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.

————————-

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.

——————-

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.

A couple of nervous breakdowns later, and after I realized that the July Birthday Curse would likely strike again, I figured I needed to come up with a Plan B for my birthday.

(for those of you unfamiliar with the July Birthday Curse, I imagine that it’s very similar to the Middle of December Birthday Curse, in that it SOUNDS like it’s a lovely time to be born, until you realize that no one is actually around to celebrate it with you, ever because something else is always going on. Or maybe it’s just me and no one likes me. Which is entirely possible.

Plus, you never get to bring cuppity-cakes to school, which is kind of like torture when you’re a kid and those things MATTER, yo.)

Vegas is going to wait until Fall or Winter because I’ll be dipped in pigshit before I roll over and accept that my birthday doesn’t need to be celebrated with a BIG ASS PARTY with my friends and glitz and glamor or maybe just Vegas (hint, hint, you’re all invited, Pranksters).

So Plan B was to go shopping, which sounds about as thrilling as dry toast, I know, but it was very necessary. Like half of The Internet, I’m going to that big thing in NYC in a couple of weeks, and thanks to a couple of children and a disappearing then slooooooowly reappearing waistline, I’m stuck in the limbo of What The Fuck Size Am I, Anyway? hell.

But I am a vain bitch, and even though this is a WRITING conference, which means that I should show up in what I when I write, which is no pants, I figure that public decency laws dictate I try and find something to swaddle my dimply butt. And rather than just shrug my shoulders, estimate, and order online, which is what I’d normally do when I’m too damn busy to drag the crotch parasites to the mall, I knew I’d have to face the fully dressed masses and try on clothes.

Nothing better to celebrate my 30th year than to face a little public humiliation, right?

So, after already tapping out H&M, where I’d decided what I’ve always thought about H&M: there are some semi-cute things in the piles of hideousness, I returned to Mecca. The Homeland. The Place Where Everyone Pretends To Know My Name To Separate Me From My AMEX.

Nordstroms.

And first, upon entering, I see what is sure to be full of the win!

Their Free People line, which is highly adorable, funky, and sequined. I make a beeline for it, and just as I pick up something like this…

I glance to the price tag. For something that I was planning to use SPECIFICALLY for the conference, because I do not intend to be this fat for much longer, I certainly am not about to spend $140.

Plus, and even more discouraging, there’s absolutely no room for el boobs. My children, who have also left me with some wicked grey hair, have also given me a considerable rack. This shirt runs to a Medium, and is designed for a waif.

My feelings are immediately crushed and I nearly cried into the shirt until the hovering salesperson snatched it from my hand.

So, Free People, you are dead to Your Aunt Becky (and sweet JESUS it hurts me to write that).

Figuring I’d probably have a better time in the Women’s Department, I headed upstairs, marveling at how much shopping at Nordies made me feel home again and how fucking HAPPY I was to be out of MATERNITY clothes. No more elastic-waisted pants for me, I cried to myself as I rode the escalator upstairs! No more clothes designed by tent-makers!

I WOULD NO LONGER LOOK LIKE MOTHERFUCKING GRIMACE!

I nearly leapt off the escalator as I reached the Floor Of Women’s Stuff and looked around happily. Certainly, HERE I’d find some of the clothes I could wear!

As I made my way jubilantly around the loop, I kept looking for the section that would scream, “It’s Aunt Becky, Bitch!” as I passed the row of formal dresses (oh hail no), the row of plus sizes, and the row of yachting clothes (um, I’m on a motherfucking boat?). There were business clothes, pant suits, and Ralph Lauren as far as my eye could see.

Finally, I stopped at the William Rast (Justin Timberlake’s clothing line) display and stared, open mouth in horror.

Where the fuck were all the clothes I would buy?

Sensing my plight, a twig of a girl popped over to me and asked if she could help me and before I could stop myself I blurted out, “Where the hell are all the non-butt-ugly clothes?”

She didn’t laugh, she stared at me, confused.

I backtracked, because she clearly didn’t understand. “I mean, NONE of these look like ANYTHING I’d want to wear. I need SOMETHING to wear.”

She laughed uncomfortably as she led me to what she called the more “youthful” section. Apparently “youthful” is all in context, because I couldn’t see someone under 65 wearing anything she showed me.

It was all wooden embellishments:

Or metal studs:

I was aghast.

