Anyone scouring my archives will note that this is a rerun of perhaps my first (?) Go Ask Aunt Becky column, which I am lazily reposting since probably 2 of you have read it before.

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Dear Aunt Becky,

Is it trashy to hang your child’s art work (one construction paper size piece from each child) on the storm door?

Oh, Gentle Reader, if only you knew how many nights I stayed awake, soaking the pages of the newest Pottery Barn catalog with my drool, dreaming, just dreaming of the days when my sofa might match the drapes and I might be able to use my coffee table for more than a toddler-jumping-off platform (it is also used, I want to add, as a bed for Auggie. Which, I know. Huh?). I fantasize about the days when I will have end-table books and breakable hurricane lamps on my dining room table.

Truth be told, I fantasize about being a size 4, too, and, well, yeah.

I’m no (insert home style star here) and if I had to describe my house, it would be kid chic, complete with a side of dog and cat fur! So I may not be the best person to ask this question to, but I will try to answer you proud.

Providing that you’re not trying to score a centerfold spread in Architectural Digest or act like you live in a house that has no kids, I say why not? Providing, of course, that the drawings aren’t of anything graphic (OR DECIPHERABLE if so) and/or containing: penises, vaginas, butts, poop, or people in various stages of killing each other.

Unless, of course, you’re trying to scare off potential door-to-door salespeople or people who want to tell you about how God Can Save YOU. Then, I would be as graphic and foul as possible.

If it’s cute and it makes you happy to look at and you don’t mind telling the world that you have kids, I’d say go for it.

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I have a family member who gives Mister and I, and our children, things we really don’t need. (Or want) This person is a semi-compulsive shopper in recovery, and I think a lot of her “gifting” is actually “cleaning off a shelf.” I’ve tried to hint that we really don’t need these things, without sounding like an ungrateful bitch.

What really makes me feel bad is that she takes the time to wrap them, and pays good money to ship them across four states. Is it rude to say, “Let’s just exchange one gift per person this Christmas.” Which would be code for, “Please don’t pay Fed Ex to ship me a(nother) salad spinner, a shoe shining kit, a pair of socks with cats on them, and a flashlight, wrapped in red and green paper.” (Ugly! Hateful!) Help!

Now this, my dear friend is a tricky question.

First, I would probably thank her for her generosity (on, at least, the phone, if not in person. Email can be tricky because tone cannot be interpreted) as kindly as possible, because, well, that’s polite. Then, as she’s ‘you’re welcoming you,’ I’d throw in a really, really, really sweet sounding “you really don’t have to go to all the trouble!”

I would probably leave it at that so as not to offend her.

If she persists (getting rid of some of this stuff may be sort of a gift in and of itself to her, because perhaps it makes her feel as though she’s really sending the stuff to a good home) sending gifts, I would donate them to charity.

Because I understand that you need another whimsical Santa-head oven mitt like you need a hole in your head.

Trust me.

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Hey Aunt Becky,

Since you’re such a people person, what thoughts do you have on avoiding relatives who plan on sleeping (and yelling) at your house for a week during Christmas WITHOUT actually telling them to their face how much you can’t stand them?

No this is not early, they just ordered their plane tickets on the internet, and I do not have the money to send my family of five flying in the opposite direction.

Thoughts?

“In the Middle” (Thanks, I’ve always wanted to use a corny pseudonym.)

ps. Something is messed up on the sight right under “ask”.

First, corny pseudonyms are drastically underused today, Aunt Becky agrees*.

If being honest about this is out of the question and straight up mentioning (or having your spouse say) that having a houseful of guests isn’t feasible, I would go with one of the following options:

Option 1: I would do whatever (and I MEAN whatever) I could to make sure that they stayed in a hotel. Your sanity is worth a hell of a lot, and if you’re dreading Christmas already (SO been there), then maybe you can find a cheap rate for a nearby hotel. You could GRACEFULLY, tactfully insist that they stay here, as your gift to either them, or to you.

Option 2: Depending on your relationship with them, if it were good enough, I might ask at some point (in my stupidest, I don’t know anything tone) “Oh! Where are you staying!? I hear there are some AWESOME rates at (name local hotel). Want their number?” Be forceful, stupid sounding and gentle at the same time.

