The Daver: “WHAT are you DOING?”

Aunt Becky (calmly): “What does it look like I’m doing?”

The Daver: “It LOOKS like you’re gearing up to go outside in the middle of a fucking tornado with your rose pruners.”

Aunt Becky (bored): “Yuppers.”

The Daver: “There was a TORNADO SPOTTED, Becky! You should get into the basement or something!”

Aunt Becky: “The storm has driven off the wasps, Daver, I can finally prune the fucking roses in daylight! Without the EARWIGS ATTACKING ME!”

*shudders*

The Daver: “There may be a TORNADO! It’s pouring buckets AND there’s a thunderstorm going on!”

Aunt Becky: “Don’t be such a puss. The tornado won’t come here. We’re in the middle of civilization. Tornado Alley is MILES out west. You Wisconsin people, I SWEAR*.”

The Daver: “But!!!”

Aunt Becky: “Besides, if I’m outside, I can hear the sirens of the town much more clearly than if I were inside. THEN, I can come in and alert you and we can make a break for the basement.”

The Daver: “Are you REALLY putting your roses before us?”

Aunt Becky: “Um. Dramatical much?”

The Daver: “YOU COULD GET SWEPT UP IN A TWISTER OUT THERE!! WITH COWS!! AND HORSES!!!”

Aunt Becky: “Perhaps you should go hide in the bathtub, then. I’ll let you know when it’s all over.”

The Daver: “Maybe I just will.”

Aunt Becky: “I’ll rescue you when it’s all over, okay?’

The Daver: “TELL IT TO YOUR ROSES, BECKY. Maybe they can keep you warm at night!”

Aunt Becky: *walks out into the sheeting rain whistling “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn.”*

*There’s a longstanding rivalry between Wisconsin and Illinois (not, oddly, any of the other states surrounding Illinois). Wisconsinites call we Illinoisans FIB–Fucking Illinois Bastards–and we Illinoisans, uh, don’t have any clever names for our neighbors to the north. But shit, they can’t fucking DRIVE.

When I tell people that Alex, who is now three, wouldn’t let me out of his sight for the first year of his life, they normally give me That Look. The one that sort of implies that I’m a helicopter parent, you know, like I hover around him, so that Ickle Alex doesn’t DARE get a boo-boo wifout his Momma RIGHT THERE to cuddle him up and protect him from the big, bad world!!!

Considering I informed Twitter I was shopping for a bag of glass and new gun to give him for his birthday, I don’t think anything could be farther from the truth. I love my kid to chunky pieces, I could have done without the suffocation of the first year. Bumps, bruises, those are part of childhood. And shit, one look at my legs would tell you those are part of my adulthood too.

After his sister was born, I was fortunate enough to secure him a spot in an in-home daycare for three hours a day. It was probably the smartest thing I’ve done–even smarter than the time I tried to whittle a model of the Parthenon out of a marshmallow–because for three hours a day, the kid is with other kids the same age. He’s had to LEARN to adapt to a life outside of his mother.

Of course, he HATED. LOATHED it, even. The lady is fantastic, the other kids are all under five and she does stuff with them that’s full of the awesome like going to the fire station to see the trucks! Story-time at the library! They went to Costco to make cupcakes! I mean, life is good for Alex.

Now, my slow-to-warm-up son loves it. On the weekends he asks to go to her house.

Alex is just a particular brand of finicky that reminds me of both my father and brother, both of whom are so set in their ways that they can hardly stand it when things do not go according to plan. It appears that not only does my son resemble my brother in appearance, he’s taken after the Sherrick side of the family in temperament as well as sense of humor.

(Pithy aside: He told his first joke last week, which he found UPROARIOUSLY funny, “P is for POOPY! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” And Alex, he has the best laugh of any of my children, so we all laughed along, first out of shock that he’d told a joke and then because he was in hysterics.

My child, all right.)

St. Charles is a Soccer Town, you see, and we’re all practically expelled from the womb clutching a wee soccer ball. So it was merely a matter of time before Alex was handed his, and as he’s spent the better part of two years kicking soccer balls, I figured this would be like heaven for him.