I got out of maternity clothes and got back into normal clothes so I could look like a wanna-be biker or a pseudehippie? My PARENTS were real hippies, and I’ll swear, Pranksters, hippies don’t spend $80 on a tank top.

Dejectedly, mumbling about the “good old days” I made my way over to Anthropologie and bought some hair clips to comfort myself.

Here’s hoping the 80’s fashion resurgence passes soon. And those damn kids get off my lawn. I have some Murder She Wrote to watch.

Sometimes, Pranksters, even Your Aunt Becky likes to take a couple of moments to pull her head out of her bejeweled ass to do some good in the world. Today is one of those days. I’m simply going to direct you to Save The Children, a charity that is trying to help local health workers bring basic first aid and health care to children around the world.

Every four seconds, a child survives THANKS to the health care provided by local health workers on the front lines.

Using our blogs, our facebook profiles, and our Twitter accounts, we can help Save The Children get the word out about this campaign. Throw up the badge, visit the site, see what you can do to help. You don’t have to pull out your wallet to help.

As a nurse, a member of the local medical reserve corp (stop gasping in fear, Pranksters, I won’t accidentally give you vodka rather than normal saline!), and a future traveling health worker, I can think of no cause I’d rather get behind.

<a href=”http://goodgoes.savethechildren.org/r/goodgoes?r=badge200″ target=”_new”><img src=”http://goodgoes.savethechildren.org/assets/goodGoesBadge.gif” border=”0″ alt=”GoodGoes.org”></a>

(that’s the code for the badge, display it with pride!)

Let’s do what we can.

Dear Aunt Becky,

So, I did something awesome today. I paid off the remainder of my unsecured rediculous debt (yeah me!)

I am so overjoyed.

… and I feel like humping my own leg.

My question, aunt becky, because you are so FULL OF THE AWE and a little bit of the SOME (AWESOME!) How do YOU keep from humping your own mother humping leg all the time?? Ya know, besides it’s physically impossible?

More importantly, how to reward yourself for something so cool without going out and spending money??? HMMM???

Now YOU are so full of the awesome that I’m here humping your leg from Chicago, which means that you either have insanely long legs or I have a very, very bendable crotch which is probably the grossest image ever so let’s move on, shall we?

Congrats, you! That’s a huge responsible thing to do and I’m super proud of you.

Clearly celebrating by going out and blowing a fistful of cash on stuff isn’t smart–even though it’s fun–so maybe you should go do something that makes you feel good about yourself. Give a concert for the homeless (snort!) or do some crossword puzzles (double snort!).

Sorry, I always hate those lists of things that “you can do while NOT spending money!!” because they always sound hokey to me. Not that they always ARE hokey, just that they SOUND that way. Taking a walk is nice, but when you’re all, “Strolling through the park on a spring day,” suddenly you’re in a Nicholas Spark novel and I’m vomiting in the corner.

So, if I were you, and you were as compulsive as I am *ahem* I’d pick some projects around the house to do that give you some sense of satisfaction. Clean your closets and purge the hell out of your basement. Or come to my house and give me a hand doing it. I’m swamped.

Bottom line: projects are an excellent distraction until you get used to not swiping that credit card all of the time. So long as they’re not like “take up scrapbooking” which is hella expensive (what the fuck?).

And if you’re still stumped, like I said, COME ON OVER AND HELP ME OUT.

Dear Aunt Becky,

About three weeks ago, I left my jerk of a husband a note telling him I was filing for divorce. Why a note, you ask? Because if I hadn’t, there was sure to be a scene. And he hasn’t let me finish a thought or a sentence in years. Anything on my heart was dismissed, ignored or argued with. (Sadly, there are two small children involved. So I’ve held on so long for them and for what!)

I wonder, if he hadn’t been so emotionally unavailable and such an ass all these years, would I still feel the same? I don’t think so. I don’t think I would have ever left. But would I have been in love? I don’t know that either. They (whoever they is) say that love grows over time and that love has its seasons – its ups and downs. And they say (again, who the hell) that when all is said and done at the end of the road, who you end up with after all the years is what matters most. I am not sure who that would have been for either him or me. Of course, I don’t have a crystal ball and there is no way I would have known, but I am not sure I would have been ME.

