I distinctly remember being in the 5th grade, sitting around at the end of class picnic and having to listen to everyone else prattle on about what they were going to “be” when they grew up. I only knew I wanted to be something that made me boatloads of cash without doing any actual work. What job that was, I had no idea.

To be honest, at 10 years old, I’d never thought about future career choices.

So when it came to me, I simply copied whatever the person before me said. It happened to be “a secretary.” At age 10, I wanted to “be a secretary when I grew up.”

I didn’t know what a secretary did, only that it saved me from saying “something that made me fistwads of cash,” or worse, stuttering blankly. Everyone else seemed so sure of what they wanted to do.

Every time I said that I wanted to be a doctor, people sort of patted me on the head and said a condescending “there there.” But a secretary, that seemed to be an okay choice. I turned 10, by the way, in 1990.

I never did find out what a secretary did until I became a nurse case manager in 2006, and I didn’t really let anyone deter my decision to become a doctor until I had a bouncing baby crotch parasite make that decision for me.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, because I was always at the top of my science classes, but that it just didn’t make any sense. Especially with single motherhood looming. So nursing it was, and nursing I hated.

I’ve left the sort of nebulous idea of what I was going to be when I grew up idea to fester until I really had time to pursue it. I plan to go back to school to get my PhD in virology (study of viruses)(I make myself sound so nerdly)(wanna make out?) when the kids are older. But for now, I’m making a go at writing.

And because I’ve never been able to be very successful at anything that I’ve done besides sit at home and eat bon-bons* and watch soap operas, I feel like I need to make a success out of myself.

To prove to myself that I can do something.

Maybe that sounds dumb, I don’t know. But because I’ve never really had the opportunity to have some sort of career that I actually liked or felt like I could be any good at, I am earnestly saccharine about making this work. And I will make it work because that’s what I do: I make impossible situations work. Eventually.

(Like the time I ate a whole box of cupcakes in a day)

I don’t go to work and have co-workers and meetings and bosses and feedback and a desk and a commute and coffee breaks and status updates and a help(less) desk and a supply closet. Sometimes I wish I did.

My day is surrounded by small people who poop their pants and teeth on my legs. I love them with all my heart, but I love me too.

I’ve been beating myself about the head with a mallet trying to figure out how I’m going to make something of myself. What I’m going to make out of myself.

I flash back to the 5th grade picnic every time The Daver and I have the same conversation (tri-weekly) that I had that warm, spring day:

The Daver: “What are you going to do? Because you’re miserable here.”

Aunt Becky: “Is this a multiple choice question? I can totally beat those just by guessing. I’ll go with letter C. Always best to go with C.”

The Daver: “I’m serious, Becky.”

Aunt Becky: “So am I, The Daver. C is always the way to go**.”

The Daver: “You need to figure out what to do with your life.”

Aunt Becky: “Wow! Since you put it THAT way! Okay. I’ll draw up a list of options.”

(draws a stick figure of The Daver with Aunt Becky cutting off his head. Doodles blood spurting all over the page. The draws “HEEELLLPPP MEEEEE! I’M SOOORRRYYY! bubble coming from his mouth)

The Daver: “Are you done?”

Aunt Becky: “Yep. I figured it ALL out.”

(wanders off)

It’s not that I don’t know what I want to do with my life, or even how I want to go about doing it, it’s just that these things take time. I’m a writer and the market for writers–even those with agents–isn’t hugely sprawling right now. So I wait.

I sharpen my knife, I pollute the Internet, I try to get my name out there without committing murder and I wait. Eventually, things will happen. My Empire is being assembled.

Bit by bit.

What else should I do while I wait, Pranksters? Because Daver’s right, I can’t live like this forever. I need stuff-n-things to do. Interview me, give me jobs, make me do things, help me, Band of Pranksters, I beg of you. (At least until the weather warms up.)

*WTF is a bon-bon?

**this is a lie.

—————-

I am totally going to make more of those cards available for (free) download. I’m in the middle of a site redesign, and I’ll have a whole page devoted to it because honestly, writing those was more fun than I’ve had in ages. BUT, I need to find more of the post cards that are FREE and not copyrighted.

So, Merry Pranksters, if you know where a certain Aunt Becky can find those (or if you want to make the images yourself and give them to me to use), it’s on like Donkey Kong.

If I were the sort of person that kept a day planner (hint, I’m not), the month of February would have exactly one task: SURVIVE. I don’t mean to sound all OH THE HUMANITY!! on you, it’s just the one month of the year where things just go horribly wrong.

If Caesar was all “Beware the ides of March,” Aunt Becky is all “Beware the month of February.”