What I DIDN’T realize is that Alex would have a problem with being on his own to do it.

But we don’t give up in my family, at least not on my fucking watch, so I’ll be dipped in pigshit before I let my kid leave soccer early because he’s unhappy about it being DIFFERENT. He’s slow-to-warm-up, which means that in a couple of weeks months I’ll have to pry him off the field, but for that moment, I was stuck, sweating my balls off, and holding my son, wondering what to do.

The other parents were all sitting in their lawn chairs watching their kids play soccer, looking at me, bemused.

Dave was wrestling with Amelia, who was trying like hell to wander into a Ebola-ridden puddle and shrugged at me.

I looked at Alex, still happily nestled in my arms.

Then I did the only thing I could think to do.

I put him down, grabbed his hand and marched my sandal-clad feet down to the soccer field and said, “Let’s play some soccer, kiddo.”

There I was, the World’s Most overgrown three-year old, playing a mean game of Red Light, Green Light on the field with the kids like a damn asshole, while the other parents looked on, laughing. I was Billy Madison, except in soccer.

You know what? It fucking worked. I mean, I looked like a bigger moron than normal, jogging around the field like an overgrown toddler, but still, the kid stayed, he’s happy about going back next week, and soccer is going to be just fine.

Thank Baby Jesus, Ben can play his violin (he has perfect pitch!) without me up there playing alongside him. Because I’d hate to upstage some little kid when I busted out my version of “Enter Sandman” on the heavy metal cello.

It may surprise you to know that I have a brother. For brevity’s sake, we’ll call him Uncle Aunt Becky, but I’ll warn you that it’s not REALLY his name because he’s older than me, and how could my parents POSSIBLY have known they would have named their infinitely superior younger child Rebecca?

I am so superior, in fact, that my father recently informed me that when they saw my face, they knew they could do no better, so my mother was immediately neutered in the hospital after my birth. This was all delivered with a completely straight face, the sort that my father always uses when he delivers his jokes, which is precisely the same way I tell my horrible jokes, so it’s safe to say that these things DO run in families.

My mother claims that when SHE saw me that she said, “Well, that’s a face only a mother will love.”

My family is very, very nice.

Anyway, my brother, Uncle Aunt Becky, he’s pretty much my opposite, and not only in that he’s male and I’m female because as far as I’m concerned, he’s a Ken Doll down there. BLECH.

See, he’s a beautiful writer and photographer, who actually got a degree in that stuff, and I pollute the Internet by saying things like, “meat curtains.” He’s a yuppie and my personal fashion sense is *sniff, sniff* Yup, clean enough for government work. I’m a science-type and he gets pasty when I say things like “NEEDLES!”

Mostly, our differences lie in that he’s kind of a gym rat who likes nothing more than sticking his muscled arms in my face and directing me to certain areas of his house. I like working out, Pranksters, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t have hours of the day to devote specifically to the deltoid muscle. I’m lucky if I can manage a workout at all, let alone an entire day devoted to my lower legs.

Uncle Aunt Becky’s new thing is triathlons.

The gear for them seems to hold particular interest for Uncle Aunt Becky, which is a topic Your Aunt Becky finds as interesting as toast. Apparently it is quite a topic for people who DO these things, but for those who don’t, it’s about as interesting as listening to me discuss the merits of the Twitter client for iPhone versus Tweetdeck (doooooowwwn with Tweetdeck!).

Beige paint, Pranksters.

So this weekend, Uncle Aunt Becky was supposed to do an Iron Man Triathlon that he’d been preparing for for as long as I can remember (which is approximately 6 seconds). I got a call from my father on Friday informing me that my brother was NOT going to be competing in the Triathlon as he’d broken his toe walking into some lockers at work.

You may assume that someone so closely related to me would be clumsy as I am (who the fuck breaks her toe making a sandwich?), but you’d be wrong. Uncle Aunt Becky got all of the graceful genes in the family where I inherited all of the clumsy, hair-brained, “it just seemed like a good idea!” ones.

In short, Uncle Aunt Becky is LOADS smarter and more graceful than his sister.

