What? What’s…this shit, Aunt Becky? I can hear you screaming from miles away. My delusions of grandeur are mighty, I know, but I’ve BROKEN THE CODE and posted a NON-Go-Ask-Aunt-Becky post today. I’m sorry. I’m tired and I’m a bad person and you should probably disown me now.

Except that I’m that annoying aunt you simply can’t shake. Kinda like the clap, but more annoying and pestilent. But yeah, I’m in California for Binky Spohr’s baby shower RIGHT NOW AS I SPEAK (I informed Heather that this means that I get to shower WITH her because OBVIOUSLY she’s easy) and if I tried to answer questions they’d be all, “Purple should be a flavor, dammit!!”

So I offer you this post instead and my deepest, most patheticist apologies.

Also, I stole a Sky Mall magazine to laugh at it and felt shifty and ruthless until Dave pointed out that I was SUPPOSED to steal them. Apparently, I do not get out much.

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Every winter, ’bout this time, when the cold days have dragged on and on to the point where a 100 degree day (Celsius even!) sounds more tolerable than bundling up the kids AGAIN and having the boogies in my nose freeze for the forty-millionth time that day, and when getting the mail at the end of my driveway seems like a drastic undertaking, I start to have this fantasy in which we move to more temperate climates.

And because, in my fantasy-land, I am also slightly practical and don’t have visions of moving to a completely foreign country and having to learn a new language (you mean people don’t speak American EVERYWHERE?), I envision us moving to one of the coasts.

For a good 290 days of the year, I like where I live, honestly I do (and probably in part as a defense mechanism, as moving out of state would be brutal as far as custody arrangements go for The Big One), and besides a small jaunt away from here several years ago, I have lived in the same town most of my life. It’s a sweet river town, and it’s great BECAUSE I KNOW WHERE EVERYTHING IS.

But, for as teeny as my family is, I do happen to have some that live out of state in California, where I have been any number of times. And I genuinely love it out there, it’s interesting, it’s clean, people are nice, and if it weren’t for such amazingly high property prices, we might live out there for reals.

Well, the cost of living AND the fact that I am not positive that I am good-looking enough.

California is weird like that, and I’ll never forget being there as a teenager to attend my cousin’s wedding. A busboy (a BUSBOY!) in the joint where we were dining nearly caused me to choke on my steak, so uncanny was his resemblance to Brad Pitt (the 12 Monkeys/Seven version, whom I had many a naughty fantasy about).

A couple of years later, I was back again, and I noticed that even the bums on The Haight were sexy. BUMS were SEXY! Even the one who flashed me his penis was good looking (and well hung)!

It was like entering an alternate universe.

As I got older and every time I went back to Cali, I noticed more and more unlikely and attractive people. Airport baggage claim guys were hot! The chick at the rental car place looked as though she’d stepped off the runway to make my car rental experience a complete nightmare. I kept expecting the dude who took my toll money to start selling me shampoo, so magnificent was his shiny mane of hair, so full of body and style.

Just based on experience (and without real knowledge), I would even venture to guess that the people who worked at the DMV were extras on a movie set in their spare time (away from being nasty to people who were stupid enough to get into the wrong line– EVEN THOUGH IT WASN’T LABELED).

I don’t know about your state, but typically the DMV workers are thought to be the bitchy Missing Link anthropologists are always harping on about (I wonder if their studies would take them to the DMV, because it should), but I would venture a guess that in California, they, too, are beautiful, attractive, and of the highest genetic pedigree.

Even if I were rich enough to buy a shack in California, I’m fairly certain we’d be turned away at the border for being undesirably unattractive.

For now, I will take comfort living here in the Midwest, just outside of Chicago, knowing that while we may be ugly and dumpy, at least we’re landlocked, so no hurricane will make it to our doorstep.

DENIED ENTRY INTO CALIFORNIA DUE TO EXCESSIVE UNFLATTERING GENES.

Snuck across the border, yo. AND NOW YOU CAN’T GET RID OF ME. TAKE THAT CALIFORNIA.

You’ll never guess what I woke up to, The Internet! Well, okay, if you guessed that I woke up to a knocked over mail box, you’d be right, because that’s what happens during the winters here. It’s kind of not awesome because it’s NO ONE’S FAULT you see, least of all the plow’s, and I have to somehow cobble together a working mailbox in sub-zero weather.

Ah, Chicago. Two seasons: Ass Hot and Ass Cold.

Either way, this is on the list of things I’ll deal with when I get back because I don’t really give a flying poo right now.