Anyway, so I’m kind of in a bad place. I’m feeling pretty low because it’s Chicago and Ass outside right now and tired of myself and tired of being inside and kinda ready to get a sex change and move to Detroit. It seems like a wise idea, right? Don’t answer that.

So last night, I was lying in bed, not sleeping because that’s what people who have insomnia do: they lay in bed and they don’t sleep.

When I lay there, I think of a couple of different things:

1) I try to imagine all of the ways I’d kill the people who come up with the commercial jingles that run in an ever-loving loop in my head while I am lying there, not fucking sleeping. High on my list are the Daisy Sour Cream people and whomever cast Jamie Lee Curtis in the Activia commercial.

Because I’ll give you a motherfucking dollop of Daisy with my glock.

Also, I don’t want to think of your colon, Jamie Lee Curtis. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I don’t want to think of your COLON.

B) I think of all the words I will ban when I rule the world. Like hymen. And moist. And juxtapose. Because there was this AWFUL girl who sat at my lunch table in high school who was a pseudo-intellectual assbag who was all “juxtapose” ALL THE TIME.

Like, I could eat a sandwich and she’d be all “that sandwich is a juxtaposition of life.” And then I wanted to kill myself. Maybe with a bomb.

Last night, though, because I was feeling particularly vitriolic, I decided that what I needed to do was to create a line of horrible greeting cards for people that I hate. Not like funny cards designed to make you laugh, but cards that say what I really WANT to say.

I’m pretty sure it’s a cash cow waiting to happen. Or at the very least, it’s going to make damn sure you never have to waste a stamp on someone you hate again.

(yes, I made these cards)(no, not the PICTURES. What do you think I am, TALENTED!?! Yeah. RIGHT.)

I’m sure with all of the sleepless nights I have, I could go on and on and on and on. The market will be huge for my cards, I can feel it.

I’m off to wait for Hallmark’s call. I’m positive they’ll be all over my idea.

—————

I’m over at Toy With Me, talking about weird guys I want to have The Sex with. I just realized that I left my new husband David Cook off there which pretty much makes me the worst wife ever. Which, DUH.

While I would never ask specifically to re-live college, I must admit that my sophomore year was a metric ton of fun. And, if I’m being brutally honest, a good portion of it was because your very own Aunt Becky had moved in down the hall.

This would have been apropos of nothing, except that her roommate, It Means Butterfly, was all “Ooh, sure you can smoke in here!” and then she was all “Just kidding, I hate you!” and so Becky would spend a lot of time smoking having deep and academic discussions in my dorm room while spending every waking moment stealing my beer.

As an aside, I wish I could tell you that she was exaggerating the roommate stories (she’s posted them here, here, and here), but she’s not. I would be the first one in line to call her out for such exaggerations, but not only is Becky not exaggerating, that bitch broke my bubble chair. TWICE.

It’s because of all that smoking deep and meaningful conversation that I have been asked to tell you about the time we managed to put our hands on some fake IDs and headed to the local bar had such deep and meaningful academic conversation that we stayed up all night learning.

OK, I’m not fooling anyone. I’ll drop the act.

So, as Becky mentioned (here), she met our friend J the first week or so of college and developed a small crush on him. J was an RA on another floor in our building, and through some miracle, he was the only RA with common sense and decided not to bust the freshman on his floor who was selling fake IDs. I think it had to do with the laws of supply and demand: this kid had a supply, and J had two friends who had a demand.

J hooked us up with two fake IDs. Actually, this is a misnomer: they were real, honest-to-goodness, State of Illinois IDs. It just so happened that the IDs in question were not our IDs.

All things considered, Becky’s ID wasn’t that bad. The woman in the picture resembled her in as much as her current ID resembles her (which is to say only sort of), but she was about the right height, about the right weight, and yes, the ID said that she was in her 30s (we were 19), but it wasn’t that egregious an error and really, we were only going to the local bar. If we’d had a sheet of paper that said “SRSLY, I’Z B 21!” they probably would have let us in.

My ID, on the other hand, resembled me only in the sense that the woman in the picture – a woman with an unpronounceable Greek name – had long dark hair. At the time, I also had long dark hair. The ID said that I was in my late 30s (I can pass for older), that I was 5’2″, and 120lbs. I am 5’10” in flats and I usually wear 3″ heels.

I would kill to be 120, but I haven’t seen 120 since I was in jr. high. The icing on this ID cake was that the woman in the ID had brown eyes, and my eyes are not brown. It was only because we were going to the local bar and the local liquor store that the IDs were worth anything at all.

