If you haven’t gone here to sign up for my book, I’d love you thiiiiisss much if you did. Because OBVIOUSLY. I need some more peoples to sign up (chapters will go out this weekend) and to reward you? I am going to run a contest to give you guys stuff for being so awesome. Seriously. I love you all.

Also? I somehow got nominated for the Hot Blogger Calendar, maybe because I didn’t win The Bloggie, and clearly because they didn’t see my Suzie Bright Eyes picture. So, if you want to vote for me (it’s for charity, people!), you can go here, scroll to the bottom, and click VOTE. Then it takes you to a SECOND screen where you tick a button. Not hard.

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From the ages of, oh, I don’t know, 3 to 24, my brother hated me. Unresolved issues, a sprinkling of jealousy and a (now ex) wife who fanned the flames of contention with her equally fcuked-up relationship with her own little brother made for a gigantic cluster-fuck of a relationship. For years I was baffled, then sullenly resentful, then I got over it.

You can’t make people (even family) like you. Period. End of story. Fin as those wily French say. Or is it the Eye-Tal-Ians? I can’t be sure.

(Years later, thanks to my sister-in-law, we get along just fine, thankyouverymuch, to the shock, I think, of us both)

But back then, when I was a teenager and he was my current age (28), he and his shrew of a (then) wife who shared my name (first, then last) bought a house in St. Charles, not too far–maybe 5 blocks–from where I live now. The only difference is, my house is in a 70’s construction subdivision, and his house was one of the original in the town. And, because he has a penchant for the dramatic and macabre, the old house he bought wasn’t any old house.

No, not a bit. Not MY brother.

It was built in 1837 in the heart of what was then downtown St. Charles, by a builder whose wife was a member of the spiritualist movement. Her name was Caroline and she believed that she could send and receive messages from the dead. As a famous medium of her time, she held many seances in her home, including one for Mary Todd Lincoln, who came to St. Charles in hopes of communicating with her deceased husband Abe.

But no, the macabre doesn’t stop there.

Once Caroline passed away, one of her daughters picked up right where her mother had left off, conducting seances in the same house. Her daughter later married a man who was an undertaker. The house was then used as a funeral home with one of the basement rooms used as an embalming and viewing room. The name of the undertaker is still etched into the glass on the front door, my brother happily pointed out when we came to tour the house.

(To think I was happy that my own home had central air.)

Anyway.

My brother and his then wife bought this home in the later 1990’s when I was a teenager. Shortly after this, my brother began to travel for business, leaving the country for weeks at a time. Also around this time, my former sister-in-law asked for a divorce. Even less reason for Aaron to be home.

So, when he was gone, I was occasionally asked to house sit, which confounded me: here I was, 18 with a boyfriend, and I was asked to stay in a house ALONE without parents, by my brother who hated me? Surely, there was a catch.

Turns out there was.

For someone like me, who firmly didn’t believe in ghosts, I wasn’t scared by the rumors that the house was haunted. Sure, the chalk painting on the wall in the basement (later, I learned, was the embalming room) of a wide-eyed girl with the phrase “JUST A PURE GIRL” underneath it was a little creepy. But St. Charles is an old town and between the houses I’d been to that had passages for the escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad and all the other old weirdness, I chalked it up to nerves.

He’d bought a creepy house.

End of the ever-loving story.

But no.

One night, after I’d promised my mother that I would pop over there to water the plants and hang out so that it looked occupied and lived in, I dragged my then-boyfriend over with me. Figured we’d listen to some music, hang out without any interruptions and maybe get a chance to have The Sex.

But no.

We pulled up, parked and walked in after I unlocked the door. It was like walking into a wall of unease. All merriment, all joy, all laughter was suddenly just gone. Sucked out of the both of us, like we’d entered The Vortex of The Fun-Free Zone. I eyed him and he eyed me back. The disenchantment was mutual, but we were going to power through it. Maybe it was just nerves or something.

But no.

We walked around the house and if we’d been actors on a stage, the directions would have read “The couple walks about, trying their best to act normal.” Very awkward and highly unexpected for the both of us. I went to the CD rack to pick out a CD as I knew my brother’s collection was far better than my own, hoping, I guess that a little familiar music would still the feeling of disquiet.