What I am doing now is trying to find myself (so cliché, but damn. So true!). I am just having such a hard time with this. I don’t want to be married to him. But I don’t want to be married at all. I know it’s probably still so fresh and I am still so raw. So I know I should give it some time.

While I have all these conflicting feelings, I do still want to be close to a man. I want to feel that desire and fulfillment. I think I now understand why some women in my position just go nuts and screw their brains out. I’m not that kind of girl, but I feel like I could be.

I think I am learning that I am a very loving person. And it’s soooo hard to be going through this and feeling this near-hate for the man I’ve been married to and supposedly in love with for years.

Do I need to just get this out of my system? Is this normal? Should Jesus be my husband for a while? I’ve always been annoyed at women who say that. Should I be chaste? Should I just get a boy toy for a while? I don’t think I have it in me to do either. Dr. Feelgood, what do I do?

Aw, Prankster, I’m so sorry. It’s hard when the relationship is insidiously difficult and there isn’t a simple explanation to why things were so hard. It sounds like you’re making some positive decisions for yourself now.

But you’re spinning.

So take a deep breath. Finding yourself is no easy task. You’re not hidden under a bed or around the corner and it’s not as easy as just snapping your fingers and wishing it was all better (trust me on this).

You’re on the right path, but you need to just step back and start living again. Start by breathing slowly, finding the joy in small things, and taking care of yourself one small thing at a time. It’s in those small places you’ll find yourself.

The beauty of it all is that you don’t HAVE to make up your mind as to whether or not you want a new relationship right now. Rushing into anything right now is a bad, bad idea, because it’s just too soon. These fresh wounds need to heal and you need to focus on you for awhile without having the pressure of any other adult to care for.

In time, you’ll know what you want, and you’ll be able to find it. But just remember to breathe and take care of yourself. There’s no rush.

Much love.

Pranksters, I heart you so much that my cold black heart has grown nearly thirty times it’s normal size. I hope it stays that way. I woke up to like 900 Facebook thingies and a bunch of tweets and YOU GUYS, *wipes tears* I’M NOT WORTHY.

Now I have to confess that my birthday is cursed because I ended up back on Vicodin and Prednisone (it’s a very boring story, actually) which makes me TOTALLY all ‘THIS IS MOTHERFUCKING BAT COUNTRY’ so I’m pretty sure I’ll be beating people with a banana all weekend.

Good damn thing The Internet is closed over the weekend. Heh.

Thankfully I have a guest post today so you’re avoiding me being all, “I HATE MOTHERFUCKING GENERIC TOILET PAPER, PRANKSTERS! IT’S BULLSHIT!”

P.S. I will be humping email today for all of you who I owe emails to, because I am on strict, “rest your sorry ass” orders.

——–

You can find me Allison blogging about absolute nothing over at Me and Mine, WHICH, by the way, is under construction. She’ll be moving on over to a new site, with a new look, at the end of the month! Oh! And you can also follow her nonsense on twitter ~ @allisonzapata.

* * *

Greetings, Pranksters! My name is Allison and I am scared shitless.

Hi Allison!

Hey guys.

Hi Allison!

Okay, stop it. Seriously. Hi.

So, when Aunt Becky so awesomely asked me to be a guest blogger this was pretty much what went down.

A. I screamed like a little bitch.

B. I fainted

C. I puked.

After cleaning myself off, it happened.

The thoughts came flooding in.

Because the self-doubt?

I haz it, folks!

Why the hell would she ask ME to guest post?

Oh shit! She must think I am an actual writer or something.

OMG, they’re all gonna laugh at me!

I desperately tried to focus and figure out what the hell I should write.

And finally, it came to me! I would write about this mortifying little thing that happened to me in high school.  Something I have been a little hesitant to share on my own blog, since I have a few teenage nieces and nephews that follow it.

It was perfect!  I could share it with all you pranksters without looking like Aunt Ho to the fam.

I sat down at my computer, with a vat of wine, and began to type away.

And this is what came out.

* * *

When I was 16 17 years old, I snuck my boyfriend into my house while my mom was sleeping.

I drunkenly marched him right passed my mom’s room and into my own.

After explaining to him that we needed to hide on the floor on the other side of the bed in case my mom walked in, we proceeded to make awkward teen love. You know the kind? With all the weird noises (see: stirring mac n’ cheese sound. eww. sorry. barf.), the not knowing what to do with “it”, the “Oh no, I am so not ready for THAT. Well, okay, go ahead. Because if you leave me?  I. will. die.”