Best of all, the IDs only cost us $20 and we didn’t have to go down to 26th and California to get them. For those of you not from Chicago: in 1999, you did not want to go down to 26th and California. Just trust me here.

And so, it was because of these totally glamorous and completely valid (ha!) IDs that Becky, J and I ended up at the local college bar every Wednesday night.

Yes, to have long, deep, and meaningful academic conversations. Certainly not to drink underage! Oh, no, not us.

In an effort to look more like our IDs, we would don our sluttiest bar outfits, our 3″ heels, and break out every stitch of makeup we owned between the two of us. Now, I never let J do my makeup, but Becky, who has issues saying ‘no’, gave in and allowed J to do her makeup.

After an hour or so of careful consideration and conjecture on which shade of eye shadow went best with Becky’s outfit, Becky would emerge from her dorm room looking, well, like a tranny who just finished Theatre Makeup School.

J, proud of himself, would ask for compliments and I would say things like “Wow! You don’t look like a hooker!” and we would walk to the local bar and get our drink on.

Our motives were clear: Becky wanted to get away from It Means Butterfly, who would never join us in any kind of adventure (she once interrupted a date I was on to see if I could fix her computer. True story.). J wanted to convince himself that he was straight by hanging out with two beautiful women. I was majoring in English Literature, which, if you don’t know, means that I am destined to develop a drinking problem.

Here’s the problem with my drinking problem: I can hold my liquor.

Here’s the problem with my drinking problem, coupled with being Italian: not only can I hold my liquor, I’m fucking good at pushing it on everyone else.

Here’s the problem with my drinking problem, plus being Italian, plus being out with Becky and J: Becky and J are lightweights.

Light. Weights. As in, “Here, sniff this! Oh, whoops, let me roll you home.”

After a round or two of drinks, when J would be asking me whether or not I had planned on attending my 8:00 Poli Sci class, I would start singing “C is for Cookie!” and convince both Becky and J to have another round with me. And not that pussy rum and coke shit, either, dude. Seriously, what is that crap? Bartender! We need dirty martinis!

The problem with my drinking problem is that I never learned and when 2:00am rolled around and I decided that there were only six hours between me and a Poli Sci class where the gross guy who sat behind me hit on me relentlessly (yay), I would round up Becky and J and tell them that it was time to stumble home.

Stumble, of course, was a relative term. I could still walk in my 3″ heels just fine. Becky and J, however, could usually no longer stand.

The three block walk back to our dorm was much like trying to herd cats. I would literally push Becky and J toward our dorm (sometimes through 2′ of snow, and yes, still in heels), and then run to get in front of them to stop them before they would walk out into a street. The two of them were ra-dick-you-lus, stumbling, tripping (but never puking), and singing “C is for Cookie!” with me at the top of their lungs.

It was obnoxious and cute in the bar when I did it. It was not so cute when the homeless guys drinking 40s took one look at us and saw that we had neon signs screaming “EASY TARGET” flashing over our heads.

(Seriously, the fact that we survived college in and of it self deserves a diploma. I digress.)

Yeah, you disagree? Well, due to the magic of You Tube, I can give you a glimpse into exactly how obnoxious we were:

Yup, that was us. Drunk, decked out for the bar, and singing Sesame Street.

Oh, yeah, why “C is for Cookie!”, you ask? Because that’s what I managed to squeak out in PoliSci.

I’m an eater. If I’m happy, sad, depressed, bored, tired or anything else…I tend to eat. While I am overweight, I’m not obese, so many people probably don’t realize that I have a problem.

I’ve known for awhile – but really have no clue how to fix it. Any ideas??

Oh Gentle Reader, it sounds to me like you’re a compulsive eater. I’m compulsive too, so I get that, don’t think I’m being all judge-mc-Aunt Becky here (you should see my orchids)(or my blog).

But the thing is, you obviously know it’s not healthy because it’s not, and you need to fix it. So baby steps, right? First, you need to put your finger on why you’re eating and figure out your triggers and learn to avoid them. As someone who has successfully quit smoking, I know this works.

Change your routine.

You’re using food (smokers use cigarettes, alcoholics use booze, pill-hounds pop pills) to fill some other emotional void and that’s not going to work forever. It’s not healthy. So figure out what it is, which, it sounds like you have, and try and channel it into something else.

Find some other healthy things that bring you joy and turn those into your void fillers. Pick harmless stuff and do that. Read a book. Garden. Blog. Take a walk. The point is, you need to get your mind off of food and on to something else. Distraction is key.

There are some really wholesome things to do that involve your hands and your head. (have you seen my orchids?)

Chew some gum and work on some cross stitching (don’t diss the cross-stitching, people). Plan your meals on a schedule and when you catch yourself reaching for the bag of chips ask yourself if you’re REALLY hungry or if you’re using them as a crutch.