But no.

We sat down on the rug in front of the stereo and began to listen to some Mazzy Star. Okay, I thought, maybe it was just a case of The Nerves. Then the phone rang. Startled beyond anything, I jumped up, my heart thudding unhappily in my chest as I realized I was sweating profusely. Better answer that, I thought as I went for the handset in the kitchen. Give the illusion that someone is home, yeah, that’s the ticket.

(my brother hates to talk on the phone, so in hindsight, this was NOT what he’d have done)

Having been somewhat of a phone aficionado for most of my life, I was shocked that I couldn’t answer it. I tried to answer it, I pushed the right buttons on his new-agey looking phone, but no one was there. On and on it rang, Tim and I looking frantically at each other like answering this fucking phone won us the right to live or die. I couldn’t manage to answer it. No way, no how.

Then, just as the phone stopped ringing, the sirens downtown began to go off. The house wasn’t super close to the police or fire department, but the sirens were loud and close. All of a sudden, I got a vision of a car wreck somewhere close where people I loved had died. Popped into my head out of the clear blue sky. My whole body was covered head to toe in goosebumps and I began to shiver uncontrollably in the warm summer air.

It was then that I knew we had to get the fuck out of there before something Really Bad happened.

I took one look at Tim who looked back at me, both of us ashen under our summer tan, and we ran. We fucking bolted from that house as quick as we fucking could, panting and breathless. I called my mom to beg her to come and lock up after me because I couldn’t do it. My hands were too shaky to work the key into the lock.

Aaron sold the house several years later, had a couple of good laughs at my experience with the ghost, whom he claimed “hated women.” My mother, conversely, loved the ghost in that house who, apparently, loved her back. So the ghost, just like anyone else, had preferences.

It sounds so flimsy when I retell it here, because I can’t inject terror into your body like it was injected into mine. The analytical side of me says that what happened was just a stress response to being in the house of someone who didn’t like me particularly. It says it that I was feeding off the emotions of my surroundings and letting it overtake me. It says that there’s no such thing as ghosts.

The irrational, emotional side of me, though, doesn’t agree. The emotional side of me calls bullshit.

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Do you believe in ghosts? Have you had anything like that happen to you?

When I enrolled in my second college (which was technically more like my 0743067290 college, but for sake of the story, we’ll call it College #2, the college where I graduated from), they, unlike the other colleges I’d attended, had a Philosophy credit. I had Philosophy products and philosophies (i.e. “do not get out of bed before noon WHENEVER possible”), but I’d never intended to take a class in philosophy on purpose.

Let’s face it: I’m not the sort of person who wants to sit around debating what it really means when a tree falls in a forest. I’m too busy plowing through the forest in my mother-humping baby pink Hummer.

(okay, that’s a lie. I don’t own a Hummer.)

Your Aunt Becky is simply not a philosopher. It’s just not in her nature. Books that don’t have colorful pictures or swear words don’t much appeal to me. I tend to tune out when books have long unnecessary words and sentences that exist simply to exist, and the smaller and denser the text, the more I’m likely to use the book as a drool cloth.

But that doesn’t mean that I can’t do it.

Apparently, however, walking into my Philosophy of Religion class dressed not in the requisite black trench coat and stringy black hair made me an instant misfit. Perhaps I should have stopped showering and started shopping at Hot Topic. Because when I walked in, the sneers of the obvious philosophy students were palpable.

I took a seat, grabbed the book out listlessly and took out a notebook where I drew myself with a noose around my neck. That, at least, should have given me SOME sense of goth cred, but no.

The professor was interesting and I always liked to hear him talk, so the class, save for my classMATES, was tolerable.

By the end of the semester, their disdain for me was palpable (it was prophetic of how nursing school would be for me the following year, but I didn’t know that yet). Particularly full of vitriol was the guy that sat in front of me. Maybe he thought I was cute, maybe he thought I was a vapid bitch, maybe he thought I should be sacrificed as a sheep, I don’t know. I called him Suzie Bright Eyes.

But the day that we were supposed to get our final papers back, worth something like 65 percent of our grade, he was incredibly nervous. Clacking his fingers and drumming them on the long tables, he jabbered on to the guy next to him about how this would determine his grade for the class.

