would be interested in it. But the Big One, Ben, well, he knows what I do. Sorta.

We’re doing a bullying carnival (much less cotton candy than you’d expect) on Saturday over on Band Back Together. Basically, this means we’re collecting as many bullying posts as we can find (join us, y’all!) to offer as many different perspectives on bullying as possible. This comes on the heels of the tragic suicides of a couple of kids after repeated, intense bullying.

I asked my son to write for us.

He’s been the victim of numerous bullies in his short ten years. If anyone knows how a bully makes them feel, it’s Ben.

Last night, I sat him down and asked him to write 5 paragraphs for us over at the Band about bullies.

He. Was. Thrilled.

And he did it.

What I got was one of the sweetest, awesomest things I’ve ever read. What I also got were questions about what it was, precisely, that Mom does. He knows I’m a “writer” and I have a “blog,” but I haven’t really discussed my other projects with him. I explained what Band Back Together was and how we ran things and the stigmas we were trying to combat.

He thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I, of course, was bowled over. I figured he’d think it was “lame” or “stupid” or something, but no. He thinks it’s great. I know. I KNOW. What. The. Fuck? I thought kids were supposed to hate whatever their parents did. Maybe I’m doing this parenting thing wrong – perhaps I need to become an assassin or something to fill the kid with angst.

When he was done with his bullying post, he told me, very sweetly, that any time I needed him to write a post, he’d be happy to help out.

I actually had to fight back tears. We all three (me, Ben, The Daver) did. What an awesome kid.

Hrms.

Guess that means all that hand-wringing was in vain.

Sighs.

Fill in the blank?

“WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE ______?”