If that doesn’t help, try and talk to someone professionally. I wish you luck, because I understand compulsions completely. I’m lucky mine are so wholesome that I’m practically all “Golly GEE, Mister*!!”

I have recently become friends with someone and after a few months of really enjoying hanging out with she and her husband and kid, my wife and I have started noticing a habit we are not fond of. My friend tends to make fun of people everywhere we go.

At first for me this was just a sort of funny, not meaning any harm thing, but lately I see how she does it a lot, and I don’t really like it. It was brought to my attention because her kid and mine are at the same daycare, and she will very quickly decide she doesn’t like one of the other parents. The main one is a mom whom she held the door for a few times and the other mom never acknowledged it. Not a big deal to me, but for her now she feels it is ok to bad mouth this woman to us, where the other mom can hear it.

To me, that is crossing a line into being mean to someone who has really not done anything bad. Sure, she was rude on a few occasions and did not say thanks for holding the door, but seriously, let’s be adults. Anyhow, this has caused me to see how much she insults everyone around us, and gets super gossipy about the other kids and parents at daycare.

With the ones she likes, she goes out of her way to get e-mail addresses so we can include them in park outings and such, so she can be really nice, and I do truly like her. I think mainly she just needs to feel more secure so she won’t feel the need to put down others so much.

My dilemma is how to handle it when she is whispering and laughing her insults about the other parents at the park? I don’t want to confront her and hurt her feelings or ruin our friendship, but I don’t want to participate either. If I say nothing I’m afraid it will be awkward. Any ideas?

Well, now, I’m all for being bitchy now and again, but in this situation I’m afraid you’re stuck between a rock and a bigger rock. I mean, if you do nothing, you’re alienating the people that don’t really deserve it by proxy. And if you butt up against your friend, you’re an ass in her eyes.

If I were you I’d keep your mouth shut and not badmouth anyone who didn’t deserve it. It’s bad karma.

And really, I know that this person is your friend, but my advice is to tread lightly around her. I’ve known people like this before and I’ve never been able to maintain friendships with them for very long.

Anyone who notes faults in others is probably turning around to note fault in me, too, when my back is turned. Which, incidentally, is what happened every time with the people I knew who were like this. That makes it hard to have a real friendship.

I don’t doubt that it is a lack of self-esteem on her part, but I don’t want you to get sucked down the rabbit hole. Watch yourself, my friend.

Dear Aunt Becky-

I have a neighbor who happens to be a pretty decent friend with two kids.. One of which is an adorable 2 year old and the other is SATAN. Seriously a straight-jacket worthy psycho 6 year old. I cannot stand being around him because he is mean to my 3 year old and not in a..”oh he’s just a typically six year old kind of way. More like mean in a devil’s spawn kind of way. The problem is my friend asks me to babysit ALL of the time and I’m running out of excuses. Any suggestions on shutting down the babysitting thing all together?

Thanks

I love situations where you can’t tell your friend that you hate their kid. It’s so honest and refreshing. Like eating a poo sandwich!

I feel for you, duder. You don’t want to babysit and you don’t want your kid around the hell beast, because no matter what sort of emotional problems he has, that’s really not your problem.

It’s times like this when you are left no option but to tell the truth: you can’t handle children older than your own. It’s not quite the truth, but it’s not really a lie. Like that Britney song ‘I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman.’ Or…something.

You need to make up some sort of reason that’s believable enough (that require you saying “I don’t want to deal with your kid”) that doesn’t have you scrambling every time you see her number on your caller ID. Because really, you don’t owe her the favor of babysitting. There are babysitting SERVICES for that sort of thing. And even they can say “no.”

Then you can hand her the number for a Sitter City and be done with it.

——————-

As always, The Internet, please fill in anywhere that I left off in the comments.

——————–

And have a happy and safe Valentine’s Day and whatever you do, don’t forget that women prefer men with shaved balls. I am going to grow old, dimply and floppy with you, The Internet.

CONSIDER THAT A THREAT.

*shut the fuck up.

My neurologist looks like he stepped off a the set of a Western. I wouldn’t be surprised if, at any moment, he said “Saddle up, Pardner.” In fact, I’m kind of hoping for it. It beats the shit out of all the depressing options for different options for treating my My Grains.

Also, I have diagnosed him with GERD. I can’t remember anything about Nursing Diagnosis, but I remember most of the medical diagnoses we learned to get INTO nursing school.