Our teacher was a notoriously hard grader, it seemed, and he seemed terrified that he would somehow fail and be unable to progress to the following class (this was a really high level philosophy class and how *I* wound up in it is anyone’s guess).

On our other papers, I’d gotten 99%’s so I wasn’t very worried. It just didn’t seem worth the extra anxiety, especially since I was lazy and tired. 50 million red pygmy hedgehogs didn’t give a shit, you know? It was fucking FINALS week and I had a 2 year old. I’d already DONE the best that I could do.

He got his paper back first and must not have done well because he looked miserable. His skinny, slimy pony-tail shook with emotion and his pale skin blotched red. I felt sorry for him, despite that he’d been a real ass to me for months before.

I got mine back and noted my perfect 100% with a “GOOD JOB” scrawled across the top and smiled to myself. I may look like this:

but I am a good student. Love me, hate me, say what you want about me, but I am an annoyingly good student.

So, Suzie Bright Eyes flips his greasy body around, glares at me and addresses me face first, instead of through snide whispers about “how they let ANYONE into the philosophy program these days.”

“What did YOU get?” he spat at me in a shockingly high voice, clearly hoping to rub a higher grade in my stupid-looking face. I could clearly see his “C” paper from my seat now.

Without waiting for a response, he looked down at my paper and noting the perfect score, his face literally dropped like a thousand toothpicks had been removed at once. A fwwwump!

You could literally see the wheels in his head turn as he simply didn’t know how to react. “How did YOU get this grade?” was the best he could sputter out, the disdain dripping from his every word. If a word could roll it’s eyes, each of his did.

I don’t know what he wanted me to say, but I’d had it with him and the rest of the class. I might look like a fucking idiot, but I’m not. I don’t have to wear all black and read Nietzsche in my spare time to understand philosophy.

So I said, for the first time since I entered the class, exactly what I thought.

“Fuck you, Suzie Bright Eyes.”

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If you haven’t signed up to pledge your allegiance to my book, I’d love it if you did. Just go here, drop in your name and email address and I’ll send out a chapter just as soon as The Daver shows me how. Tell your friends, your co-workers and your IMAGINARY co-workers!

Your Aunt Becky needs help and feels like a douche asking (sorry).

First, I have to say that I love you. Seriously. I love you all hard. Thank you for signing up yesterday. I was beyond touched. I have a post about it, but seriously, you guys made me cry.

SHUT UP.

I still need more help and people to sign up here for the pre-pre-order of my book. Just names and email addresses, really, so that I can dazzle publishers and show that really, I do have people who’d buy my book. But thank you, Pranksters. Thank you. I owe you all a big bottle of vodka and some sloppy wet kisses. If we manage to pull this off, drinks are on me.

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I might be a little obsessive, Pranksters.

Okay, stop laughing. Seriously, stop laughing. It’s not funny. Okay, it’s really funny. Because anyone who knows me well knows that the minute that I get an idea in my head, I can’t get it out until it’s done. One look at my orchid collection (which will kick YOUR orchid’s ass) will tell you that.

I’d be an awesome Evil Drug Overlord* if I had any desire to be evil, because I’d stop at nothing until I was, well, full of The Evil and I owned most of the Midwest. But anyway. My desire for evil is about equal to my desire to listen to Michael Bolton albums, which is to say that I don’t really want either. MUCHLY.

My desire for deliciously filled sandwiches with the crusts cut off, though, knows no bounds. You might be thinking, “Now, Aunt Becky, you’re 29 years old. What would you want with a product designed for 6 year olds?”

And that is where I would point out that you’d never had a clearly crack-filled Uncrustables. Which are as close to heaven in a neat, frozen package as I can find, EVEN if they sound like a rare STD**.

Sunday-Sunday-Sunday, rather than watching a monster truck rally, I set out on a mission to find me some Uncrustables. Clear over on the other side of town, I figured I’d simply POP into another grocery store and nab some more.

NOT SO, Little Butterfly. It was not to be. They didn’t have my Peanut Butter Filled treats. I nearly cried. Only the PB and & J filled ones, which, I’m sorry, I don’t think so.

