Today, I have someone posting for me who I MET ON THE INTERNET. Do you remember when that was all scary and you had to be all, “I’m meeting someone FROM THE INTERNET” and then you were supposed to call and check in like 57 times with your BFF because Internet People were kinda like Mole People in that they rose from the Earth to kill you dead and were all all be shifty-eyed and shady?

And now, just LOOK AT US ALL!

(shifty-eyed and shady!)(also: pantsless!)

Anyway, this is The Next Martha, who is my friend in real life, which goes to show that I CAN MAKE FRIENDS (let’s be friends, Pranksters!), dammit, and that Internet People can also wear pants sometimes! Like me! Just not right now.

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Here’s the situation. It’s not that I believe that penises are better than what I have because let’s face it, they’re not. I don’t see 8 lbs of anything coming out of their pipe. It’s just that being a woman and not having a penis really pisses me off when it comes to dealing with men.

For example: I decide to hire someone to help me with some of the edging and mulching that I am clearly not going to get to this year.

Man shows up. I show him the back (which sounds way dirtier than it is) and make some small talk about gardening, since he is in the biz after all.

Me: “So you see many butterflies this year?”

Man with Penis: “I think so.”

Me: “Really? Because I have hardly seen any.”

Man with Penis: “You know there’s plants you can attract them with.”

Me: “You mean like those? (I say as I point to my 8ft by 20ft butterfly garden)

Blah, blah, use us, blah, blah, easy job, blah

Man With Penis: “Oh and I only use American workers”

Me: “Oh?”

Man With Penis: “You know because you don’t want a bunch of Mexicans walking around your yard.”

If I had a penis, this is where I would whip it out, lay it on the patio table, and challenge him to a table check: “Okay, time to do a table check because I’m pretty sure mine is bigger and you should just shut your ass up now.”

Instead, I have no penis so I say:

“Oh, well I speak fluent Spanish so it wouldn’t bother me.”

I’m sure we can all agree that table checking our penises is clearly a superior scenario.

This type of situation happens to me all the time.

I take care of ALL of our outside services. I deserve a penis.

Phone rings. I pick up.

“Hi, Can I speak to the man of the house?”

I HAVE caller ID so I know it’s a damn lawn guy pulling his out early. Too bad it’s only a 6.

What’s that? Did you just challenge me? It’s penis time:

“Thanks for calling. Mine is 9 and a half so trust me when I say that I can handle the lawn, if you know what I mean.” I wish he were here so we could just have the conversation at the patio table.

Instead, I have No Penis:

“No, you can’t talk to him because he doesn’t even know what NPK is and I take care of the lawn.”

See? Penis time wins again.

Don’t even get me started with tools. I have a tool chest, jig saw, drill press, belt sander, and a compound miter saw. My tools. M-I-N-E. Oh, and can I use them. I know this makes you hot. That 9.5 just became 10, right?

So when I’m at the hardware store and the guy says “Do you know if you have a drill?” It’s table time again and I’m tempted to whip it out and smack his face with it. Or something like that. Not sure exactly but you get the point.

If I could order one for these situations, I would. I’ll even pay the overnight shipping because I have a contractor coming over on Thursday for a paint estimate.

I wonder how he’ll size up.

It was a good thing that I was lying down when they told me my first crotch parasite had a hot dog instead of a hamburger or I would have probably fallen over. I was 158% certain that the baby who had HER feet stuck up in MY liver was a GIRL, thankyouverymuch and her name was going to be Elise and excuse me?

SHE has a PENIS?

What the hell kind of GIRL has a PENIS?

Where did you get your ultrasound degree ANYWAY, lady? SEARS?

But she zoomed in and showed me a dangly bit and a comically large sack, and assured me that it wasn’t some circus freak of a girl/boy I was carrying. Nope, I was having a BOY. A bouncing beautiful baby BOY. (I made up the beautiful part because he sort of looked like a pixelated version of the blob)

I was TERRIFIED. We’d gone in for an emergency ultrasound because the doctor had heard “something” on the fetal heart tones that made him “unhappy” and I couldn’t get what specifically that was, and although I was only twenty at the time, I did love my baby, despite what all of the people who came up to tell me my business thought (oh, Pranksters, you have no idea, except those of you who do).