My neurologist has GERD (gastroesophogeal reflux disease). I’m sure of it. I sort of want to tell him. I wonder if he knows…

Wow, these drugs all have incredible side effects, and in spite of the fact that he’s not wearing a fringe jacket or a gun holster and is telling me about drugs that may kill me, I really, really like my neurologist. This makes my current tally for neuros that I like at 3/3. Must be a record.

Okay, after all of that, we’re going to increase my Topamax dosage and add in a non-narcotic. Who knew narcotics could change headaches? Also, do you think he thought it was weird that I insisted that I DIDN’T WANT VICODIN over and over?

I was kind of the antithesis of drug-seeking behavior.

I was all “No, doctor who normally gives out pain meds, don’t give me drugs!” I probably said it 50 times. Probably the opposite of what he normally gets. Heh.

Oh shit. Now he’s asking me what I do for a living. Does “lazily pollute the Internet count?”

Phew. Went with “writer.” That’s an odd question.

OH. Now I see why. He’s warning me that I’m about to get stupider. Except he said it all fancy-like. “Cognitive impairment.” 1 out of 4 patients may experience cognitive impairment.

Well, now, I’m officially screwed.

Now I’m laughing like the village idiot. I mean, how do you get much dumber than this? Tears are coursing down my cheeks because I’m laughing so hard and the doctor is beginning to look alarmed.

Finally I catch my breath and explain that my stupidity is okay because no one’s lives are at stake with my job anymore. Then I take my new script, walk into several walls, and try to get into 3 cars that are not my own before realizing that I sold that particular car 5 years ago.

But the guy totally has GERD. For sure. I should call him and tell him so.

*A Fsssssshhhhh.

I knew of her before I knew her. That’s the mark of a truly great person, I think.

And she had that ability to make people feel like they’d known her forever. In my case, I kind of had known her forever. Since she was 13 and I was 14, which pretty much made us sisters for awhile.

I cried for a solid month straight after she died, two years ago today. Unable to make the silliest decisions, I was overtaken my my grief. I never ended up sending flowers to her funeral, not because I didn’t try and pick some out–I sat for hours flipping through flower websites–but because I couldn’t make up my mind.

Did the “Eternally Yours” scream out “I can’t believe you’re fucking dead?” Or perhaps, “Gentle Thoughts” bouquet might be more appropriate for someone who, at age 26, died of natural causes in her sleep, leaving behind her two sons. Someone else should have told me which to choose, because I was useless.

In the end, I chose nothing, because nothing could properly express how I felt about losing my friend Stef. Shit, I still can’t write about it. This stupid fucking post won’t capture the half of who she was. Because you can’t capture her essence.

By being her friend, you were a better person. She had a sparkle to her, not a quality most of us have, and if you were with her for very long, it rubbed off on you and for awhile, you were better too.

For years, I’d have gladly traded places with her without hesitating. She was everything I didn’t think I could be: strong and solid, funny and sweet. If she’d been a bitch, it would have been easy to be jealous of her, but she wasn’t.

During a time when I had no one, I had Stef. When I was pregnant with Ben, and his father sought refuge in another vagina, Stef was the one person who not only comforted me, as all of my “friends” turned against me for this transgression (obviously my fault. The situation sucked) but then chewed the vagina a new, well, asshole.

There aren’t a lot of friends who will do that for someone. Or, if there are, I don’t have them.

She sat with me day after day during my pregnancy with Ben, co-hosted my baby shower and told me that I looked beautiful 50 pounds overweight after I delivered. That’s a real friend.

I love her very much.

She was miserable after she had her first son. Even more after she had her second. She chose to drown her sorrows in bottles of vodka. I channel mine into growing orchids and writing words.

Stef died in her sleep after coming home from her second stint in rehab.

I don’t regret not reaching out to her and Doing Something, because, to be honest, after having been through 2 alcoholic parents, I know damn well that no matter how nice Intervention makes it look, for ever success story, the addict has to WANT change.

So sitting her down and saying “you need to CHANGE” would have done nothing. I can’t accept responsibility for her death.

I can accept responsibility for not telling her that I loved her before she passed. I never, ever thought that I’d be here, telling The Internet that I wish I’d been able to tell my friend one last time that I loved her.

Because she was so, so loved.

Her funeral was standing room only. The room was filled with mourners who wept over her open coffin. All of us crying for her, for us, for her children, listening to the string trio weep as they played the Stones song “As Tears Go By” hoping that maybe her spirit was in the room and could hear us tell her in death what we hadn’t in life.

The world is a worse, colder place without her. This much I know.

I miss her every day.

The Daver: “Baby, what’s wrong? You haven’t asked me all night how I rate your awesomeness level.”

Aunt Becky (despondently): “I’m just feeling…so…sad.”