Option 3: Convince your family that you have some horrible communicable disease like rabies and they cannot possibly be exposed! O! The humanity!

Option 4: Call your doctor and get a prescription for Xanax and spend your holidays living on a fluffy, pink cloud where you won’t care that everyone is yelling at you.

Option 5: Call your liquor store and get a case of (insert your drink of choice) and spend your holidays living on a fluffy, pink cloud where you won’t care that everyone is yelling at you.

Option 6: Move out for that week. Fake a work trip, a separation, whatever, and get the hell out of there.

Option 7: Praise Sweet Merciful Baby Jesus that your family doesn’t live closer and try and grin and bear it. Then say a prayer thanking Sweet Baby Jesus that the holidays only come once a year.

Now, none of these options excludes the other, so if you like a little from Column A and a little of Beaker B, feel free to mix them up.

I wish you good luck, my friend. Good luck indeed.

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As always, should you have a burning question for Aunt Becky other than “How does anyone stand you?” please go up to the top of the page and click on the “Go Ask Aunt Becky” page. You can freely send me questions, compliments and marriage proposals which I do answer every Sunday.

And, Pranksters, please feel free to fill in where I left off in the comments.

Today, Pranksters, I’m bringing you a guest post from my homie, The Girl Next Door Grows Up. It’s pretty much word-for-word what goes on in my house, so you could sub out the names “Tyler” with “The Daver” and have the same story. Because it’s full of the AWESOME, naturally.

Also, I have a giveaway going on here at We Know Awesome. AND Imma write something for Mushroom Printing today.

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When Aunt Becky sent me an email asking me if I would do a guest post for her, I actually looked behind me as if the email was meant for someone else. I am deeply honored and dumbfounded that she thought to ask me since she was the very first blog I ever read and that was before I even created my own blog.

Her post was about the Wonder Pets and why Ming-Ming can’t pronounce words correctly. I laughed so hard and I was tickled to think that there was another person in this world who thought the same way I did.

Now… some of you know me, a lot of you don’t. I usually write about the “funny” in my life.

How I am continually yelling “Jack! Off!” everywhere I go with my dog, Jack.

Or, how we have a pair of scissors named George.

My parents, who are my neighbors by choice, provide a plethora of blog fodder. My 67 year old mother colors her bangs fire-engine red, or purple, or pink depending on which mood she is in. Need I say more?

My husband could not be more supportive of my writing and on the days that I write about him, he takes me through each sentence line-by-line to discuss, what he says, are inaccuracies. This, it seems, is going to be one of those days:

I Might Live to Regret This…

“I don’t care what I have to do, as long as I never have to do yard work.”
-Tyler 2005, Our Engagement

I mowed the grass and weed whipped up until I was super-pregnant with Sarah. Then when I had her, Tyler took over. And he kept on doing it.

Last summer, we completely re-landscaped our yard to include a new deck, pool, shed and we even leveled out the hill that we once had. We laid sod, planted stuff… you get the idea. Ever since the snow melted this Spring, Tyler has become slightly obsessed with the yard.

Almost every day I hear him tell me how he either has to mow soon, needs to mow now, or is thinking about mowing. He mows on Sunday and on Monday he is back to talking about when he is going to mow again because the grass grew overnight.

He texts me to tell me that he might come home early… to mow.

It’s going to rain so he must mow before. The sun is shining and making the grass grow – OH NO! He needs to MOW! However, there is no joy in his voice when telling us about his mowing plans. In fact, he dreads it. He will openly tell anyone who will listen how he does not like yard work. So I said something.

I am taking over my duties as the “official” lawnmower of this family. I have had it with all of this grass talk. Grass grows. It gets mowed. End of conversation. I actually am looking forward to it. I really like to mow. I get to be outside. I get to be alone with my thoughts.

Tyler can spend 2 hours entertaining the girls with paint, playdoh or chalk while dealing with tantrums, dinner prep, and potty accidents. I am going to go and be by myself.

Did I mention for 2 hours?

By myself?

You know what? It is going to rain tomorrow. I know I mowed yesterday, but I think I might need to mow again today. But you won’t hear me complaining about it.

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How do you feel about yard work?

Do you like it, or would you rather have a tooth pulled?