Like, if The Daver were to get a phone call that went like this:

“Um, so Dave, I’m at the hospital because I broke my foot chasing after a lemonade truck. See, I REALLY wanted some lemonade and the truck didn’t stop…well, okay, I don’t REALLY know if it was a lemonade truck because I’m not sure if there are such things as lemonade trucks, but it was yellow and it made me THINK of lemonade and then I got thirsty and decided to run after it and then when I got close it’s bumper fell off onto my foot. And now my foot is broken and the truck was ACTUALLY a DHL or DSL or whatever truck. So anyway, I need some lemonade. Can you pick some up on the way to the hospital please?”

He would just say,

“AGAIN, Becky?”

But my brother, that’s completely a different story.

So upon hearing this, both The Daver and I stared at each other, jaws flappity-flapping in the breeze for a solid two minutes before we wondered aloud what the fuck had REALLY happened.

He never did tell us, but I have a feeling the story involves aliens or zombies or zombie aliens.

It’s really the only thing that makes any sense.

—————

Incongruently, the story of the birthday blowjob is up at Toy With Me. It’s a great one.

On Friday, I saw one of those things that made me happiest in the pants: my friend Brittany over at Barefoot Foodie (who, if you don’t know her, you should, because she’s full of The Awesome, and you should trust me because I’m a doctor) had actually been featured on a Social Media Site (this one was Shamable).

Now this was beyond fucking awesome to me because Brittany isn’t a cookie-cutter blogger. She uses words like “fuck” and “asshole” and peppers her posts with all sorts of interesting imagery that make her as endearing to read as a doe-eyed puppy. But much fucking funnier.

This means that maybe–JUST MAYBE–the media is going to stop paying so much attention to blogs of user submitted photos and start focusing on blogs with REAL CONTENT. You know, WORDS? Because you can only look at pictures of cute kitties with funny captions for SO LONG until you realize that there is another world out there–a world of people who use words, REAL words to write with.

And that people like to read those words, even when those words are dirty. It doesn’t matter how profane we are, PEOPLE READ US. I like to imagine that if she, or I changed our MO and started simply writing posts like,

“Today, I looked at my beautiful glorious children who shone like diamonds in the sun, and then I smiled.”

(insert over-processed picture of my Photo-shopped beaming kids)

I’d lose my Band of Merry Pranksters. Why? That’s fucking VANILLA. Sure, it’s a fine sentence, I GUESS, if you like boring, old tripe that’s pretty much the same thing you can find at any other flowery blog.

No, you come here to read this sentence:

“My crotch parasites shrieked and wailed as they all dog-piled onto my pants (oh, no, not my WHORE pants that are STILL fucking MIA!), that had pooled around my ankles as I tried in vain to take a crap without an audience. I laughed as they fought over the prime spot, closest to the bowl of the toilet, and thought, “I guess I’ll take dump alone in about 15 years, eh?””

There’s a difference, clearly, and that’s what keeps YOU here (the good ones, at least) and bloggers like Brittany and I off the radar of the social media sites and the mainstream media sites. We’re too…profane, I guess. Not cookie-cutter enough. We swear, we curse, and we talk about the sort of stuff other people don’t. It’s why you read us, and why I read you.

Sometimes, I am marginally funny. Sometimes I shock you. Sometimes, I am heartfelt and then I make you nervous that I might have had a lobotomy and lost some of my brain function. Either way, I write the hell out of my blog. It’s raw, it’s real, and it’s all Your Aunt Becky.

I write because I have to. I write because I love it. I write because I don’t know how not to. I write because that is what I do. I am damn proud of it. My ickle blog is a labor of love. My Band of Pranksters are my friends. They inspire me.

To be able to Write Hard and to do it genuinely, you have to do it without fear. Do I get people who come here and hate me? Of course I do. It’s not terribly often, and typically on posts over five years old but I have been called names and insulted. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt, but I’d also be lying if I said it hurt a lot. But if someone coming and trying to hurt me is the worst thing that happens to me today, well, shit, that’s a damn good day, Pranksters.