Because what’s REALLY cool about this morning besides renewing my sorted love affair with Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is this:

I recognize that this looks like I typed it up myself and I assure you that I have more official looking documents, but this was the biggest looking thing with my businesses name on it.

Oh yes, I incorporated this morning. Which makes me feel like I should have like morphed into something else, perhaps with metal and sharks with freakin’ laser beams on their heads or something. But no, I walked out of my attorney’s office the exact same person, just laden with a bunch of papers.

So, what does this really MEAN in the grand scheme of it all? Nothing much.

My community site and Mommy Wants Vodka will run under the umbrella corp of Copy on the Rocks, Inc (certainly, har-dee-har-har at a loss)(which, trust me, is fine).

But it’s official and it means that I am PROPERLY a Business Person and I can apply for Business Things and probably buy one of those “perpetual motion” things with the gears and perhaps maybe a squeezy thing for stress relief. I should also probably get some business suits with shoulder pads to wear about the house and an ear penis (phone headset) justincase someone actually calls me to “talk shop.”

No one actually calls me except people trying to sell me carpet cleaning services.

But I am a Business Person and will be reminding The Daver of that when he asks me to take out the garbage from now on. A sample conversation:

The Daver: “Can you take out the garbage, please?”

Aunt Becky: “I am very busy.”

The Daver: “Doing what? It looks like you’re scratching your crotch with a pen.”

Aunt Becky: “I am a BUSINESS PERSON WHO IS DOING BUSINESS THINGS NOW AND I CAN FILE A BUSINESS PERSON LAWSUIT.”

The Daver: “Shut up and take out the garbage.”

Aunt Becky: “Blow me.”

Marriage is grand, people.

In order to celebrate my incorporation, I’m going to do some Giving Back because really, without you guys, I wouldn’t have done this. It never would have occurred to me that I had a knack to write if you hadn’t encouraged me, and I wouldn’t have continued to pollute the Internet if you hadn’t acted like you liked to read it (also: smooth move).

In other words: you made your monster.

Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have a contest, and the first thing I’m going to use my Copy on the Rocks bank account for is to happily buy a gift card to Amazon.com for $50. You can win it. You can enter up to three times, three different ways to win it. Contest will end next Friday at midnight CST.

1) Go to Savvy Source and join my group, Aunt Becky’s Band of Merry Pranksters. Then, start a discussion about what you love about the blogging community. You can even use your Facebook ID to join. Couldn’t be easier. Then leave me a comment here saying that you did #1 (if you’re already in my group, go forth and participate.)

2) Leave a comment here where you talk about your favorite blogs. Hell, pimp YOURSELF out. I want to know why you love what you love. What makes a blog good?

3) It’s Interview With Aunt Becky time! Answer my questions on your own blog, grab my button, and come back, leave a comment and let me know that you did the Interview. IF you do not have a blog, feel free the interview in the comments.

1) Dave and I have a long-standing feud over cheese in a can. He thinks it’s food of The Gods while I think it’s probably Of The Devil. Your take?

2) Is there any way you can think of to make the elder Gosselins go away? I AM ALL EARS.

3) Who is your ridiculous “I can’t admit this to anyone in polite company lest I be banned from life” crush?

4) If you could fuck it all and pursue your dream (assuming, of course, you were going to be GOOD at it), what would that dream be?

5) They say “living well is the best revenge.” I think they are wrong. Do you?

6) What is the most humiliation you’ve experienced in public that you’d be willing to admit to The Internet?

7) Are you honest with The Internet? Like, if I came over to your house tonight (heh)(I’m coming over, yo)(heh) would I be surprised at who I found?

8 ) If you could have one talent that you don’t currently possess, what would it be?

9) There’s not always room for Jello. Is there?

10) What’s your guiltiest of the guilty pleasures?

<a href="https://mommywantsvodka.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/hellsyesbutton.jpg"><img src="https://mommywantsvodka.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/hellsyesbutton.jpg"></a>

P.S. Thank you to everyone who nominated me for a Bloggie. Seriously, that’s the best thing ever and I might have cried. SHUT UP.

I never thought I’d get married. I really never thought I’d get married, squeeze out a couple of crotch parasites and move to the suburbs and become a housewife. I really, really, really never thought I’d get married, squeeze out the kids, rock the ‘burbs as a housewife and write.

Talk about a mindfuck.

Add a white picket fence and I’m June Cleaver with a dirty mouth.

Truthfully, I’d not given the idea of marriage much mind. I’d not planned out a puffy white dress or a first dance number and hadn’t planned out bridesmaids and while I thought that the idea of having “a man” around to help raise the other man in my life (who happened to be 2 feet tall) was a good idea, I didn’t think it would happen.