After we were finished 30 seconds later, Juan Doe (I grew up on the border) asked me where he should put his used condom (HOORAY FOR SAFE CHILD SEX!)  and I was all, “Just put it in that half empty coke can next to my bed.”

Because really, WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Besides everything.

* * *

So, after getting to this point in my story, I got stuck.

“I mean, really Allison, this so isn’t that funny. And so not worthy of the Prankters. Gah! You are such a loooooser”,  said one of the voices in my head.

I slammed my MacBook shut and turned on the TV, telling myself I shouldn’t force it. That it would come to me.

After apologizing profusely to my MacBook, for being so rough with it (and not the good kind of rough), I french-kissed it a bit and caressed it in all the right places. Satisfied that we were all good, I gently closed it and turned my attention back to the television and The Bachelorette.

Oh Ali Fedotowsky!

As per usual, my ADD mind began to wander.

What if I were on a reality show?

I could SO be the next Bachelorette. I mean, if I wasn’t all married and shit.

I can see it now.

Oh hey, Roberto! They have a great day planned for us. First, we are going to ride in a helicopter and then we get to be in a Broadway show. And, well, while all this sounds really cool in theory, I hate helicopters and flying in general and moving and all that stuff. And I really hate dancing and singing in front of live audiences, especially since I can’t dance nor sing and also because I hate being around humans that don’t live in my computer or in my television.  And seriously, I pretty much hate leaving my house at all. Getting dressed in normal clothes, brushing my hair, my teeth, all of it!  Just UGH! It’s all such a drag my little Robertito. So, I was thinking, how’s about you and I just stay right here in our pajamas lounge wear and eat some of these here funny brownies I paid some guy for baked and drink some wine and watch stupid shit on TV? Hold me.

Annnnnd scene.

Snapping back into reality, the panic of not letting you Pranksters down came flooding back. Like a bitch.

I sat and looked at the crap I had just written.

I. Was. Stuck.

Sigh.

Annnnnyhoo, I thought about asking Aunt Becky if I could take her up on this awesome offer another time. After my mojo returns.

After junk punching and water boarding myself for having such a stupid thought, I reached for my laptop and tried to focus.

And this is what came out.

* * *

“I kicked Juan Doe out of my house after all the teenage awkward sex-like stuff went on.  Slowly locking the door behind him, I crept back to my room and dove into bed. I laid still for some time, making sure my mom hadn’t heard us or the sound of his big ass sub-wolfer when he drove away. Confident that I was in the clear, I breathed a deep sigh of relief and passed the fuck out drifted off into sweet, sweet slumber.

I woke up around noon the next day (ahhhh, the life of a teenager) to my mom washing dishes in the kitchen. Feeling like a monkey shit in my mouth while I was sleeping, and so thirsty I could not speak, I walked to the fridge to grab a Coke.

I plopped myself down on a stool and began chatting with my mom as she washed dishes. Her back turned towards me.

She was in such a good mood, so I was confident she had no clue about the skankiness that had just gone down in my room the night before.

And then? It happened.

She explained to me there was this new thing called recycling that would totally help the planet. And I was all, “Sounds awesome mom, anything for Mother Earth, you know! Go rainforest!”

We continued to chat….

And she continued to empty out the Coke cans she had collected, from ALL OVER THE HOUSE, into the sink to prepare them for, how you say? Recycling.

The second I realized what was happening, I ran over to her. I got to her just as she grabbed the remaining Coke can and began emptying it into the sink.

IN SLOW MOTION, the condom came rushing out with the flat, syrupy coke.

SPLAT!

Right in the sink. Both of us staring at it. Slack-jawed.

My super amazing mother looked at me and said, “I’m not sure I like what Juan Doe does with his Coke cans.”

I ran to my room and locked the door. Terrified.

The next day she drove me to the vagina doctor and I was put on the pill.

* * *

Then? I was stuck. Again. I couldn’t think of a single funny one-liner to wrap it up, all nice and purdy. No witty way to end the story.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

I was back to stupid square one.

What in the hell am I gonna right about?

And guess what? I never thought of anything. I have had like three effin weeks to try and impress you lovelies and I totally blew it. Hard.