In the end, so fucking what? Plenty of people don’t like Your Aunt Becky. The haters can take a number.

To those of you who have your own blog, I encourage you to Write Hard. Write because you love it. Write because it fulfills you. Write because it makes you happy and because without it, you feel like your arm is missing and your pants are on backwards. Write because you’re empty inside when you don’t. Stick your neck out and say what you mean. Be authentic. Be REAL. Show the world who you are. Write without fear.

Write Hard, Pranksters. Write Hard.

On August 20, 2001, after nearly 24 hours of hard labor, my husband’s first son, Benjamin Maxwell, was born. He was hundreds of miles away, out of state, likely on campus for class, and I have no way of knowing if he knew that his first child had been born.

Did something stir within him at the highly civilized hour of 2:50 in the afternoon? Did he shiver as his son drew his first breath and screamed his bloody head off? Did he stop for a second, not knowing why, as his some-day-will-be-wife cried as she looked at her new son for the first time, marveling at his beauty and how damn HEAVY he was?

I don’t have any way of knowing that, of course, and The Daver, he doesn’t remember. The pictures my mind paints, though, that’s what they all look like. Two realities, separate, then intertwined.

The Daver, he met Benner and I when Ben was two and I was twenty-three, and while he confessed to being nervous about dating a girl with a kid, all traces of nerves were evaporated when Ben raised his stubby arms up to him to be carried across the street for the first time. When Ben wrapped his arms around Dave, a father was made.

That night, on the drive home, Ben spoke one of the only sentences he had, and certainly one of the only ones he’d made up, “Awww…..(sniff)….BYE DAVE.” The kid, he loved his Dave. For an autistic kid, that’s huge.

From then on, they were like cheese and macaroni. When Ben was obsessed with the planets, Dave had a friend paint the walls of Ben’s bedroom in our condo with Jupiter and Mars. When Ben needed to potty train, Dave went to poop class with me. When we needed to find a preschool, Dave helped me look.

When we got married, Dave asked Ben for my hand in marriage. Ben didn’t hesitate before he said said, “Yeah, okay!”

After Ben walked me down the aisle, he stood up as Dave’s best man, and Dave’s vows to Ben had the entire church weeping. I could have skipped the white dress entirely (and trust me, I would happily have done so. I am SO not a wedding person) and left my kid and his dad up there alone.

2 years after we were married, March 20, 2007, Ben became a big brother and Dave became a father once more. I don’t know who was prouder. I still don’t, actually.

2 years after that, Ben and Alex became big brothers and Dave became a father for the last time.

Fathering a child may be easy, but being a dad, that’s the hard shit. I know that.

I have more male readers than most blogs with “Mommy” in the URL  (thanks to saying things like “beef curtains,” “sweater kittens” and “anal leakage”) and I’m honored to know all of you.

Happy Father’s Day, Pranksters.

And Happy Father’s Day, The Daver. We’re damn lucky to have you.

[flashvideo file=wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Having-My-Baby.flv /]

Today’s guest post comes from a Russian blogger named Marinka who is freakishly hilarious (notice the word “freak” in there). You’ve PROBABLY seen her skulking around such blogs as Motherhood in NYC and The Mouthy Housewives. I’m also speaking with her on a panel at BlogHer so I figured I should play nice in the sandbox with her for awhile before I throw sand in her eyes and pee on her dress.

Plus we’re friends, although I’m guessing that I probably won’t be inviting her to any dinner parties any time soon. She might have rabies or try and use one of my crotch parasites as a coaster. If she offends you, blame it on being lost somewhere in translation. I always do, although she probably doesn’t ACTUALLY speak a single word of Russian and is actually just insulting me every time we talk.

Ass.

Remember, any insults should be directed AT Marinka, not Your Aunt Becky, who loves you and thinks you look fantastic in those pants. Wait, are those MY MISSING PANTS? Because 7 days later, the pants are still gone.

———————-

I’m so happy that Aunt Becky asked me to guest post because I have something to get off my Marilyn Monroe-like chest and I sure as hell don’t want to do it on my own blog.