Grimly I drove to grocery store number two, joking with The Daver and the two small kids who weren’t thrilled to be along for the ride that “Heh-heh, Mommy is SO SILLY!” They didn’t look amused. I wasn’t amused when I realized that the second grocery store didn’t CARRY the damn things for the love of sweet baby Jesus. THEN, to soothe my son, I had to drop $12 on a balloon arrangement. Because he’s 2 and balloons and red Solo cups are his obsession and really, I can’t deny him that.

Surely the THIRD grocery store would have my delicious, delicious Uncrustables! Why, I nearly pictured the boxes of neat little sandwiches and I running down the beach together, hand in, well, sandwich, laughing and playing, before I ate them.

My dreams fizzled into an audible pop as I realized the store did, yet again, NOT carry the brand that I wanted no NEEDED. Sadly, dejectedly, I walked back to my mini-van and faced up to my fate: I’d have to go back to Target yet again.

Dave said the words no one should say to someone who is obsessive: “Maybe they discontinued the plain peanut butter ones.” He might as well have said, “Maybe you should stop breathing for awhile.” I cried a little.

Once the kiddies were firmly ensconced in their wee beds, I took the first opportunity I could to run out to Target. And, as the lot of you told me that Target is also YOUR boyfriend, I should warn you to get tested for VD. We don’t use protection.

I nearly ran to the frozen food aisle, pushing aside little old ladies and strollered children, and finally, finally, it was like the light of heavens opened up and shone upon me. There they were: my savory morsels of peanut buttery-goodness.

All.for.me.

Before anyone in the vacant aisle could rush up and elbow me out of the way, I quickly shoved them all in my cart and furiously ran to the front of the store to check out. I dared anyone to look sideways at the 8 boxes of Uncrustables in my cart because I would have run them down without hesitation.

If the checkout girl was surprised to see a grown woman with a cart full of children’s food, she said nothing. I half-expected a manager to come by and try and stop me from buying them out of plain Uncrustables, but no, nothing like that happened. I happily walked out of Target with my bag of loot, grinning vacantly like the simpleton that I am.

And they were worth it. Every single bite.

*Heh-Heh. I am TOTALLY kidding, Mr. (OR Mrs.) DEA Agent. Drugs are for LOSERS. The DARE Program taught me WELL.

**By that sentence alone, you should know, Mrs (or Mr.) FTC Agent, that I was not paid to say this.

———————-

I am over at Toy With Me talking about things people stick up their, uh, YOU KNOW. Yeah, I know, it’s weird and awkward. But I actually SAW this stuff as a nurse! It’s REALLY not safe for work.

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The second half of my podcast with the fabulous Dr. Dick is up here and here. It’s full of The Awesome and I hope that you take a listen.

So wow, huh. If you’re reading this in a reader, I suggest you come and take a look around. Come see! Come see! It’s pretty! *claps up and down like a chimp*

Anyway. I kind of need your help today. But don’t worry. It’s actually not, like, HARD.

See, ages ago, when I rode a dinosaur to school and Jesus was my classmate, I was fortunate enough to land myself a couple of agents, Michael and Kristina of Ebeling Literary Agency. I had a book proposal that was full of The Awesome, everyone said so, and it was only a matter of time before someone eagerly snatched it up.

Then the crash of Aught-Eight happened.

The publishing world, along with the rest of the world, got burned when the economy plummeted and while everyone agreed that my stuff was great! My numbers just weren’t high enough.

But Your Aunt Becky, she is many things. And she is a tenacious beast, so Round Two of Book Proposals were drafted, incidentally, as Amelia was born, and sent off to publishers. Again, the publishers were interested, but worried. They’d been burned badly. People weren’t buying books in such droves.

New vs. old media! Cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria, Pranksters!

Publishers, it turns out, they like numbers. No one has said that I don’t have talent or appeal, because if LOL Cats can get a book, I should probably be able to score something.

It’s a numbers game. Publishers want numbers. They want to see big Twitter numbers, big Facebook Fans, huge subscriber numbers, all of that stuff, publishers want.

Along with my new site design, I have a new page up at the top left corner called, brilliantly “The Book.” If, my agents think, I can get a ton of people to fill out their names and email addresses saying that, “uh, hai, we’d order her book, publishers would be swayed over.