I suppose the only thing left for me to do is beg for forgiveness from all you guys and from the magnificent Aunt Becky.

You’re a kiss ass, GAH!

Anyway, I promise if you all give me another chance, one day when my mojo returns, I’ll do better.

And also? Thank you SO MUCH for not throwing tomatoes at my face.

Carry on Pranksters. Carry on.

Huge hugs and major gratitude,

Allison

On my twentieth birthday, I celebrated by going out to the diner I was working at with my boyfriend and some friends. I remember feeling terribly sad because I’d just moved in with my boyfriend at the beginning of the month, and while I didn’t expect a huge fuss for my twentieth, he’d bought me 3 CD’s–one of them, he boasted, for a penny.

I worked 5 grueling days a week slinging plates of cheap breakfast food from 8 AM to 4PM, making roughly $400 a week. It was, my boyfriend often rubbed smugly in my face as I wearily rubbed my feet at night, the same thing he made sitting on his ass working the help desk. He’d laugh cruelly at the irony of it all.

I was confused by my life.

I’d dropped out of the college I’d been planning to go to for ages, I was now living with someone who I was pretty sure wasn’t who I thought he was, and my mother had taken to leaving me horrible, mean letters rather than talk to me. My life didn’t make sense any more.

But it was a new decade, I reminded myself, and I sadly blew out the candles on my birthday sundae as my boyfriend said, “they’d BETTER pay for that.”

My early twenties were kind of like that. Moments of sweetness marred by intense, searing  sorrow.

I walked into my twenties with an abusive boyfriend on my arm, and today I walk into my thirties with my three hilarious crotch parasites bounding along by my side. They remind me that life is all about bounding and rebounding.

Alex runs into walls and bounces off them, laughs, gets up, and then does it all again just to make me laugh. I cannot grimace at one of his particularly fragrant diapers without him trying to swoop me up in his spindly arms and remind me that he loves me more than anything else. Ever.

His sweetness is breathtaking. His sense of humor reminds me that everything is worth a good solid belly laugh.

Amelia painstakingly crawls up onto the couch, her cellulite-dimpled butt struggling with exertion, then, finally gets up there triumphantly, flashes a four-toothed grin, claps her hands and yells triumphantly, “AAAAAAAAYYYYY!” It’s expected, of course, that since we are all mere mortals in Queen Amelia’s Court, that we all chime in with applause and screams of “YAAAY!”

Her triumphs over the small things in life remind me that everything should be celebrated.

And Ben, Gentle, sweet Ben. Who is trying so hard to learn the things that come naturally to other people that it breaks my heart into a million pieces. Ben who is only good inside. Ben who is made of only sweetness and light.

Ben who reminds me that we can overcome anything so long as it is what the heart desires.

And who could forget The Daver? He may not be the one who “swooped me off the streets and rescued me from a life in The Gutter” like my parents think he did, but he’s about the kindest person I could ask for. I smile as he swoops my babies up in the air and laugh as they breathlessly scream with joy.

Dave reminds me that sometimes I should TRY on the rose colored glasses for size, even if I don’t wear them.

—————–

I’m thirty today.

I’m no longer confused by my life.

A couple of weeks ago, it dawned on me that I’d been spending a hell of a lot of my time reacting to things rather than focusing on controlling the things I could. I was floundering in the water when I could have been handily doing the backstroke and Pranksters, that’s bullshit.

That’s been a hallmark of my twenties, that behavior, and frankly, I’m done, Pranksters. Certainly, life was chaos during these years, and the behavior is a learned one, but that’s done. I’m taking out my gigantic set of platinum-and-diamond-encrusted balls and I’m super-gluing them on.

It’s time to do the one thing I never managed to do in my twenties: get a career and make a name for myself (besides #1 Slore)(which, let’s be fair, is an awesome name).

Aunt Becky is back, world. Get ready.

———————

Thank you to everyone who gave me advice on Mushroom Printing, the new group blog. Been working my ass off on setting it up (also added CommentLuv and Comment RSS here, too!). Is there anything else I should add on my blog?

PLEASE, keep the advice rolling in. I don’t read any other community blogs and I want to make ours full of the awesome. Because, obviously.

——————–

And, uh, thank you for everyone who voted for me for this, uh, award I didn’t even know about but won:

Suzy and I decided it means we got our very own MBA now, so, rad. We’re business people now, Pranksters!