His heart turned out to be just perfect and his twig and berries, well, they were unexpectedly there, but fine as well.

And now, I was a mother. Of a boy. Pretty sure I was soon to be a single mother. Of a boy. I was shitting my pants. Or I would have been, had the prenatal vitamins allowed for it.

Several weeks before he was born, stuck for a name, it came to me suddenly and I named him Benjamin, meaning “son of my right side” and hoped that he could be a kind, strong, good and sweet person.

He is. That and so much more.

When I found out I was having his brother, Alexander, I scoured the shelves at the toy store to find him a non-girly baby doll, and when I did, Seth came home with us. Still Seth is a fixture in my house and he frequently is put down for naps, gets bottles, and gets his diaper changed.

Alex came rocketing into the world, in March of 2007 and I can tell you that no one was more excited than Ben.

I implore you to a) ignore the horrid jacket that my darling firstborn son is wearing because I DID NOT DRESS HIM and 2) please look at Alex’s face. It’s HILARIOUS. It’s also the way Alex looked for an entire year.

It turned out that all of the fears I’d had about having boys were unfounded. Of my children, if I am to fall down and hurt myself, it is my sons who will run over to comfort me and wrap their spindly arms around me until I assure them that I am fine. Amelia may come over and investigate, sure, but it will only be to then hurl something large at my head.

(she is her mother’s daughter and my clone in just about every way)

And Alex, oh sweet Alex, the small love of my life, he has his baby, too:

Sure, maybe he carries the thing around by the top of her head and sometimes throws her at the wall for a laugh, but his heart is so crushingly huge that I sometimes wonder if he really is related to me. And then he farts and laughs hysterically and I know that he clearly is.

It’s when they pile on top of me, the three of them, all elbows and knees and giggles, like a squirmy pack of puppies, that I know I’ve done right by them.

And I am happy. If I do nothing else in my life, I have done right by my children.

Several years ago, I wrote the first in a series of posts to my television husbands, this one to Vincent D’Onofrio, where I divorced him for having the audacity to impregnate someone else. This of course, was shortly after I’d popped out crotch parasite numero dos, Alejandro, and blatantly overlooked that I had recently had a baby that hadn’t been presumably sired by him.

I also frequently called myself the “anonymous Midwestern girl with kicky hair” which should have told anyone that I didn’t take myself SERIOUSLY. The letter was, of course, a total over-the-top joke. I had to Google his fucking name to even write the damn thing.

But after I wrote it, my tens of readers laughed, because writing a fake love letter to a fake TV husband is kinda funny (shut up) and then an odd thing happened: Google Reader picked the damn thing up as in, “if you like, “xxx” you’ll LOVE “yyy””

THEN the Lovers of Vincent D’Onofrio showed up on my doorstep. I’m not talking about people who have some Law and Order: Your Doesn’t Suck So Hard on DVR, no, I’m talking about the people who have entire BLOGS devoted to him. Who know his wife’s name (he’s married?) and paint murals of him on their walls.

They were *ahem* displeased with Your Aunt Becky.

And I was shocked that so many people could devote so many hours a day to caring about celebrities. It just hadn’t dawned on me that anyone, well, WOULD.

I still get people who swing by and yell at me about it, just like the teens who yell at me on Twitter for misspelling David Archuleta’s name. Not, oddly, that I said “I thought about buying David Archuleta’s book until I realized he’d been a Barbizon Model and then punched myself in the face.”

(I’m bitter that my parents wouldn’t let me take Glamor Shots and for some reason I have my wires crossed and Glamor Shots = Barbizon = Be a Model, OR JUST LOOK LIKE ONE)

But now, I’ve realized that my true love is not Vincent D’Onofrio, Lovers of Vincent D’Onofrio, so you can all back off.