But if I need numbers, I need your help, my Mery Pranksters to get them. Blog it, Tweet it, beg people on the street, just please help Your Aunt Becky out.

It’s not money or a credit card I need, it’s just names and email addresses of people who might be willing to buy my book. Consider it a PRE-pre-order. Ask your coworkers, your mom, your dad, your friends, your IMAGINARY friends, whatever.

The higher the numbers (they’re looking for numbers, I emphasize, not your NAMES)(it’s not The Man looking for you, people), the better it looks. And really, this beats me coming around banging on your door and peeking creepily in your windows. WHICH I WILL DO.

I did door-to-door sales for Girl Scouts and I’ll do it again if I have to but I am not going to look cute in a costume designed for a third grader and mark my words, I WILL wear it.

In return for signing up, I will HAPPILY send you a chapter of my book (soon). Really, nothing about this sucks.

Just don’t make me hold a bake sale because seriously, that will make no one happy.

So, Internet, while you’re exploring my new site design and admiring all of the hard work that went into it, done by the disjointed efforts of The Daver, Your Aunt Becky (Sherrick Harks), Keeping You Awake and Mrs. Soup, won’t someone think of the NUMBERZ? By no means is it complete, but sometimes, you have to just get ‘er done.

Let’s get ‘er done.

Can you help me? Please?

My daughter Sara met this girl Abby when they were only about 2 years old.  My daughter fell in LOVE with Abby.  So the mom and I exchanged numbers and for the past 3 years we’ve had about 3 or 4 play dates per year.

They are a super nice family and I love them, I wish we could get together more often….but busy times, busy people.

Anyway, I think I can sort of tell that Abby sort of thinks of Sara in a …’could take this friendship or leave this friendship anytime’ sort of way.

They are only 4 and 5 years old.  When they are together they play really well.  But it just makes me wonder.  Why does my daughter LOVE this child so much and this child is sort of indifferent?

On the other side of that, another friend my daughter plays with, Cindy, loves my daughter Sara so very much.  And of course Sara is a bit indifferent.

I just always wonder about that.  Tell me what you think about it all?

(Names have been changed to make me feel clever)

I *love* changing names to make me feel clever, Gentle Reader! That’s full of the Awesome that you do too. Except I can never remember what I changed names TO, which is why I blog under my real name. Otherwise, you’d get wickedly confused when I called my son 74 different names in a single sentence. I’m clearly no genius.

But, tell you something you DIDN’T know, right?

ANYWAY.

Kids? Are fickle and weird creatures. That’s probably the shortest explanation I can give you. I’m sure a child psychologist could give you some more insight into WHY they’re weird and twitchy like that, but that’s just what they do.

Let me give you an example.

Ben (who is 8) has a best friend who lives in the neighborhood. All summer they were joined at the hip, and, in fact, they are in the same class in school. But they haven’t really played together since the end of August. Why? I HAVE NO IDEA. Ben has no idea.

Until this week, when they’re suddenly best of friends again.

No idea why.

So my answer is this: kids are weird and squirrelly.

Aunt Becky, I need help!  I don’t know what to talk about to people anymore! I just had my second baby on Halloween, and it seems like since then, all I can think to talk about are REALLY inappropriate things.  Like, the other day, I seriously considered changing my Facebook status to “Mommy’s nipple is super sore from nursing”.  WTF?! I know this isn’t appropriate! My DAD reads my status!! But right now, I’m crazy enough, I’d probably tell him to his face.  This is insane! Will this wear off?  Is there a support group?  People who don’t mind listening to this tmi minutia?

Thanks!!!

Oh Gentle Reader, I think that you’ve already FOUND that support group here. Or, at the very least, you’ve got a friend in Your Aunt Becky. Because you’re asking the same person who, just this week tweeted,

“My quest for honey uncrustables has been so far in a sad, sad word: fruitless. That so sounded like an exotic STD, didn’t it?”

and

“Sometimes, when I look like I’m staring into space, I’m really just imagining what I’d if I had a third arm.”