I’m just not the marrying kind.

I’m the go-go boot wearing, cell-phone bejeweling, disco-dancing kind. So I was genuinely surprised to find myself at the alter, pledging to love, honor and repay The Daver for taking me to be his lawfully wedded wife. He pretty much had to drag me up the aisle by my hair kicking and screaming.

I was pretty afraid that I’d lose myself in being someone’s wife. Someone’s mother. Someone else’s everything.

And I was right. For the first years, I did.

A sea of extenuating circumstances: thyroid storm, my mother’s alcoholism and subsequent rehabilitation (which, sobriety, YAY!), the incredible isolation of our first condo, the loneliness of being a parent when you have no other parent friends, post-partum depression, pre-partum depression, living as a single parent while my husband focused on his career; all of those to the me out of me.

It was so gradual that I didn’t even realize it.

Only recently did I realize that I had to unearth myself and figure out what’s what. Truthfully, I’ve been really afraid of what I’d find. Would I even recognize who I was anymore? Happily, I’ve come to realize I’m exactly the same as I was, with, perhaps, a white stripe in my hair now (yes, seriously) and the self-confidence that comes with being truly happy.

Maybe I’m still xx pounds fatter than I’d like (I have no scale) and maybe I’m still not writing for Playboy (a girl can dream) and maybe I still only see The Daver 3-4 hours during the week, but I’m finally moving. Not stagnating in a pile of my own filth feeling trapped and miserable.

Now I’m just stagnating in a pile of filth. Beaming merrily. As it should be.

——————–

Team Mimi is up and in Full Effect and walking for March of Dimes on April 25 in St. Charles (the details are behind the linkage or on my sidebar). Anyone is welcome to join. We’d LOVE to have you. If you’d like, you can form your own team as well. They’re forming all around the country.

——————–

I AM going to launch the community site, just as soon as I can get the kinks worked out with The Daver, and my site designer and figure out exactly how to set it up.

So far, this is what I’ve got on the docket for ideas:

*It’s got to have a variety of topics that we can all weigh in on and post about.

*Easily navigatible and not full of The Ugly.

*It’s just going to be a link from the top of my blog to a separate site, where hopefully I can do some promotional giveaways and stuff because according to you guys, people like free shit. So, if I can find people to give us stuff, we’re IN.

*I’m going to use the same software that Dooce’s community site uses because it’s a great example of a community site.

What else would make a community site Full Of The Awesome?

(I bought the domain www.bandbacktogether.com for the community site)(we still need to name the community site)

(ring, ring)

The Daver: “Hello?”

Aunt Becky: “I’m leaving you.”

The Daver: “Oh yeah?”

Aunt Becky: “Yup! I’m forming an all-girls disco band and we’re touring the country.”

The Daver: “Okay.”

Aunt Becky: “Wait, you’re not upset?”

The Daver: “You’ve got to follow your dreams, man. Who is going to be in the band?”

Aunt Becky (gestures to empty room): “Oh, you know…TWITTER.”

The Daver: “That’s a big band. What are you going to do?”

Aunt Becky: “Wear roller skates and play the triangle. It’s DISCO. And it’s making a comeback. I CAN FEEL IT.”

The Daver: “Okay.”

Aunt Becky: “Oh, and I need one of those voice thingies. So I can actually sing. What are they called?”

The Daver: “A vocoder?”

Aunt Becky (happily): “YES! I need one. Can you get me one of those?”

The Daver: “Okay. I’ll pick up Chinese food for dinner?”

Aunt Becky: “Sure. See you soon! Before I’m gone with my all girls Twitter disco band. I’ve got to go order some more go-go boots!”

The Daver (laughs) “Bye!”

(both parties hang up)

——————

Because I am in the process of forming My Empire, which means I’m trying to think of more projects, I’ve come up with the idea of a couple of community-based forums for us. The ROYAL “us.” Problem is, I’m not sure exactly what we should be about.

I’ve had a bunch of people suggest that I cobble (and by “I” I mean “The Daver”) together a site where we could go to put together weight loss articles and articles about self-improvement and Getting The Band Back Together (it wouldn’t be like a boring site or anything) where we could cheer each other on.

I think this could work. I also think there are other things we could do and I’m eagerly thinking of them, but my brain is small and yours, well, is not, so this is the part of the post where I ask for your input. What do you think? Honestly. I’m open to any ideas, providing they’re feasible and full of The Awesome. I love the idea of a community-based site.