Because after years of searching, I’ve finally found The Love of My Life:

Rod Blagojevich’s Hair: (he’s the former governor of Illinois, where I live. State Motto: We Impeach our Crooked Governors! He’s also…just…wow.)

When we met, I was immediately smitten. Sure, politics aren’t my thing, but the hair, people, THE HAIR.

His magic hair and I went for long walks on the beach, looking at rocks, rotting fish and hypodermic needles.

And just when I thought I couldn’t possibly be any happier, his hair took me for a long romantical visit to Detroit, where, over fried chicken and waffles and cans of Diet Coke,  his hair asked me to be it’s bride.

The day I married his hair was the happiest day of my life. My dad walked me down the aisle to strains of “Dude Looks Like a Lady” and when I met his hair at the alter, I promised to “Love, Honor and Repay” his hair for the rest of my days on Earth, til baldness (or Rogaine) do us part.

His hair just floated there, like a mystical being from another planet while I beamed serenely. My heart was finally happy.

His magic hair completed me.

You know what happened next, don’t you?

9 months later, the product of our Magical Union, the sweet Hair Baby baby popped out of my crotch.

The day I had his hairs’ baby, well, that was the second happiest day of my life. Second only to the day I became, Mrs. The Magic Hair Blago.

Of course, a mystical being like Blago’s Magical Hair can’t be contained for long, so I’ve been left to raise our Love Child alone, but that’s okay. I’m lucky to have had his Magic Hair for as long as I did.

If you love something as special as Magic Hair, you have to let it go to be free. If it comes back to you, it was always yours.

Or…uh, something.

Pashmina: “How was your birthday?”

Aunt Becky: “Eh.”

Pashmina: “We’re thirty now.”

Aunt Becky: “I’m changing my birthday.”

Pashmina: “Are you one of those freaks that doesn’t like getting older?”

Aunt Becky: “No, I mean I’m changing the DAY.”

Pashmina: “…”

Aunt Becky: “See, 3 ER visits in 5 years means that the day is cursed. I wasn’t supposed to be born July 15 anyway but I was in distress or some shit.”

Pashmina: “Maybe you’re just unlucky.”

Aunt Becky: “The first person to wish me a happy birthday is always either an ER doc or a pharmacist. So no more. July 15, you are dead to me. July 28, you are my new birthday.”

Pashmina: “Can you do that? Like, just change the day?”

Aunt Becky: “Why not? It’s like Your Number of People You Bone. As you get farther past it, you know, some just DROP off the list for whatever reason.”

Pashmina: “…”

Aunt Becky: “You know, Bob had a micropenis so he didn’t count, and Jim humped your leg instead of your naughty bits and what’s-his-face had a bit of a premature ejaculation problem?”

Pashmina: “…”

Aunt Becky: “So they drop of Your List!”

Pashmina: “…”

Aunt Becky: “What?!?”

Pashmina: “The way you do math is bizarre.”

Aunt Becky: “I can justify just about anything. Like why I need to buy a tapeworm. And move to LA to start a disco band!”

Pashmina: “Disco sucks.”

Aunt Becky: “You won’t be saying that when my band is on the cover of Rolling Stone. You’ll be begging for groupies.”

Pashmina: “I am pretending not to know you anymore.”

Aunt Becky: “You won’t be saying that when my tapeworm farm is famous, either.”

Pashmina: “…”

Aunt Becky: “You’re still mad at me about the butt sex check (Pranksters, go read those links in that order) aren’t you?”

Pashmina: “No. Well, maybe.”

Aunt Becky: “How about I let you into my disco band as an apology?”

Pashmina: “You shine on you crazy diamond, you.”

Aunt Becky: “That’s the spirit! Let’s get some go-go boots and blue eye shadow!”

Now, Pranksters, aren’t you glad I don’t IM you?