So, I’m all, ‘DAWN, I dunno what I want,” when I went into my tattoo appointment, and because she knows me, when I said, “just draw my soul,” she laughed because I was kidding and sketched some stuff on my arm. THAT, Pranksters, is how you know you have a fucking awesome tattoo artist. For SERIOUS.

Anyway.

Scroll to the previous post if you want to see the “before” snaps, because I don’t want to put the pictures up again when you’ll be all SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET TO THE NEW SHIT, AUNT BECKY.

This, Pranksters, this is the “after” (until I go back in a couple months for the clouds below it. EVENTUALLY, I want to do a sun, but I think I need to wait for the sun)(GOD that sounded convoluted):

And for those of you *ahem* ZOMBIE JULE, who have asked me where the Phoenix’s head is, I have included a diagram:

(yeah, sorry about the boobs. I’m not a big “show us your tits” person, because, uh, I dunno why)

Also, if you look closely, you can see that I bleed RED, not green. So I’m not a damn reptile. SEE?

Anyone who wants a better angle better get their butts over to my house with a bottle of narcotic pain killers and a econo-vat of vasoline.

P.S. Please?

So instead of being a good mother and writing some heartfelt post about how my kid started school today (he did) and I cannot believe I have a fourth grader (I totally can) and how fast summer went (it dragged like a cats’ ass), I’d much rather discuss something more interesting. Tattoos.

Specifically, the one I am going to get worked on today.

Back in January, I was all, IMMA GET A NEW TATTOO! on Twitter, and I decided that I had to do it now, RIGHT now, because I lack impulse control. I was fortunate to be referred to someone whose work I loved, who is like world famous and shit, and she got me in because someone canceled, which is kinda like kismet and stuff.

This is what I wanted, a phoenix tattoo:

And after my first appointment, I came back with this:

Then, I went back in February to get this done:

THEN, in April I went back to get the color filled in:

Awesome, no? (if’n you like tattoos, I suppose)

Today, though, I’m going back for touch-ups and, like I said before, because I don’t plan ahead very well, I’ve finally decided what I wanted to do. First I was gonna be all, “IMMA MAKE THAT PHOENIX RISE FROM SOMETHING!” because people are always like, “Nice Peacock,” and I’m all, “Imma shoot you.”

And I probably will, some day.

But today, I want to put something THERE, where the nifty arrow is pointing. Last night, because I am brilliant, I asked Twitter. Twitter said that I should put in that space:

1) a meatball

2) RIP Tupac

3) Bacon

4) a giraffe

5) OJ Simpson’s Face

Twitter is an asshole.

I’m adding something into that space because eventually I want half of my back done. My mother, she will shit a brick (she hates tattoos), but I’ve always wanted something part of the way down my arm. Not, like, SLEEVE style, because I am a chicken shit, but something that goes along with the Phoenix.

So, Pranksters, what would YOU put there?

Bloggers, especially mom bloggers, have taken a lot of heat. We’ve been accused of neglecting our children so that we can go online and post how-to-make-tutu guides on our frivolous, silly blogs. We should get our asses back into the kitchen and tend to our kids! We should turn off our pink lap-tops and stop trying to pretend we’re important. If we want a job, well, we should go out and get one.

To be honest, I don’t quite understand why anyone would get their hackles up over blogs about tutus, blogs written by women, or blogs written by Russian spammers, for that matter, but the New York Times is famous for dragging bloggers through the mud. My best guess is that they’re lashing out at the New Media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc) and using it for page views and free publicity. You know, all of us who write our rebukes on our own blogs that link to that article we’re so furious about?

Anyway, it’s all bullshit. You know it, I know it, and the New York Times knows it, or they wouldn’t be writing about it every other week.

A couple of weeks ago, I sat in the keynotes at BlogHer, listening to all of my friends up on the stage, reading their words aloud, and realized how important what we do is. Their words were more moving to me than anything I’d ever read in the New Yorker or the Atlantic, because they were real and they were honest and they were true.

I hugged some of them later, amazed that my own friends could write such beautiful words. Words that moved me, words that inspired me, words that made me laugh. I was so proud to call them my friends.

Later, I sat with some of my infertile and baby loss friends, who had raised money, supported and loved each other through many of the procedures necessary to produce the very children I cuddled on my lap. They’d all met through the Internet. It was an honor to call them my friends as well.