Let’s say that you’re invited to a dinner party. Would you appreciate being told in advance if one of the guests were a dwarf? Because I’m firmly in the HELL YES! camp whereas my friend who hosted the party was all “what? Oh, yeah, I guess he’s a dwarf” about it. Which is fucked up.

So I walk into this dinner party and see the people and THEN there’s this short person and of course I immediately think “OMG” because I am very socially awkward and am only allowed to mingle with people occasionally, (ed note: GEE, I WONDER WHY) so I’m worried about how I’m going to mess this up.

Of course I don’t want to appear like I’m ignoring Peter the Dwarf because I’m uncomfortable, so I rush to him and engage him in some kind of conversational torture that he would like to end as soon as possible, without actually going through the exertion of having me killed.

During the whole conversation, which I totally dominate, because I don’t want him to think that I only came over there because he’s small, I am hyper-aware not to use words that imply shortness at all, even a little bit. Therefore, I am choosing my words carefully, but also speaking really fast, for a complete psychotic freak touch.

“You could have warned me,” I seethed to my friend later.

“What? Peter’s great,” she said.

“He is great, but he’s SO SHORT! And I was completely unprepared. I made a fool out of myself.”

“How do you prepare for HEIGHT?” she asked.

“Fuck do I know. I wouldn’t have rushed over to him like a moron and started talking nonstop. I would have been nonchalant. Like oh, hi!”

“Yes, the oh, hi would have been a nice touch. You were fine.”

And then I married a man whose secret pet peeve, unbeknownt to me (because apparently that’s how secrets work if you’re not a blabbermouth) is  how badly dwarves are portrayed in movies. “I don’t understand,” he told me. “Why does Hollywood think that dwarves are funny and that it’s ok to laugh at people because of their height?”

“Why are you talking about dwarves?” I asked.

“It bothers me,” he said.

“Well, since we’re sharing,” I decided to strike, “if you were going to a social event, would you want to know if there was a dwarf in attendance?”

“What social event?”

“Like a dinner or a party.”

“A fundraiser?”

“No, just with friends. For fun.”

“Why would I need to know who was attending?”

“You know, to prepare yourself.”

“Prepare myself for what?”

“For…for the dwarfhood.”

“Why do you need to prepare for meeting a dwarf?”

“So that I’m not unprepared, obviously.”

“…”

“I wouldn’t want to look surprised.”

“…”

“I’m not the weird one here.”

He sighed the sigh of the ages. “Maybe people should warn their guests that you will be attending.

“Also a good idea,” I conceded.

So I totally swallowed the red pill on Mother’s Day and forgot to make more of my cards-you-should-never-send-to-someone-unless-you-hate-them. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re probably better off, but here’s the link. As you can see, I have a lot of work to do (most of that is going to be finding artwork I can actually USE, which is shockingly difficult) (I’m all ears to suggestions)(if any of these are your images and I’ve taken them in error, please let me know and I’ll remove them immediately).

But Father’s Day is this weekend, and how could I forget with The Daver constantly telling me things like, “Oh, well, the new iPHONE is coming out!” and “I need a new computer!!” Because apparently, Father’s Day is cause for me forking over loads of cash. Who knew?

Since I borked on Mother’s Day, I figured I should make it up to all of the three dads out there who read my blog and might appreciate the sentiment. If Hallmark were smart, this is what they’d make because inappropriate is always better than appropriate.

Technology and I have a somewhat tenuous relationship. Without certain members of my family doing such things as “programming my remote” and “plugging in the microwave,” I’d probably still be stuck staring at a can of Spaghetti-O’s forlornly and wishing I could figure out how to open it. It’s not that I’m inept, it’s just that I’m inept.

I’m okay with this because while I have routinely explained that dirty socks actually do not have to roam about the house in pairs of two, looking for a family, but prefer to actually live in the basement by the washing machine, my pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

Division of labor, I guess.

The television, however, I have figured out.

Not maybe the fancy doo-hickeys that go along with it and all the buttons on the 57 remotes that we own (apparently they all do mystifyingly separate but all equally important functions and can never, ever be thrown away, ever), but I understand how televisions work.