So, I suppose that what I’m saying is this: we’re all entertained by pointless TMI minutiae. Or, if we’re not, I have 4,668 people who follow me to point and laugh. Which is entirely possible. In fact, it’s likely.

If it bothers you, try picking up a newspaper and just reading the headlines so that you can talk a little bit about what’s going on in the world. Your brain will grow back once you start sleeping some more, I promise.

And I’m kind of a lost cause. But hey, I’ve got my Uncrustables, so I’m happy.

Dear My Band of Merry Pranksters,

I am in the middle of feverishly working on getting my new site design up and running and I need your help. What are your favorite posts that I’ve written? I know, I KNOW, I ask so much of you.

xoxo,

Your Aunt Becky

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P.S. If’n you’re going to BlogHer and want to vote to see The Mouthy Housewives and Your Aunt Becky (Sherrick Harks) speak, today is THE LAST DAY to vote for our room. So, go here, vote and let the people speak! Or not. Whatever. I’ll still BE there. Maybe I’ll speak in my OWN room. BY MYSELF.

Years of serving has wrecked my delicate, dainty wrists. I know we Midwestern girls are supposed to have thick, corn-fed wrists and ankles, but I never got those. Apparently, I was absent when they were passing those out.

My hands, too, are actually impervious to certain degrees of heat thanks to the hot plates which gave me topical nerve damage. Which is a great party trick, until it’s TOO hot, because then? I burn the bejesus out of my hands and that’s not full of awesome.

I have sissy wrists and sissy ankles and after years of lugging thousands of pounds of food and drinks around my wrists have sustained some injuries. So now and again, I bust out the wrist guards and mope about the house, cursing my former self and my genetics.

Tuesday, was one of those such days that I went a-courtin’ for my wrist guards, and having not needed them for years, I had no idea where they were. First stop, upstairs bathroom, which is rarely used.

Shocked by the sheer quantity of feminine hygiene products in one small place, I congratulated myself at having the foresight to stock up and BE PREPARED in case a whole troupe of women came through with their periods ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

I could have been on an episode of Hoarders. Except that I had no idea that I had anything like that under there. If only it had been something like DIAMONDS.

My shock quickly turned to dismay when I discovered that most of the stuff underneath the sink was…damp. And some of it was…mildewy. There’s nothing more disgusting than damp mildewy shit, except for damp mildewy shit that you put on your cooter, so I was suitably horrified.

I looked under the sink, saw that among the losses was my trusty ACE bandage, which had sadly succumbed to death by mold, and then realized that my sink; the U drain in my awful, ugly sink is leaking. Only, by sheer luck, when it’s being used.

So I did what any self-respecting hoarder of feminine hygiene products would do: I hid the evidence of my obsession. I gathered a garbage bag, threw away all of the maxi-pads and tampons, bleached the bottom of the sink, grabbed a bucket, threw it under the U-drain and realized that I’ll have to deal with it this weekend. Time for a new vanity.

Just as long as Daver doesn’t see that I have enough maxi-pads to fill a gigantic vagina, we’ll be all good.

While I should have been working on meaningful things like meeting deadlines and washing floors, I’ve instead been infatuated with the idea of finding free pictures online and turning them into HILARIOUS greeting cards. Because that is what I do with my time: worthless things!

Also, my line of cards has a name. “Love, Aunt Becky.” Because OBVIOUSLY.

We were at Target this weekend (also known as My Social Life) (also known as My Boyfriend) buying both groceries and pants for my middle child. The groceries, I should clarify weren’t strictly for Alex, but rather stuff that we could all safely enjoy. Deliciously, even. Especially Uncrustables, which are pretty much heaven in a wee package.

Alas, I digress.

In the children’s section, I happened to come across a shirt for my daughter that I found to be the proper amount of sass-a-frassery AND adorability and as such, I picked it up and exclaimed to Alex, who happened to be in the cart I was pushing (yes, we take two carts)(no we don’t FILL them), “Oh! Look at this cute cupcake shirt for Your Sister!”

Upon examination, Alex said “I want a cupcake shirt for Alex!”

What went through my head was this:

“Oh shit, Dave will kill me. This is a BABY FUCKING BLUE SHIRT with a frilly blue collar. And look at the cupcakes! They’re SPARKLY. I mean, there is not a single doubt that this shirt is for a girl. You couldn’t make this shirt more girly if you tried.”