When Amelia was born sick, my life was upended, all my neat plans were tossed aside as I flipped into survival mode. Part of what happens when a family member becomes very ill isn’t just the immediate threat of losing someone you love. It’s the change in dynamics of all of your relationships, and I do mean all of them.

People who you could normally count on to lend an ear or shoulder suddenly become harsh or distant or “can’t deal with you right now, Becky.” They say things that maybe they cannot recall, but you won’t forget. Everything is irrevocably changed.

In the midst of the chaos, I was so fortunate, though, to have the one thing I could count on: my band of Pranksters. You.

Maybe that sounds silly, saying that when my daughter was so sick, The Internet held my hand and made it all better, I don’t know, don’t care, but it’s true. It was amazing to know that people thousands of miles away were praying for me, holding my hair as I puked, and sending me love. It was what I needed. I’m honored to call you my friends. All of you.

So when I hear people mock blogging, I just laugh, because it’s clear to me that they have no idea what they’re talking about. They’ve never sat up at night, frantically trying to Google “blogs and prepartum depression,” desperate to make a connection with someone who might, just might, understand what they’re going through.

We don’t have coffee clubs* anymore. In my neighborhood, I’m the only one who stays home with my kids. I can’t find a mom’s club to save my life. My best friends all work big girl jobs in the city and have no children. During the day, it’s Your Aunt Becky and the tumbleweeds on my block.

That’s just the way it is now. Connections aren’t as easy as popping over next door for coffee and a chat. We have to seek out friends and confidants.

But I hope that none of us ever forgets that we are more than simple words on a computer screen. For every comment you get, there are ten people not saying a word, reading, learning, connecting with you, and though they may never speak up, they are there. Your words mean something, dammit, every single one of them.

And to anyone who says that blogging isn’t important, I say, with all due respect, “Fuck you.”

*what the fuck is a coffee club?

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Incongruently, my Toy With Me post is up! It’s pretty hilarious. Sex toys and conservative in-laws, anyone?

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So, Pranksters, what do YOU think about why blogging is important?

I’m putting up a Mr. Linky in case anyone wants to respond in a blog post.

I’m deathly afraid of fish, rather than spiders, live fish, although I’m not apt to go running out of an aquarium shrieking and screaming in the throes of a major panic attack. In fact, once you learn that I was once stuck in middle of the ocean, ensnared in the tendrils of a Portuguese Man ‘o’ War until I was blistered and raw, my fears of fish seem a little less absurd.

Probably only a little, though.

When I was a waitress, I worked at an outside restaurant right on the river here in Geneva, and one of the jobs in the morning was to clean out all of the cobwebs that sprung up overnight, so that the spiders wouldn’t *ahem* shit on the guests while they ate their overpriced burgers.

Your Aunt Becky knows how to be glamorous, eh?

So, when I woke up on Saturday morning to find this on my back door, as I went out to lovingly minister to my roses, I was mostly amused:

My recreation is stunning, I know. It’s so…realistic!

I did the mother fucking limbo to get underneath it so that I could tend to my roses, and made a mental note to watch the hell out for that web. Spiders eat mosquitoes which are the Devil, so I like them around.

But Friday was also Of The Devil and Your Aunt Becky got a migraine as karmic payback for past misdeeds, so by that evening, after I’d finally gotten the last crotch parasite to bed, screaming her ever-loving head off, I went back outside to water my exotic plants. I’d only bought them, you see, because their names sounded like STD’s and turns out that they need a whole TON of water to stay pretty.

Still suffering from my migraine, my earlier mental note had been tossed aside to make room for the lyrics to “Baby Got Back” and I walked face-first into the spiderweb.

While I appreciate SPIDERS, I do NOT appreciate a face full of spider WEBS and I made my displeasure known by shrieking and then running around my yard impotently for a couple of minutes yelling, ‘GET ER OFF, GET ER OOOOFFFFF.” But the yelling and running only drove the spider webs into my mouth, and then, because I’ve recently lost enough weight and not bothered buying new pants, my pants fell down, I stopped running around, and went back inside to wash the spider web off.

When I came back outside to gather my gardening sheers, some 45 minutes later, I noticed two things:

1) the spider web had been entirely rebuilt.

b) It now had an occupant. A big gigantic red occupant.