And as soon as I remember my login, I’m voting for Suzy for Best Humor Blog:

Because I’m up for Hottest Mommy Blogger (which means they DID NOT see the balls picture above)(heh):

Sadly, this is not a post announcing the return of my whore pants. I DID, however, get a mass email from Target announcing that they have “mean” pants, which means that Target is copying me. Because whore pants is ALMOST mean pants.

What can MEAN pants do, anyway? Like, taunt you for being a size 12? Change sizes drastically from one day to the next, making you feel like you’ve gained 20 pounds? Openly tell people how much you weigh?

Or perhaps, have a gigantic hole in the crotch that you don’t notice for most of the day because you’re very, very smart. Not that *ahem* I would know anything about that.

Really, the possibilities are endless.

ANYWAY.

Back in 2004, my boyfriend, The Daver got tired of hearing me flap my flapptity-flap jaw and started saying things like, “wow, you’re a GOOD writer. You should start a BLOG!” When I was done punching him in the throat for insulting me, I asked him what a blog was. It sounded like VD to me.

He’s all, “it’s an online journal!” which made me think of creepy people who lived in their parents basements and were afraid of sunlight. Then he showed me a couple, and I was like, “O.M.G. They’re written by creepy people that live in the dark!”

My friend Pashmina and I clicked around the very few blogs we knew for awhile, laughing at

the

bad poetry that

made thine hearts

oh!

our hearts!!

smell like poo.

the occasional report of what someone ate for lunch (kung pao chicken is soooooo good!!!!!!) always punctuated by multiple exclamation points, for added emphasis, of course, and the Jane Austin quotes:

“To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”

And we laughed. Because honestly, that just wasn’t my scene. I couldn’t believe that a) Daver thought I was a writer, and 2) he thought the world needed to read MORE regurgitated quotes from crazy cat ladies.

(I don’t like Jane Austen).

I mean, okay, Pashmina was an English major, but the most writing I’d done was for REAL research papers.

But then we came up with a most brilliant plan. We’d start a blog. An ANTI-Blog. A blog that NO ONE in their right mind would write! Oh yes, yes, we would.

And so, Mushroom Printing was born. The first entry, I think, was about shaving the vagina. I don’t remember whose, but it doesn’t matter, because that’s the sort of stuff we wrote about. 2 girls, 1 blog, being crass, making you laugh.

We kept it until 2007, when my second son was born, and then I needed another space to talk about my crotch parasites. That’s when I started Mommy Wants Vodka. I never really meant to let Mushroom Printing go, but it just happened. We outgrew it, and then shut it down. I imported (and heavily edited) my old posts, and said goodbye.

Yesterday, I got an email from the hosting company where I’d initially registered mushroomprinting.com asking me to update my records. I’d completely forgotten registering it back in 2005, but apparently I own it until November.

I sat around yesterday, imagining Mr. Pinchy, my fake monkey butler, and I stealing a Jeep and driving around, whipping donuts at kids with silly droopy hair, and then it dawned on me: I needed a new project. Something else to do.

What better to do than bring back something I always missed: Mushroom Printing. Probably the best blog name my feeble mind could come up with (it’s WAY better than Mommy Wants Vodka) but with a new concept.

Mushroom Printing as a group blog.

Finally, I’m getting my ass moving on putting together that group blog. Because what better to do than put together a place where we can all go to post about people, places, and things who need a big, fat, mushroom print?

The world is full of douchebags. Thanks to the social code, we can’t always call people out on their douchetastic behavior. Now, we can finally let it out.

To be clear: I don’t want this to be a slam site. Like, “I hate Dooce/Aunt Becky because she smells” or anything, because, Your Aunt Becky is bitchy, but she likes other bloggers and she’s not going to run a hate site. Period.

So, this site will be for OTHER things. The asshole in the parking lot that clipped the mirror off your car. Your mother-in-law. Your whore pants. Whatever.

But I don’t have the site quite up and ready yet. I’ll be working on it for the next couple of days. Now I need YOUR input as to what would make this site awesome and something you’d want to use. This is what I have so far:

1) Anyone can post, but they have to register first.

2) All posts will go into a queue before they go live to be edited and moderated. Because I don’t want anyone being a TOTAL asshole on it.