The Daver: “Aw, why?”

Aunt Becky (listlessly draws in circles on table in front of her): “Well, I’m pretty sure that none of my television husbands even know I exist. I pine for Dr. House night after night, and still, he’s never even once responded to my advances.”

The Daver: “It’s just because he doesn’t know you.”

Aunt Becky: “And Dexter, DEXTER, Dave. I never thought I’d say that I wish I had a friend who was a serial killer, but I do. I want to have a friend who is a serial killer. Like Dexter! (pounds table) I want Dexter to be my friend!”

The Daver: “Baby, if he knew you, he’d want to be your friend.”

Aunt Becky (looks up at him hopefully): “You really think so?”

The Daver: “Of course. Who WOULDN’T want to be friends with a creepy internet person who blogs about her television husbands?”

Aunt Becky: “When you put it like that, I mean, of COURSE he’d be my friend! I’m a shoo-in for his BEST friend. And then, I just know he’d want to marry me. It’s a very logical step.”

The Daver: “Clearly.”

Aunt Becky: “I think I need to expand my cadre of boyfriends to include some new genres. I’m thinking I need a rock-star boyfriend now.”

The Daver (has left the conversation and is busily typing on his Blackberry)

Aunt Becky: “I follow some on Twitter. Ice-T and David Cook. Those are my next boyfriends…(trails off)

Aunt Becky: “Look out, gentlemen, I have you in my sights. I’ll be the cheese to your macaroni. The Fun to your Fetti.”

The Daver: “Wait, I though it was just David Cook’s Fanclub that followed you on Twitter.”

Aunt Becky: “Semantics, Daver. Who gives a shit? Either way, he is my new boyfriend. *pumps fists* All that remains is me telling him that we are now officially dating. Also, did you know that David Cook was my best friend growing up? TRUE STORY. We shared the sandbox for years.”

The Daver: “And to think, you could have had fame and fortune…”

Aunt Becky: “Yeah, well, Twitter and I are getting the DISCO band back together just as soon as I get my vocoder. Then I, too, will be famous for being in our ALL GIRLS disco band.”

The Daver: “You go ahead with your dreams, baby. Don’t let anyone get in your way.”

Aunt Becky: “Are you…are you ROLLING YOUR EYES at me?”

The Daver: “I would never mock something you were so serious about. Your unrequited love for people who you don’t know that you’re going to go off and marry is one of those things I couldn’t DARE mock you for.”

The Daver: “Much.”

Pashmina lived down the hall from me and was one of the original merry pranksters (although we never called ourselves that). While SHE was blessed with a fucking awesome roommate, my own roommate, It Means Butterfly was about as passive-aggressive as they come. So rather than deal with her bullshit, I escaped to Pashmina’s room whenever possible.

Mostly to steal her booze and smoke, but you know.

Along with Pashmina, the Merry Pranksters included James, who was an RA on another floor. On James’ floor, he had a kid who had a brother who was a bouncer at a club. That kid, in exchange for…something, gave Pashmina and I fake ID’s.

I think we were supposed to give him money, but I never did because that’s the way I rolled.

The bar down the street was a college bar and pretty much so long as you showed them AN ID, they didn’t so much care if your picture showed that it you were actually Sasquatch.

But we were 19, and the ID I took showed a girl who was 30. On my best days, even now, I don’t look 30. She was also 5 foot 10 inches tall, and I’m, well, not. I’m 5’5″ and really, even in heels, I’m not like a commanding presence.

Her name was Arhontia, and she was very, very Greek. But Greek, is another one of those Middle Eastern ethnicities I can typically pass for, if you think about it really hard. But we decided that the best way to get me to pass for a 30 year old tall Greek lady was to pile on the makeup.

James immediately volunteered. So I let a not-out-of-the-closet-at-the-time-guy at my face with a makeup kit not designed for my face for my first ever trip to a bar. I sat there as the make-up was piled on. And on. And on. And on. And on.

I couldn’t see my face, but being the kind of person who wore makeup approximately 4 times a year, I began to panic slightly. But James seemed pretty happy to be working on my face, so I said nothing. Not that I could have, considering he was piling SOMETHING on my lips.

After about 30 minutes, he pronounced me done. My face felt sort of waxy and strange, but I went with it as I made my way over to the mirror to check it out.

What I found staring back at me was Aunt Becky, The Drag Queen.

Sort of like this:

Except that’s a Halloween costume. No, really, that’s me getting ready for Halloween.

Anyway. I looked exactly like a fucking drag queen. Heavy eyeliner, flourishy blush, thick, pancake foundation and lipstick that made me look like I’d just made out with a bowl of cherries. It was bad. Funny, but bad.