“Hey buddy,” I said to it, because I was deliriously migrainey and Charlotte’s Web made me cry like a baby. Plus, a spider that big is always a good ally.

I ducked under the spider web–no way I was about to make THAT mistake again!–and as I was halfway through, the big ass spider spun some web out of its ass and swung itself towards me.

“WOAH,” I cried, as I stepped back, off the porch step. I’m okay with spiders, but this didn’t seem like an overly friendly gesture to me. I grabbed my garden sheers from the table and headed back towards the back door, preparing to go inside.

Casually, I eyed my door-dweller. It stared back at me and lifted one leg at me and shook it menacingly.

No, I rubbed my eyes, that’s the headache talking. It has to be the headache talking. I looked down at my poo-eating dog, Auggie, who was standing next to me, and he looked back at me as if to say, “I dunno.”

Figuring something as small as a spider couldn’t possibly have a vendetta against me, I tried to step back through the doorway. AGAIN the spider spun some web from its butt and lunged at me.

I shrieked and jumped backwards off my stoop, shockingly, not landing on my ass.

The spider wasn’t a regular spider. It was a MAN-eating spider. The spider was going to KILL me for ruining its web!

I went around the outside of my house and through the front door, where I then observed my enemy from the inside. It had caught a bug and slowly eating it while watching me and I swear he was winking at me.

Every now and again, it would raise a hairy leg toward me as if to say, “I’VE WON.”

Then I realized, I could never go to sleep again. EVER. Because that spider not only knew where I lived, it had a VENDETTA against me. It would wait until I slept and lay EGGS in my EARS and then pretty soon, my brain would be full of spider babies.

I got out an icepick, a six pack of sugar-free redbull and lay in wait. Knowing that the spider would come for me, and when he did, I would be READY.

Tragically, The Man Eating Spider had another idea in mind. He hit me where he knew it would hurt most.

Yes, Pranksters, The Man Eating Spider killed MY FAKE CAT MR. SPRINKLES!

That BASTARD! How could he kill my FAKE CAT!?!

But I showed him! Ben crushed his web once more that morning, like the Man Eating Spider crushed my DREAMS for my FAKE CAT.

*shakes fists at sky dramatically*

WHY, MR. SPRINKLES, oh, WHY DID YOU TAKE MY FAKE CAT FROM ME?

*sobs*

P.S. Now I need some good bug stories, Pranksters.

Dear Aunt Becky,

So, I’ve been single for over three years.  I’ve dated a couple of guys here and there, but haven’t found any that I “click” with or even enjoy after being around them a handful of times.  It’s been over seven years since I met someone that made me feel all squishy inside and that relationship ended horribly after only four years.

I’m nearing thirty (very, very nearing), which isn’t old, but it feels like as I get older, I just don’t find many men attractive anymore.  If I meet one that likes me (which happens decently often it seems), I’m usually not interested or become disinterested incredibly fast.

Is this normal?  I’m not looking to jump into a relationship, marriage, or have kids.  I’m just looking for someone that I actually *feel* something for and want to spend time with every so often.  It’d be a breath of fresh air, because I’m starting to feel like it just isn’t going to happen anymore.

I know these seem like crazy thoughts, but I was wondering if anyone else experienced the same thing?  I feel like throwing my hands up in the air and becoming the crazy cat lady who never leaves her home.

Some background: I’m attractive, work out, have an excellent job and am well-educated, I don’t have high standards (I will give almost any man a first date just because he had the balls to ask me) or expectations.  I do a decent amount of varying social activities, so I’m not limited in where I would meet men. I just don’t seem to connect with anyone, even when they’re great guys.

Am I not giving them enough time to grow on me?  Am I expecting a connection in the beginning when there doesn’t always have to be?  In my experience, no connection in the beginning means no connection later on.  Am I wrong?

Signed,

Frustrated, confused, and missing that loving feeling.

Well, Prankster, I’ve enlisted The Daver AND my homie The Next Martha to help me with this question because Your Aunt Becky isn’t the best at answering dating advice, and we all have some advice for you. Hopefully, my Pranksters will also be able to fill in the gaps.