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Mushroom Printing. It’s up. It’s awesomer than ever. You can play, too.

Back when my first son was a baby, I had a real cat in addition to my fake cat, Mr. Sprinkles, and his name was Pete. Pete was probably clinically retarded, but I loved him anyway, and we had adventures like, ‘LET’S RUN INTO WALLS HEADFIRST’ and ‘LEGS, LET’S USE THEM!’

Oddly, now that I see that typed out, it was the same sort of adventures I had with Ben, but I digress. Badly.

One weekend, my brother, Uncle Aunt Becky, and his wife, Sister Uncle Aunt Becky were at my parents house, were Pete, Ben and Your Aunt Becky lived. While Your Aunt Becky went to work, slinging crappy pizzas and beers as a waitress, Uncle Aunt Becky and Sister Uncle Aunt Becky kidnapped Pete to take him for “just one week” to kill a mouse.

Why they thought a retarded cat could kill a mouse is beyond me. I’m pretty sure any mouse that would die on his watch would have to have committed suicide.

But then, of course, they fell in love with Pete. Stupid old Pete, my companion. But, Sister Aunt Becky has more maternal sweetness in one of her cells than Your Aunt Becky does in her entire body, so when it came time to bring Pete back home, Pete already had amassed a collection of soft kitty blankies, toys and treats. In a week.

Suddenly, I felt sort of…guilty taking him back, where he’d be forced to sleep on my BED without treats, toys or the soft caress of cashmere cat blankies.

So Pete became Uncle Aunt Becky’s cat.

Many years later, I adopted a similar orange cat from the shelter because I am a creature of habit and also because I have no imagination. When I got him, I brought him home and loudly proclaimed that his name was….(wait for it)

PETE.

And Pete II was possibly more simple-minded that Pete I.

Firstly, he used his head as a battering ram. Doors, windows, heads, walls, people, no matter what was in his way, he just bashed it with his head until it gave in or until he forgot what he was doing and decided to do something else.

Then, the moment he got happy, which was often, he’d start to salivate. Which was kind of funny, because you think, “hey, Aunt Becky, I drool when I see bacon!” but you know, the cat would drool when he saw ME. And since I LIVED WITH HIM, I was pretty much always cleaning up piles of cat drool.

Well, then I popped out two back to back crotch parasites and Pete II’s four measly neurons couldn’t handle the stress of having to deal with the peeing and pooing of two additional small humans.

So he did what any mentally challenged cat would do: he started peeing on stuff. Anything.

I called up my sister-in-law and started pleading with her. Shockingly, she listened to my pathetic bribes and ended up coming to take Pete home with her because she is a better human being than I am.

Which meant that she had not one, but two of my fat, orange, stupid cats named Pete.

Pete and RE-Pete.

I really shouldn’t be allowed to do anything. Ever.

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Further proof that I should probably be chained to a wall somewhere.

I made you a present. See, now The Internet is trying to get a role in this, uh (I think I have this right now) blogging reality show about, uh, bloggers? Well, this is why I SHOULDN’T be allowed on a reality show:

I made that! It’s new! It’s why I should NEVER be allowed near a video, uh, maker. Or YouTube, where I made a channel, so I can make NEW videos. (hide, Pranksters).

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Mushroom Printing! It’s live!

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P.S. Now I feel like I should probably make more bad videos. This cannot possibly end well for anyone.

Hi Aunt Becky,
My fiance and I are planning on getting married in a little over a year, but with relocation, finding jobs after school, and a bunch of other things going on in our lives right now we have yet to plan a single detail.

It’s getting to be about that time to book churches, reception halls, and figure out colors or whatever (my sister is good at the planning so I’m passing it all off onto her).  The problem is, I just started a job that is going to be able to pay my monthly bills and that’s it, and my fiance is still unemployed.