3) It doesn’t HAVE to be a smack down.

4) I have a Twitter account set up and I figure I’ll just RT stuff you tweet to it from there.

5) I’m going to get someone to design a masthead and button for it so you can be all, “I GOT MUSHROOM PRINTED.”

6) Imma to make a sister site to it for all the awesome stuff you find. Because obviously.

Okay, Pranksters, what else? Please, let me know. What would you want in a site like this. Besides, of course, my whore pants.

—————

Because I am not smart, I TOTALLY forgot to announce my Girls I’d Hump post yesterday at Toy With Me. DUH.

I came from, among MANY other things, a car family. Before I could talk, I was whisked to the Chicago Auto Show (a yearly tradition in Casa de la Sausage), and one of my earliest memories is of stealing a Sharpee Marker and decorating the inside of my uncle’s painstakingly restored 1969 Stingray with my finest doodles. It’s a wonder I made it past my first birthday.

Let’s pretend that I’m in a car, okay?

To me, there’s nothing more intoxicating than getting out on the open road, shifting seamlessly from fourth to fifth gear and just going. Seeing where the road takes me. Letting my mind crawl alongside the wheels while I roam the roads, my skull cavity blissfully empty and my heart filled with the happiness that only wandering can bring me.

I don’t often get the chance to do that anymore, because my minivan, although practical, doesn’t evoke the same sort of wanderlust that my cherry red sports car does. The gears don’t scream as I red line right before I shift from first to second, the engine doesn’t lurch comfortingly with every shift, and when it comes to gripping the road like a glove, well, the minivan always feels like it’s one toke over the line (sweet Jesus).

Yeah, I’m a wanderer.

———–

I’ve always meant to take a class on car maintenance. I know they offer one at the community college nearby and I’ve always thought that I should know how my car works. Especially since I got ripped off. What, ME bitter?

It’s happened a couple of times, where I’ve been taken for a ride (heh) because I simply didn’t know any better and each time it’s made me Furious George later on.

The first time, I nearly bought a rear-wheel drive sports car to be driven in the Midwest all year round. The car weighed all of 4 pounds, and when I asked the salesman about it, he’s all, “Oh, you’ll be FINE in the winter!! It’s FRONT WHEEL DRIVE.” When I asked my friend’s father about it, he’s all, “I NEVER drive that car in the winter! It’s totally rear-wheel drive.”

When I called to chew out the salesperson to his manager for being a lying douchebag, the manager said, “Well, that’s YOUR fault for not knowing.” That’s a safety issue. And I was lied to. Way to be an upstanding citizen!

The next several times, it was all done at a major oil changing place. I’m sure it’s happened to most of us.

Oil Change Person: “There’s something wrong with xxhasfigbfsdKfg.”

Aunt Becky: “Huh?”

Oil Change Monkey: “I SAID there’s something wrong with wntuifdhsvfdosG.”

Aunt Becky: “..uh, okay.”

Oil Change Guy: “You need this fixed NOW.”

Aunt Becky: “Why?”

Oil Change Dickhead: “If you don’t, your car will EXPLODE and you will DIE!!!!!!!!!”

Aunt Becky: “Holy crap.”

Oil Change Jerk: “Pretty much if you don’t get this done, you’re an idiot and you’re killing yourself and hundreds of innocent children.”

Aunt Becky: “Wow. When you put it that way…”

Oil Change Manipulator: “Give me your credit card now.”

Aunt Becky: “..fine.”

Oil Change Guy: “That will be $4,000.”

Aunt Becky: “WHAT!?!!”

Oil Change Shyster: “Saving the world isn’t cheap, sucker.”

—————

Because I do not want this to happen to any of my Pranksters, I have teamed up with Ford to do a Q and A with Cristina Rodriguez where I can ask her all about Car Maintenance. It’s going to be on Blog Talk Radio, which is pretty much going to win me an Oscar or something.

Ford wanted me to ask YOU (which is the part where YOU become celebrities) what you want to know about car maintenance or repair so that I can ask their expert. Or, if you have no specific questions, just, you know, talk about cars and stuff in the comments. I can totally pull an interview out of stuff you talk about. The more stuff you say, the better.

So pull up a seat next to Your Aunt Becky, I’ll pour you a nice glass of vodka (only if you’re not driving), and tell me what’s on your mind.