First, I’d offer up my own words of wisdom (which, frankly, is worth cat shit in a bag): the times when you’re LEAST looking for a relationship is always when they manage to find you. There’s something about when you’re alone and really comfortable in your aloneness that really seems to attract that one special person. So I’d say that perhaps getting nice and comfortable with yourself is the way to be.

The Daver pointed out that perhaps you’re dismissing the people you’re going out on dates with too soon to decide if you have a real connection with them. He also thinks that maybe you need to be more choosy about the people you go on dates with (so that you value the dates more).

The Next Martha thinks that maybe you have some unresolved issues with your ex-boyfriend that you may have to work through before you can move on to successfully date again.

So there you have it: three different people with three different sets of advice for you. Ignore what you hate, take what you like, and hopefully my very brilliant Pranksters will fill in where we left off.

Good luck, Prankster.

Dear Aunt Becky,

I come seeking advise from thee, oh wise and great one.

Basically my family does DRAMA. Most of the time in a good, snarky, crack you up laughing at something really twisted sort of way. But lately… its gotten a bit complicated and every time I come to town it gets WORSE.

Long story short: Me, my Hub, and the wee one live 1000 miles from my folks, my sister, bro in law and nieces.

Base conflict: One of my nieces is special needs, as part of my sister’s reaction to this she has become ULTRA SCHEDULED. She is all about the plans and the control. Things do not go well when the plans get dissed. Understandable but frustrating b/c my sister is a very intense, relentless type person, which is good in some ways and tiring in others.

My parents have both survived multiple rounds of cancer. They now refuse to get worked up when plans fall through. They just roll with it. This makes them a bit flakey but lowers their stress. I tend to be more like my folks and try to roll with things.

Needless to say my sister does NOT handle the flake well. Most of the time they just deal with it. When it becomes a MAJOR problem is when I come to town.

Because apparently I am a hotter commodity than chocolate in a PMS convention and so lots and lots of plans are formed when I come to town. Some times one group does not even inform the other groups that plans have been formed.

But either way the melt down that will ensue regardless of whether the dissage was informed or not is a sight mighty to behold.

And honestly its getting REALLY old. Its almost never personal when the plans get dissed. I do love my sister and want to see her. I also wouldn’t mind getting some one on one time with my Mom. But the sis seems to take this personal.

Any suggestions on how to defuse the situation? B/c the repeated melt downs almost make me wanna NOT go home and they rob so much of the joy from my trip.

I don’t wanna cause drama. I just wanna see my family. I’ve even said this and it hasn’t made a dent apparently.

And so in my extremely verbose fashion I seek wisdom from the great and glorious Aunt Becky (bytheway – have you lost weight? Cuz dang girl!!).

Sincerely,
Gonna Beat ‘Em ALL Down and Be Done With It

Prankster, you’re making MY head spin with this, so I can only imagine how this would be for you to deal with. Your Aunt Becky needs a drink (or thirty) right now just to type this response.

So, it sounds as though your sister needs concrete plans for the days that you’ll see her. I understand that. I have kids on a rigid schedule, too, and that makes sense. Flakiness is hard to handle for us, because our time-table is fairly, well, rigid. You should make sure that you make the plans with her ahead of time and stick with them first and foremost. If everyone else is more laid back, then plans with her will be the ones that are most important to be on time.

As for the rest of the time, maybe it’s wise to schedule it out BEFORE you leave for the trip with the people who will want to see you if you’re interested in avoiding The Dramaz. This way, you’ll know on X Day this is the plan-ish. If they fall through, okay, but that’s the plan for the day. Then there’s not so much up-in-the-air-ness about the whole situation and if your sister can make it to the events that are planned–great–if not, okay.

Sometimes plans change. It’s hard for those of us with special needs kids to accept that the rest of the world doesn’t live like we do. It just is.

But maybe if you can do a lot to get it planned out ahead of time, it might save you some grief during the vacation.

I hope it helps.

Pranksters, I’d love your take on it.

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As always, please fill in where I left off in the comments. And feel free to submit your burningest questions to Go Ask Aunt Becky button at the top of the screen.

Dear Benjamin,

I’m sorry that I don’t write you a monthly letter like Dooce, but I’m afraid that those would become painfully boring and mostly about me because, let’s face it, by nine, what you do each month isn’t much different. I, on the other hand, am endlessly entertaining (to myself). Also, it would require me to do math and math is hard.