“But I mean, he’s two years old! How the hell can you possibly tell a two year old that he can’t have a shirt because it’s for a girl? This is probably the most manly two-year old boy ever. His second word was penis. Who gives a fucking shit if he wears girl’s clothes? He’s a baby! HE’S STILL IN DIAPERS. I will CUT someone who looks at him funny for wearing girl’s clothes.”

So, I looked for the shirt in a 2T and I handed it to him. He grabbed it, hugged it and said, “I love you, Cupcake Shirt.”

Dave glared at me for a second before bursting out laughing because really, what the hell can you do? The shirt is pretty fucking cute. I kind of want one in my size.

(yeah, the coloring is off because I messed with the flash by accident)

The shorts, he insisted upon wearing, are actually Mimi’s.

Never one to let an opportunity pass him by, he insisted that his sister wear her cupcake shirt as well. This is exactly why I love kids, even if they poo their pants and teethe on my legs.

Probably the first thing that went through my shiftless, lazy, baby brain when I said my first word to a rousing round of laughter was “Holy shit, I have to do that again.”

The word? “Fuck.” I’m not kidding.

Over the years, it’s remained my favorite of the dirty words, but I’ve gotten more amused by pairing up other, less dirty words into combinations that, when combined, are even dirtier. Take the innocuous “meat” and the always fun “curtains” and pair them together and you have one of the best terms on the planet: “meat curtains.”

Shockingly, I am neither the user, nor the asker. This somehow ended up in my iPhoto account. I nearly died of happiness.

My first blog was named after another series of innocuous words strung together to make something even better: “Mushroom Printing.” I doubt you’ll find this in a Yahoo Answerbag forum, but if you don’t know what it is, let me tell you once and for all.

A Mushroom Print, My Merry Pranksters, is also known as a dick slap. To the face. Still confused? Think about it a little.

Anyway. There are lots of opportunities to make great combinations of dirty words out of NON dirty words if you do it right. I pride myself on that, especially as my kids get older and I can’t possibly run my mouth like I used to. So I just get more creative.

So hit me with your best shot in the comments. What can you put together to make us laugh?

———————-

I’m at Toy With Me talking about lousy lovers. It was one of those articles that SEEMED like a good idea when I wrote it until I realized that it MAYBE wasn’t such a wise idea. Probably because I’m going to get my ass beaten.

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And if you haven’t checked out Part I of my Podcast with Dr. Dick, the podcast can be found here on his main site and here on his sister site.

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Lastly, I’m redoing my blogroll, and I need you to go and see if your blog is on there (if, of course, you should be). I periodically go through and delete blogs that appear to be abandoned. If I’ve done so in error, or if you’ve updated your link and I haven’t done so, or you’re just. not. there!! Please, oh please! send me an email to becky@dwink.net with BLOGROLL in the title.

In the body, of course, give me the full website address as well as any compliments or complaints or promises of lavish gifts to be bestowed upon me.

If you’re asking for a link on my blogroll, please make sure that I am on your blogroll as well, because obviously.

I may not get to it today, but I will get to it this week.

While I normally don’t do two posts in one day, I simply had to share with you Part One of the podcast that I did with one of my Internet Besties, Dr. Dick, of Dr. Dick’s Sex Advice. His site, as you might have guessed, isn’t safe for work, but he’s simply outstanding.

If you don’t know him, he’s a sex therapist and a pretty fucking big deal, so you probably SHOULD know him, so just PRETEND you do and we’ll forget that you didn’t and move on.

Our podcast isn’t actually very dirty and you get to hear me read some of my favorite stuff from over at Toy With Me. I was completely nervous to use Skype, because I’m a noob who doesn’t understand technology, and was terrified I’d sound like a jackass when I was recorded, but I think it turned out well. You be the judge.

And if I do sound like an asshole, just go ahead and THINK it. You don’t need to tell me.

You SO should check it out and give Dr. Dick a whirl. He’s like my friend Dear Redhead with a penis. He’s amazing.

The podcast can be found here on his main site and here on his sister site.

Now, I just have to work up the nerve to VLOG.