See: my television is home to a number of very small actors who are incredibly versatile. While sometimes they boringly report the news (although never naked, because we’re not in the UK), when I switch channels, they seamlessly switch to contestants on American Idol, a wee Ryan Seacrest joyfully narrating and building the suspense. The tiny actors then whip out instruments and sing and dance and occasionally even have talent.

The actors that live in my television set are not the same as the ones that live in yours, though, so we’re never watching the exact same episode of Law and Order: Incredibly Depressing Episode Where You’re Reminded That At Any Moment Someone You Love Might Be Raped (and Probably Die), because having MY actors live in YOUR television set is positively absurd.

But the actors that live in my television are amazing, I’ll admit. They’re almost as awesome as the hamsters that live in my air conditioner that hold ice cubes in their mouths and blow cold air through the vents at me (but nothing, let’s be honest, is THAT awesome).

No, the actors are awesome because no matter how hard I try to catch them in the act of switching between programs, I simply cannot do it. That means that no matter what, I can’t catch Ryan Seacrest announcing, “THIS, is your NEXT RAPE VICTIM!”

But THAT, Pranksters, is what I so desperately require my television to do. If I could make my television set do anything at all, I would make it so that all of the programs did a mash-up.

Meaning, that at any time, you could catch Dexter Morgan mutilating one of the Desperate Housewives, his hair all sexy and askew, as he told them all of his secrets, yelling about his Dark Passenger.

Or maybe Dr. House could come in and do a musical number with some of the Glee kids about the wonders of Vicodin, because honestly, there’s nothing not wonderful about Vicodin, once you get past the potential for addiction and stuff. (WHATEVER)

The horrible contestants at the beginning of American Idol would be chased off the show by some roaming sharks from Shark Week, screaming as they were eaten alive, right in front of your very eyes. I mean, don’t tell me you haven’t thought “Jesus, people GET A FUCKING LIFE” when you’ve seen some of your fat male television actors traipse across the American Idol stage in a Star Wars themed thong bikini, making your ears bleed.

Kate Gosselin would find herself on Dog, the Bounty Hunter as his new wife and occasionally all of the actors would duke it out a la Celebrity Death March.

Then my television would have to make me popcorn. OBVIOUSLY.

On the list of things that I hate (including thousand island dressing and Farmville), shopping for pants is right up there. It’s probably in the top five, and if I were an organized list maker, I’d be able to tell you that for sure. But I’m an ENFJ which is like fancy mumbo-jumbo for saying that I don’t like making lists, I think.

It’s worse when I’m fatter because, obviously, who wants to go shopping for pants that look like they could be made by Olag The Tentmaker? And worse, who wants to PAY for that privilege? I know, I know, you’re supposed to just buy what fits you, but honestly, I’m a vain bitch and I don’t WANT to buy something that reads a number that makes me hyperventilate. I don’t CARE if I have to squeeze myself into it, I’ll take the smaller size, thankyouverymuch.

Or I did, until I had some babies, gained a fuckton of weight and realized that you can’t just magically make yourself squeeze back into your size 6’s without some real effort.

So, for every size that I am, I buy one or two pairs of pants and when I outgrow them–the DOWN way, I mean–I toss ’em and buy another, smaller pair.

I learned a long time ago that you should always buy pants a little snug when you’re dieting so you don’t have any room to grow, and really, who DOESN’T want to go down a size? Honestly, now. That’s pretty much cause for celebration with a nice, tall glass of water!

I’d bought myself new pants a couple of months ago, one a standard size, and the other with some what I like to call “torture panels” that are designed to suck you in in your gut and your thighs. Flattering for when you’re going out, for sure, but they were the step DOWN from the standard size.

I considered those to be a gradient from that same size. If you’re a man, you’re probably shaking your head because a 32 is a 32 is a 32 right?

Women’s sizes don’t run that way. A size 6 is NOT a size 6 is NOT a size 6 which is why our heads spin when we have to go clothes shopping if we have any problem areas. Me? I always have had a gut. I’m getting a tummy tuck when the weight is all gone, but for now, I have a gut and it makes pants shopping annoying.