I hear a lot of parents talk about how their kid changed their lives, and it’s not that I don’t understand what they mean, but you, my son, you really did change my life. The moment I grabbed that pregnancy test, recently bathed in my own urine, and said, “that can’t be a motherfucking line,” (forgive my language; you always do) because trust me when I say I was TAKING PRECAUTIONS, my life was forever changed.

I went from a carefree unmarried twenty-year old whose main concern was where to find her next twenty bucks for a tank of gas to someone who had to figure out what to do next. So, I scrapped my life’s plans, ditched the whole “Imma be a DOCTOR” idea, waddled back home to my parents, enrolled in nursing school, and then three weeks after I turned twenty-one, I pushed your gigantic head out of my vagina.

Yeah, I’d say that’s a little different than having to give up date night.

But there you were. All 7 pounds 13 ounces of you, with a mane of black hair so shocking that I thought someone had put a wig on you. What amazed me is that everyone was so astounded that I loved you. Over and over I heard, “wow, you really DO love that baby.”

Apparently, I have one hell of a poker face. Also: of COURSE I fucking love you.

This year, though, was the year I was dreading. It was the year I’d been dreading for years, and when I saw it barreling down upon us, my heart shattered.

This was the year you realized you were different than the rest of the world.

Our uniqueness can be a gift, but sometimes, in order to blend in with the rest of the world, we have to put those aside and learn things that come so easily to other people. This year you are trying so hard to understand feelings. Where your brother can look at someone and easily detect what mood they are in, to you, it’s as complex as the Pythagorean theorem.

Does that face mean anger? Sadness? Happiness? It’s a puzzle to you, but for the first time, you realized that just because you can’t understand it, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t. It breaks my heart to see you struggle with this, but as you told me yourself, you don’t want to spend your life hurting others. So we practice. Diligently, you practice, and day after day you tell me excitedly, “MOM! I think I’m FINALLY getting this emotion thing!”

My heart smiles, because it’s just such a Ben thing to say.

I am the one who named you. I don’t know if you know that, but I chose your name. Benjamin means “son of the right side” and I hope that, true to your name, you inherited all of the best parts of me. All of the right parts of me.

If the first nine years are any indication, I think we’re both doing okay.

Happy, Happy Number Niner, Benjamin Max,

Love,

Mom

I do not honestly know how to thank you. I have a post, sitting in drafts, that I want to finish, and I will, because I’m a compulsive freak of nature, but for now, I want to say that I am shocked and humbled by your kindness. I am always shocked and humbled by you, my Pranksters.

I’m proud to know you and prouder to call each of you what you are: my friends.

But for today, when my words fail me, and I sit here, trying to pick out something, anything to follow up the post that I am most proud of, I know that I cannot. Nothing will come out that will make any sense.

So, instead, I give you this. A montage of photos from my iPhone. Someone should give me an award for the breathtaking quality and composition.

P.S. Am I the ONLY blogger with no interest in becoming a decent photographer? I mean, I want to BE a fucking amazing photographer, I’m just not interested in working at it. At all. Or spending time, money or effort towards becoming one. Ever.

If I cannot store my drugs or money in the Quest Diagnostics Laboratory box, well, where the fuck CAN I store it?

Mmmmm…Soapy mealtime snacky-poo. Who isn’t smacking their lips now, Pranksters? (seriously, drug companies, GO BACK TO PENS)

And I call this, “I’m About To Shiv My Brother:”

It’s a nice enough looking building, all official and comforting, with people buzzing in and out in their neatly pressed scrubs, looking like they know precisely what they’re doing and where they’re going. In the hallway there, there’s a heart statue, or maybe it’s a statue of kids in a ring, perhaps playing a game of “Ring Around The Rosy.”

The desk is always manned by a sweet-faced volunteer to help you find whatever you’ve lost or find your way, except when, of course, you cannot find it at all. There are flowers there, too, beautiful flowers, always fresh flowers. Usually lilies are mixed in, fragrant lilies, reeking of death and funerals, but the flowers are so beautiful that you can almost forgive the scent that makes you want to vomit.

Over there is the place you cried until you dry-heaved as you took your infant daughter to her third MRI in her first week of life. And just past that is the chapel where you prayed for her life. The stained-glass windows during that frigid February day shone a cold bright light as your daughter slumbered through an anesthesia coma, and you tried to forget all that you knew about neurosurgery.