Here’s the kicker: He wants a big wedding with a DJ, food for people (a main meal and drunkie snacks at the end of the night) and other wild things that we just can’t afford without taking on more debt.  I think we should just invite our guests down to the Church reception hall for coffee and cake after the ceremony and be done with it.  I really don’t want to spend a ton of money on one day when we could be putting it toward a house or a kick ass honeymoon.

Help please!

-Unhappy Planner

Oh, my Unhappy Planner Prankster, how I empathize with you entirely, because Your Aunt Becky is SO not a wedding person. I’m very much a PARTY person, but not at all a wedding person. I’m the chuck-it-all-and-go-to-Vegas-and-get-married-by-Elvis-kind-of-girl, actually, but you know, apparently that’s not en vogue or something.

So here’s what my advice is to ALL of those out there planning weddings: this is your first step as a soon-to-be married couple in what marriage is all about: compromise.

I suggest you each make a list of what it is that you want in your ideal wedding without input from the other person. Then, add an approximate cost associated with each item. After that, rank each item from order from most to least important.

THEN, regroup and have a real discussion about what you can combine to make this work for you both.

Marriage is a partnership and nowhere is that going to be more evident than now. So I suggest you start getting accustomed to thinking like a twosome now. Two is the new one, you know.

Good luck, Prankster.

(for the record, I’d do Vegas)

Dear Aunt Becky,

I am turning 21 on July 21st. I really want to go out for my birthday. I don’t even want to drink- I just want to go dancing. Here’s the kicker. I am going to be 29 weeks pregnant on my birthday. And, as bad as I want to go dancing, I don’t want to deal with the fucktards that are going to be giving me the stink-eye the whole time I am there. It’s not like I am massively huge pregnant either, I have only gained 4 pounds, and I don’t have this raging prego belly, just a little bump.

So, Aunt Becky, does being pregnant mean I have to sit at home and act like I am dead because I have this thing growing in my stomach? Or can I go out and shake my ass?!? I mean, I am just pregnant, not dead!

Aw, Prankster, I missed answering this one in time for your birthday and I’m sorry. Happy Birthday, belatedly, my friend.

So, should you go out and celebrate on your 21st birthday while pregnant? ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY! I was a whopping 37 weeks pregnant (or perhaps 48 weeks?) with Ben when I turned 21, and you bet your ass I walked into that liquor store and bought a bottle of champagne with my brand new driver’s license.

Why?

BECAUSE I COULD.

Then, I waddled my sorry ass home and went to bed. Of course, I didn’t DRINK any of it or anything, but I just did it because I had to.

And frankly, anyone who thinks that pregnant women should stay home with their feet up resting and watching TLC, hiding from the world, should be beaten about the head. If you want to go dancing on your birthday, baby, you shake that ass.

I’ll never forget back when I was a bartender, this very pregnant lady came in and ordered a non-alcoholic beer for herself. The bottle does, of course, look like, well, a BEER bottle, and the bar was bumping. That poor woman got SO many dirty looks that I eventually had to start stepping in and fending people off of her.

It’s bad enough to be hugely pregnant. If the woman wants to drink a non-alcoholic (blech) beer, let the damn woman do it (and yes, I know it has a tiny bit of alcohol in it. She had ONE).

So I hope you shook that ass and had a great birthday, Prankster.

Dear Aunt Becky,

I did not grow up with a gun in the house. It was never like an “oooh guns are scary” type of thing, they just were never a part of my life. And frankly, I’ve just never cared for the thought of one around.

My boyfriend on the other hand, has always had guns in the house. He competitively shot as a teen, and his father collects them.

Now basically he has just the one side arm that he keeps in his nightstand, unloaded, with the ammo far from it. He’s not an irresponsible gun owner in any way. But still the gun bothers me. He says its just for protection, that it helps make him feel safe. That there’s nothing for me to worry about, and still, I worry.