He scampered off before I could complain, luckily.

Because I found out later that the reason that I looked like a drag queen is because he’d had plenty of experience making up men to look like women. Several male members of his immediate family, in fact, had used his services to make them look like women over the years.

Which would be why I looked as though I’d walked off the set To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Aunt Becky.

Needless to say, it worked.

Now I need to strong arm Pashmina into telling the bar stories. They were awesome.

—————–

And? Today was the day for interviews!

I am here at my friend Miss Spoken’s bloggity-blog.

and here! at my home-slice Chris’s blog (Great Moment’s in Christory)(*giggles*).

Both blogs are full of The Awesome and warrant a read. And not just because I am ON THEM AS WE SPEAK, although that makes them DOUBLY awesome, I admit.

I stole a lot of your material from your blog. Now I have herpes. What happened?

P.S. I am a virgin. So is my 16-yr old daughter.

You know what confuses me most? I am a virgin too. I was explaining this to my doctor when I got pregnant with Amelia and she rolled her eyes at me! I thought that was very nervy of her because it’s very obvious that I am a pure, pure girl.

And I also have The Herpes. Well, okay, I don’t, but I was trying to make you feel better about yourself and your diseased crotch.

But perhaps stealing my very important and obviously awesome (and by awesome I mean I should probably not quit my day job)(wait, I don’t have a day job) content is a bad thing. Because stealing content is what gave you herpes. Maybe you should give me tens of thousands of dollars as an apology so that your crotch goes back to normal. Then your herpes will go away.

P.S. Give me money.

Do you let your kids watch cartoons? How do they feel about the new computer generated graphics vs. the old hand drawn cartoons? Personally, I can’t stand the new Disney characters that are CG, even if they are slightly 3-dimensional. I was just wondering how an actual child felt about them.

I am going to guess that my family is not going to give you the normal spectrum of answers because my kids are full of weirdness and quirks. Which, I mean, with me as their mother, you can’t really blame them for.

Ben, the 8 year old, will succumb to peer pressure of the kids in his age bracket and watch a CG movie if they’re watching it. Otherwise, getting him to watch a movie is kind of like getting him to get a root canal. Actually, he’d probably prefer the root canal.

But, like I said, if his friends are doing it, he’ll do it. Likewise, if his 2 year old BROTHER is doing it, he’ll do it too.

Alex is 2. 2 year old’s that come forcibly ejected from my nether bits tend to be as stubborn as the day is long (whatEVER that means). Roughly translated, if I put his dinner on the wrong plate, he won’t eat it. So there’s a couple of videos he’ll watch, and that’s it. (I’m betting some of you are frantically reaching for your birth control pills right now)

Some of them ARE CG, though, but not to the exclusion of others.

And Mimi? I think she’s too busy beating on her brothers to notice.

What, praytell, does the tooth fairy bring to your house? How does she do the exchange without waking the kid? And why does that wiggly tooth make me want to throw up?

Thank the sweet merciful Lord in heaven that Ben sleeps like a stone. My other two, not so much, so when they start losing their wee teeth, I’m going to have to come up with some better solution than clomping in there half-asleep because I’d woken up from a dead sleep, panicked because I’d forgotten to leave a couple of bucks for my kid.

Now, Ben isn’t greedy and could give a shit what the Tooth Fairy brings to him, so I keep it at a couple of bucks. I could probably give him a shiny quarter, if it weren’t for his freakish memory. He’s the kid who is all “remember when we ate the red potatoes on the day that the snow piled exactly 4.3 inches high?”

And I’m like, “uh, and how is it that you can’t remember to wash your hands after you use the fucking bathroom?”

But this is neither here nor there (autistic people have amazing recall, something I could stand to borrow right about now).

So, HEED MY WARNING: once you give a dollar amount, you will be stuck with that amount, amazing memory regardless. Start SMALL, my friend.

And I get heebie jeebies with eyeball stuff, not so much with the teeth. *shudders*

Hey Aunt Becky,

My friend of eleven years has recently cut off contact with me. She’s blocked me on all social media sites (facebook, AIM, stopped following my blog, etc.). I’m not quite sure what prompted this. She was my best friend in high-school and a good portion of college, and then she started dating this guy.

You had to know a boy was involved, right? Well, he’s a scumbag. He’s not quite right in the head, and he has no respect for her or her friends. I told her when she started dating him that I didn’t like him and that I thought he was bad for her. She later found a few suspect text messages on his cell phone (to another woman…and they were of the ‘if you were here I’d so totally be making the sex with you’ variety), and they broke up…for a week and a half. She took him back, and they’ve been together ever since. She’s convinced that he’s going to propose to her soon. Urg.