You prayed with all of your soul.

Above the chapel is the waiting room where you sat after you’d dropped your daughter off into the arms of her neurosurgeon, hoping that the last kiss you gave her warm, delicious head, wouldn’t be the last kiss you ever gave her. You sat in that waiting room with the three people who cared enough about you to show up and hold your hand and you choked back tears as the operating room nurse brought you back a bag of your daughter’s first hair in a bio-hazard bag.

You held that bag and wondered if that would be all you had left of her.

Below that waiting room is the gift shop where you dragged Nathan, someone who you will always treasure for being a friend when you needed one most, to buy your daughter something hopeful. A necklace. Carefully, you pick out a necklace that you will give your daughter and someday tell her, “Amelia, Princess of the Bells, Mommy bought you this when you were having your brain surgery.”

It’s a very beautiful necklace. A crystal encrusted heart on a simple silver chain in a velvet bag. It is perfect.

You hope she knows that this necklace is very, very important.

Two floors and a yawning corridor away, is the happy floor, filled with women and new babies, where your life was forever changed with seven words, “Becky, there’s something wrong with your baby.” A new world was created then, a secret place only you could go, this land of tears.

Your soul broke.

Up above that room, down another winding corridor, you screamed as they wrenched your nursing baby from you. Your breasts wept, too, as you cowered in that bed, terrified, in your secret place, your own land of tears.

In the dark basement, worlds away from the happy new parents above, you joined the ranks of the hollow-eyed ghosts in the NICU as you signed in and out to see your daughter. There, at least, you didn’t scare anyone with your eyes swollen nearly shut from crying and cheeks raw and bleeding from hospital grade tissues.

Above her bed there would be her bed post-surgery in the PICU and seeing her in a gown that bore the same logo as the hospital you’d worked at in nursing school made it almost easy to pretend this was all some vicious nightmare. That maybe you’d wake up to a normal, healthy baby.

Then your daughter would cry, her voice raw and hoarse from intubation and you knew this was your new world order.

When your other children came to see their sister, you’d rearrange your horrible face into a mask of what you hoped would pass as cheerfulness, ply them with candy, and hope that they wouldn’t look too closely at your shaking hands or tear-stained face. When they screamed, “I want MOMMY!” as they left for the day, you felt torn between the two worlds, one of which you’d just as soon leave behind, too.

All corridors eventually feed into the cafeteria, where you remember laughing for the first time in months. It was a jangled, strangled sort of sound, but there it was: a laugh, from your mouth, and it was real.

Down by the statue of the heart or perhaps children dancing in a circle is where you waited with your daughter as you took her home with you for the last time. Surrounded by all of the pink things you could find, balloons deflating slightly in the cold February air, you were exhausted, but ebullient: your warrior daughter had made it.

A mother had never been prouder. You held her car seat close to you as you whispered to her sleeping cheek, “You made it, my girl. You’re a fighter like your Momma, all right.” This time, for the first time in her life, when the tears wet her cheek, they were the good kind.

But late at night, when the rest of the house sleeps, these are the corridors that your mind roams, over and over. Your memory, always photographic, can recall everything with the sort of clarity that makes you relive those days constantly.

You are forever delivering that sick baby.

Constantly having her wrenched from your arms, always back in those terrible moments roaming the halls, seeing the same desk clerk, smelling those awful lilies, dry heaving into the diaper bag.

The sadness is omnipresent and yet nowhere. It is the new world order.

Save for roaming the corridors all night every night, you haven’t been back to those halls since your daughter had those awful thick black stitches removed from the back of her head.

You must return. New problems, a new specialist, means one thing: you must face your demons and return.

A new desk clerk and a new flower arrangement await you in the official looking building in which you found absolutely no comfort and now you must face up to walking these halls once again. It’s likely that you’ll cry. It’s likely that you’ll dry heave. It’s likely that no one will understand your reaction to this big official building. It’s just a place, after all.

But this is so much more than a place. It’s where the old you shriveled up and died and the new you was dragged screaming into the world.

So you and your ghosts walk the corridors all night every night, reliving the worst parts of your life, wishing they could be laid to rest, knowing that they never will.

Ever.