I know he won’t just get rid of it because I want him to, and I really don’t have a good reason other than it bothers me. How do I get over this? Should I just get over it?
It’s not a pressing issue, as we don’t live together at the moment, but we’re planning on getting married, and moving in with him means moving in with it…

Sincerely,
Annie Get Your Gun

Oh Annie, I so get where you’re coming from because my hippie parents wouldn’t ALLOW us guns of any sorts. Not even SQUIRT guns until I was much, much older (I wasn’t allowed Barbies either, which probably explains my personality a lot more, too).

So I’m actually a little afraid of them. Okay, I’m a lot afraid of them. And it’s a stupid fear, honestly.

But what I need to do, and what YOU need to do is to do something about it.

A gun is an inanimate object that can’t physically JUMP UP and hurt you, right?

So I think that first you should talk to your boyfriend about your fears about the gun. Then, maybe you should have him take you shooting, just so you learn how to use it. Clearly, he’s no amateur and isn’t going to be unsafe with it, so I’d trust that he knows what he’s doing. If you’re going to move in with him, you need to be comfortable with him and with his hobby and lifestyle.

Or, of course, not, if that’s a deal breaker for you.

And as for me, I need to confront this and learn how to shoot a damn gun.

Good luck to you, Annie.

When I was a wee bonneted lass of about three, I stumbled upon a worn copy of Grey’s Atlas of the Human Body hidden in plain sight on the overstuffed bookcases at my parents house. I have no doubt that I was looking for a leftover piece of chocolate with which to taunt my brother (“Loooook at what IIIIII found, Uncle Aunt Becky, and yooooouuuu can’t haaavvvve it!”), but accidentally I found something that would change my life.

The book fell from it’s shelf, flipped open and the afternoon sun sank in the sky as I poured over the ancient pages of the human body, flayed and open, the diagrams carefully explaining words I couldn’t quite read. It didn’t matter what they said. The pictures were there: the muscles, the bones, the heart, the brain.

It was beautiful.

I fell in love at three years old. It’s a love that still makes my soul dance, my face break out into a gigantically goofy grin, and my brain flood with serotonin and norepinephrine.

Happiness. Such a simple emotion. So hard to explain.

When My Band of Merry Pranksters (and, presumably Your Aunt Becky) were asked by The Science Museum’s new worldwide project, “Who Am I?” to answer ‘what makes you smile?’ I could hardly say no.

In no particular order, here are some things that make me smile:

1) Unintentionally hilarious packaging by way of poor translation.

This gem was sent TO ME by my friend Wild Cakes and it sits proudly in my china cabinet. Because why the hell would I actually put CHINA in there? What, am I FANCY PANTS now?

(answer: you can take the trash out of the girl, but you can’t…wait, I’m confused)

2) My awesomely bedazzled phone. It’s really, really pathetic, actually, but it goes to show that when you can find someone else who CAN do something for you, you always, always should. Otherwise, you end up looking like a thumbless two year old probably had arts-n-crafts time with your phone.

c) Twitter. Although I often mocked it for being the most narcissistic and obnoxious, I now find to be full of The Awesome.

4) Mushroom Printing, our new group blog which is going to be full of the win, which is now ready for you to submit your most delicious, entertaining stories. I’m sure I’ll do an official launch on Monday when The Internet is not sleeping, but may as well start that puppy up.

f-niner) Smaller pants. They may not be my missing (WHORE) pants, but at the very least, I ordered some new pants in a smaller size.

00.00008) The continuing adventures of Mr. Sprinkles, my fake cat. Look at what that wily cat was up to when I wasn’t looking!

So THAT is what I was upset about. Mr. Sprinkles was busting up my army of bunnies!

And there Mr. Sprinkles, my fake cat, is AGAIN!

Oh, Mr. Sprinkles, what a silly guy you are.

6.8) This poem, that had me smiling through my tears, written by my friend, Star Crossed Writer. It is singularly the most beautiful thing I have ever read.

Amelia

An army stands ten thousand strong and tall,
But you shall rise above the bloody fray
And rain down vengeance ‘pon your enemies
And all those who would stand against your will.

When darkness threatens fainter hearts than yours
And calls ring out for champions to arise,
The cries will cease and everyone will see
Amelia, the Princess of the Bells.