And so that was that.

Since that point, we’ve been drifting apart. Almost to the point where we would only speak to each other about once a month. But, I figured that it was because we are both busy – I’m constantly job hunting, and balancing a full-time job with volunteering; she just started a new job, and she just moved. And then the blocking occurred.

So I’m just kind of left in limbo. I know that we’ve been distanced for a while, and I can accept that that might be why she’s cut off contact. But I feel as if I’ve done something (when I haven’t). What’s worse is that one of our mutual friends has also blocked me – I’m scared that all of our mutual friends will follow suit. I shot her an e-mail asking her what was up, but she hasn’t responded.

Help?

-Nyx, aka Confused and Less Two Friends

Oh Nyx, I’m so sorry. What your friend did was a shitty, low-ball thing to do and no matter what perceived wrong you did to her, that’s a really immature way for her to handle it. As adults, we should behave, well, like we’re adults and not like we’re 12 again, and you did the mature thing by trying to figure out what was going on.

What you have to do now is to accept that whatever happened is done and that it’s not your fault. Even if it is, you’re not the one who handled it like a jackass, the both of them are. The mature thing to do isn’t to hide behind not returning emails, it’s to respond, face up to problems, and then move on.

I’ve had this happen with two of my former best friends before (one was supposed to stand up in my wedding as my maid of honor and just stopped returning my calls. I’ve not heard from her again) and it sucks. You’ll probably never know what you did “wrong,” and whether it was “wrong” is a matter of personal opinion.

What I’ve tried to do (especially since one of them stalks my blog) is accept that you won’t ever know what exactly you did, and that anyone who so blatantly disregards you and your feelings isn’t really worthy of your time or energy. It’s sad and it’s hard and I’m sorry.

In this case, don’t beat yourself up too much, okay?

xoxo,

AB

——————

As always, please fill in where I left off in the comments, yo.

OH!

BlogHer ’10 is coming to NYC this summer and some of the Mouthy Housewives and me!! have put together a proposal for a room, called Dear Abby 2.0: Giving Advice in the Blogosphere. We will tell you everything you need to know about creating a successful internet advice site, all while eating bon bons and swilling vodka. It’ll be a lot of laughs, and a fun discussion for sure.

Please help us bring this session to BlogHer! Whether you plan to be there or not, you can vote by going here, logging on to BlogHer and then clicking “I would attend this session” (it’s just above the title: Dear Abby 2.0). After you click it it will miraculously say, “I would not attend this session.” This means that your vote for the session has been successfully registered. Thank you!

My typical emotional continuum ranges something like this:

I need a damn nap <-> Where is my Britney CD? <-> I can haz cheeseburger?

The elements change places somewhat, but really, I have the emotional range of a turnip and the depth of a small puddle of mud. I’ve always considered this to be something of a bragging point.

When I stuck my toe into the waters of mental health this summer before realizing that my mental health benefit blows ass, I made mention of this to my therapist, and rather than giving me a nice purple lollipop, he seemed alarmed.

Apparently, requiring a stunt double to cry isn’t a good thing.

Anyway, the one thing I learned in my appointment is that I needed to start at square one and relearn all about emotions. Nothing makes you feel more like Gimpy the Clown than realizing that you don’t know anything about actual emotions.

Perhaps I should go back to preschool and relearn colors too (because I’m colorblind too).

(shut up)

(no, really, shut up)

Part of Bringing Aunt Becky Back is trying to figure out who I am now.

My life took a different path when I inadvertently got knocked up with my firstborn at age 20. While my friends (and ex-boyfriend, his father insert other term here) were out crawling bars, I was dealing with colic, late night feeds, and a special needs child.

I scrapped my life’s plans to go to nursing school, which I hated. I graduated with high honors anyway. Got married, and domesticated, even though I’d never wanted that either. Stayed at home where I’d always wanted to be the one who did something else with her life.

I’ve never, ever done the things I wanted to do because it never made sense. I’m not sad about it, and I’m not sorry about it.

These are all facts, pure and simple. Dave knows them, I know them, everyone knows them.

But I’ve also never given myself the chance to feel anything about it. There are people in the world with no feet, after all, so how could I feel sad that I ended up where I put myself?

I should have given myself the opportunity to grieve the dreams that I gave up to do something else. Even if other people would kill to be where I am, I am not other people.

I can feel a change coming down the line. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that nothing is permanent except for change, and what I’m going through right now is growing pains. Something big is on the horizon. I can feel it.

Or maybe it’s just a cheeseburger and a nap.

Oh. And I want that purple lollipop now.