So I’m in my bedroom, and I can find my Torture Pants, the size BELOW that, the pants I am currently wearing (dirty from the garden) but not the standard size I am looking for. I had seen them several weeks before, in my bedroom and now, nothing. They weren’t under my bed. They weren’t BEHIND my bed. I hadn’t been wearing them because they hadn’t fit properly before and now I was sure they WOULD fit.

Desperately I searched my bedroom. I pulled apart my closet, looking at all my skinny clothes mournfully while I diligently searched for my pants.

Where.the.fuck.were.my.pants?

I grabbed a shopping bag and carefully began to sort out the maternity clothes I SHOULD have gotten rid of months ago. I sorted sheets. I found an old bottle of perfume I’d thought I’d lost. And still, NO PANTS.

I went downstairs and looked in the basement to see if they’d gotten thrown in the laundry. NO PANTS.

I checked in Ben’s room to see if somehow, he’d overlooked that he could have fit his entire body into the leg of the pants, decided they were his and put them away into his dresser. NO PANTS.

I then checked in Mimi’s room. Had someone stashed them oddly into her walk-in closet? Nope, just toys. I made a mental note to clean it out this week and wandered off, furious. Where the HELL were my PANTS?

I had worn them in my room. I had taken them OFF in my room, deciding that I’d WAIT and wear them again when I could actually BREATHE while they were on my person. That meant that unless they’d become intelligent, they couldn’t have actually LEFT the room on their own.

I quizzed the usual suspects and as is the case when I ask about the poo stains on the toilet seats, it was all deny, deny, deny.

So if matter is neither created nor destroyed, where the shit are my pants?

———————

My conclusion to my search for the crystal ball-gag is up at Toy With Me.

*No, really, how do you do that without sounding a) overly deep? or b) callous? I don’t know quite what line to walk there.

*Because when I was on Twitter tweeting about #yellowballoons and #suicideprevention the rest of the day I was all, “um, can I tweet about anything normal like MY VAGINA ever again?”

*Most people probably wouldn’t call that NORMAL, but then again, most people don’t have the absurd kind of assumed familiarity of calling themselves Aunt Becky on The Internet so really, who is to say what is normal in that instance?

*At least I don’t call myself “Mrs. Justin Beaver” because that would be creepy. He’s like 12 and with the exception of his flippy hair I DO NOT understand the appeal.

*Thank you to all who took the time to tweet, comment, or send love yesterday or today. Unlike most of the causes, suicide and depression are two of the ones that people ACTUALLY can feel the support and effects from the the effort. I got probably 20 messages from people (not spammers!) who had been affected by this and really appreciated people talking about it.

*It solidified even further my feeling that people are almost entirely good.

*My luck with scales, however, is almost entirely bad. Not like you’d imagine, though. Somehow I’ve managed to encounter two SEPARATELY broken scales that registered my weight at….(wait for it)….0.0 pounds.

*I’m pretty sure that makes me VERY skinny and I should probably gorge on donuts.

*Except that filthy scale lies because it also informed me that chubby Amelia weighs 0.0 pounds and according to my back, that is a LYING LIE.

*But 2 broken scales (one brand new!) would give me a complex if the top weight on the newest one wasn’t 400 pounds and I hadn’t recently been to a doctor to determine that I weighed NOWHERE NEAR 400 pounds.

*Do you guys REALLY want me to talk about dieting and the Diabetic Diet any more? I feel like kind of a stooge blogging about dieting, but when I read about OTHER bloggers dieting I get all inspired, so I’m ASKING you if that’s inspiring or interesting or if it makes you want to stab out your eardrums out of boredom.

(I can always make it a separate series of pages at the top, I guess.)

*Tomorrow I’ll have the page up for the votes for the camera contest (today will be the last day to enter).

*Solidifying my desire to move down south, I found an energy drink called “Whoop-Ass.” I require this to live and I cannot find it up here. I could ORDER it from The Internet, but it’s not the same, you see.

*I just want to be able to say, “Imma open up a can of (sugar-free) WHOOP-ASS on you!”

What’s randomly on YOUR mind today, Pranksters?