I don’t even know what to say. Thank you doesn’t begin to suffice.

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All right, Pranksters, this is what makes Your Aunt Becky smile. What makes YOU smile? Pull up a tall glass of vodka, gather round, and let’s freaking SMILE our balls off today.

Even in the NICU, she made her temper known. Her furious bleats echoed from the previously calmer walls, disturbing the other tinier occupants and their parents, and I had the good grace to feel sheepish as my daughter wailed fiercely, her gigantically fat legs and arms pounding against the sides of the isolette.

“Let me the fuck outta here!” she hollered without saying a word.

I echoed the sentiment, with my own words, of course.

My daughter, she is a fighter.

At birth, my Amelia Grace, the fighter, born with her brain hanging from her head, she disturbed the entire labor floor with her angry screams. Indeed, one of the only clear memories I have of her birth is her shrieks, so loud, so furious over the grievous sin of having been forced to be weighed.

(I, of course, feel precisely the same way every Friday when I am weighed in, but, you know, I am much more in control of my tantrums, so I can shriek QUIETLY before having to see the number on the scale)

This trait, this fighter trait, it has never left my daughter, my warrior girl, and it is with intense pride that I see her furiously beat her hands against the floor, shrieking in anger over some injustice, because it is so familiar to me. She is her mother’s daughter and she should know how to fight.

Yes! I say to her, YES, my brave, sweet girl, you FIGHT against it. You get good and god-damned mad and you take that anger and you channel it into something good and you use it for all it’s worth. That is the tiger in you, my child. And you let that tiger out and you let it ROAR and God HELP anyone who gets in your way. That fight will remind you you’re alive.

My little Amelia is a warrior.

If anyone should be born with the spirit of a warrior, passed so handily down from her mother’s DNA, I think it should be a daughter, someone born with the odds stacked so heavily against her.

Still, she doesn’t speak to me and tell me the secrets of her heart, although when I look into her deep brown eyes that mirror so closely my own, I can see them there, just below the surface. The Little Prince was right, what is essential is invisible to the eye. And when my heartstrings pull painfully in my chest, imagining the times when it will be so hard for her, I comfort myself in knowing that the warrior heart that beats within my own chest beats within hers as well.

The secret place, the land of tears, well, that will be hers alone, as it is with all all of us.

As I look at her, awestruck, often bemused by her anger, flared up by the terrible injustice of having been told, “no, no we’re not having candy for dinner,” I never forget how lucky I am to have her by my side.

Her speech therapy will begin soon. She’s operating at quite a delay, backsliding from even where she was several months ago. So now we put on our platinum battle armor, polish our diamond coated swords and get ready, because it’s time for the fight to begin.

My Miracle Mimi, my Warrior Principessa; it’s you and me against the world, kid.

So watch out, world.

The monster that lived in my close was named Ernie. I knew this because my brother told me. Ernie liked raw meat and eggs and every night I had to feed him or he’d come down and eat me while I slept.

I’d have to yell, “Here Ernie, here’s an egg. Catch the egg, Ernie!” and then I’d run back into my bed and pull up the covers while I waited for Ernie to devour the egg, hoping that he didn’t decide that ickle girl would be a tastier option.

My father told me of my sister, the one who lived in the basement, chained to the wall, living on apple juice and rats. She’d been born, apparently, between us, and rather than let her live upstairs, she’d been too feral, too wild, and she had become a basement dweller.

My cousin would delight me with stories of the little girl who visited the lollipop factory, only to fall into a vat of the sticky syrup, and in a tragic accident, become a lollipop herself.

Less concerned with her fate, I was reassured that she was turned into my favorite flavor, cherry red. This satisfied me, of course. Because if you have to die in a lollipop factory, you should, at the very least, turn out to be sweetly delicious.

And then there are pictures like this. I’m in the bonnet.

Yes, the bonnet, motherfuckers.

You got a problem with my bonnet?

Because I clearly do. Even at 2.5, I seem to be looking at the camera in a “dude, I look ABSURD,” way, because, well, I do. I’m not sure what my mother was smoking to think that a nearly-three-year old needed to be doing walking around in a bonnet, but there you have it. Further proof that I was destined to write about my life on The Internet.

And here, surrounded by my bunnies, I am clearly afraid for my life. Why? Because I had to go to bed soon, where ERNIE could, at any time, come and eat me.

My army of bunnies couldn’t save me from the monster in my closet.

Perhaps I was practicing to be a pirate. Because, wouldn’t you if you had a monster in your motherfucking closet?

The best part of this picture is my “BECKY” barrette. Because I would STILL TOTALLY WEAR THAT SHIT.

This is my father. And my brother. No, I am not kidding. That’s Santa and his Elf, Ralph.

So, no, I don’t EVER wonder why I’m like this. In fact, I often wonder how I got to be so damn normal*.

*normal is relative.

For those of you not painstakingly combing my archives because you know, you have a LIFE and stuff (which, hi, tell me how, okay?), I started a project back in January that I call “Bringing Aunt Becky Back.” I realized that I’d lost a lot of my identity while I popped out my crotch parasites and wiped endless poopy butts, and I realized that something had to be done about it before I ended up with Mom Jeans up to my nipples and some sensible white Keds on my feet.

So the Bringing Aunt Becky Back project was born.

The good news is, when you think you’ve lost yourself, you’re never as far away as you think you are. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear, it turns out. The bad news is, if you’re me, you have a lot of work to do to move away from your past.

These are luminous times, and I can’t help but feel that the changes I’m making are, well, change, and change is better than stagnation, so that’s forward movement. Starting therapy (which I return to on Saturday), is probably one of the smartest things I’ve done, and I’m looking forward to finally staring down the demons in my closets and making them dance the Funky motherfucking Chicken.

When you graduate college, it’s assumed you’re going to go on and have some sort of career. In my case, I grabbed my RN-BSN, knowing I would never actually be a career nurse and floundered for awhile.

Then, in the unlikeliest of places, I found something that I was not only (marginally) good at, but also made me happy: words. Glorious, beautiful, letters, strung into patterns, that formed words, put together in such a way that could horrify, delight, and make you weep. Writing. It was like discovering you could breathe underwater.

So I went with it. This had to be what I was supposed to do with my life.

I was fortunate enough to get literary agents and wrote up a couple of non-fiction book proposals–books of essays*–and waited. The stock market crashed, the publishing industry took a huge hit, and people stopped buying books.

So I waited, they waited, I went back to the drawing board, and in the meantime, I sent out essays, knowing full well real writers couldn’t get published anywhere, so the likelihood of anyone in The New Media (a.k.a. The Internet People) (potentially The Enemy) being able to get somewhere was about as good as me winning The Nobel Prize for Awesomeness.

Then I just…stopped.

And last week I had an epiphany: I needed to attack the problem from a different angle. Rather than focus on something so far out of reach, I’d try and do something I understood. So I revived Mushroom Printing as a group blog. I’m talking to a friend who runs an actual shirt screening press about getting “Shut Your Whore Mouth” shirts made.

If any of this leads to something else down the line, I’ll be doing the happy dance until my legs fall off. I still believe that making some sort of career out of writing is what I am supposed to do with myself, but perhaps this just isn’t the time.

It’s time to put my thinking cap on and figure out what to do next (any advice, I’m open to, Pranksters). Besides, of course, form a Neil Diamond tribute band.

Because, obviously.

*if you have signed up for an essay and haven’t gotten it, it’s been waylaid in your spam filter because it comes from a dummy email address. If’n you want it (and you do), email me. There’s a BIG OLD “email me” button on my sidebar. I can send you one.

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It’s Toy With Me Tuesday! I’m talking about making a porno (no, not REALLY making one). Heh. It’s much sillier than it sounds.