Operating on about 3 hours of sleep combined, my husband of 40 hours sat across from me shoe-less, his shirt up around his pasty nipples while another man rubbed him up and down. While an awkward woman rubbed my butt and patted down my vagina, our eyes met. Without attracting any more attention, I mouthed “I’m sorry.” His eyes smiled right before the man grazed his balls with his elbow. Then he wasn’t smiling anymore.

It was all my fault. Honestly.

Later, he expressed, several screwdrivers to the wind, that this was his first experience with being singled out and searched by airport security.

Mouth full of egg and cheese biscuit and several screwdrivers drunk myself, I slurred, “Well, dude, at least they didn’t take you to that back room.” I took a long drag off my drink, “Because that shit is WHACK.” I paused. “And hey, the let me keep one of my lighters.”

The Daver looked less than pleased.

“I’m sorry,” I said, chastised. “It’s all my fault.”

But was it? Was the issue with having a face (presumably) like a terrorist my fault? Certainly I’d been stopped by customs and security more times than I could possibly count, singled out from a crowd each and every time I flew since I was a small child. My father and brother, who turn equally brown skinned in the sun get it also, but not as bad as I do.

I can’t put a toe into an airport without securing a nice frisking and potential strip-search.

While I can easily claim that I *am* an asshole, the moment I hit the airport, I turn into the mentally challenged sister from Hee-Haw. I’m all “Golly Gee,” this and “Jeepers, Mister,” that with a side of “Gee wilikers” thrown in for good measure. You’ll never see a more ridiculously PC, G-rated version of me.

And still. And yet. And how.

I’ve learned to show up to the airport extra EXTRA early. I’ve learned that flip-flops – even in the dead of winter in Chicago – are the footwear of champions, and I know to wear loose baggy pants for easy up and down access.

But this begs the question. Why me? Was I marked as a potential terrorist when I was a baby? Is this on my ever-fucking Permanent Record?

We’re going to California this weekend (*squee!*) and while I’m certain I should probably just go in a thong and pasties, we’ll see how security handles me this time around. I am a married lady now with a new name and MAYBE I have made it off the DO NOT FLY list.

Then again, maybe not.

So, what gives, yo? Are you subjected to such inhumanities when you travel?

———————

Join me over at Toy With Me for Beaver Talk With Aunt Becky where I give Cosmo a piece of my mind. Or, what’s left of it. It’s sure to…well, I’m interested to see what you think.

Over at SodaHead, I wrote about the dating site that just let 5,000 of their chubby members. Yeah. Seriously. Ouch.

Apparently I am the last person on the planet to realize that 2010 = the next DECADE. Okay, so I never claimed to be a particularly bright person, but this takes the cake for even me. Especially since I turn 30 in July and I was born in 1980 and…yeah, I should have seen the BIGGER PICTURE, but apparently I was too deeply ensconced in my nervous breakdown to see out of my butthole.

I’m not much of a New Year’s person, so I suppose it’s not entirely shocking that I wasn’t all HOLY FUCK, PEOPLE!

Anyway.

New Decade, New Aunt Becky abounds which makes me think that I should get some Moon Boots and a flying car. Because obviously.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to dragging myself back out from under the piles tiny fucking Playmobil pieces and I’ve been making steps in that direction. When I do something, I tend to go balls to the wall, which is why an itemized list of resolutions isn’t really necessary. Plus, even as neurotic as I am, I hate making lists almost as much as I hate cream based condiments *shudders* but I’m making myself accountable.

To you. The Internet.

Ima check in now and again just to let you know how I’m doing in my progress to reclaim myself. You can let ME know what YOU’RE doing or how you think I can do better, or shit, you can just fucking tell me how awesome you are in the comments.

(Because you guys are full of the awesome. You were so nice to my formula-feeding friend–the Go Ask Aunt Becky questions all come in anonymously–yesterday and I was so grateful because she doesn’t need anyone to attack her when she’s feeling low. Also, have you lost weight? Your ass looks HOT in those pants. Let’s make out.)

1) First, I bought an elliptical. I know, I KNOW, it sounds like a BAD IDEA because it’s one of those things that you can easily ignore and use as a clothes hanger and what better to remind you of your failures? But this one was effing cheap and time is kinda precious right now. So ANYTHING is better than nothing.

Ima get my ass on it as soon as I can wear a bra lest I knock myself out with a rogue boobie.

2) I bought more clothes. I’d all but stopped buying clothes when I realized how depressing it was to do it because, well, I’m still rocking the baby weight. The elliptical will help that. But new clothes help me feel better about myself, which will make me feel EVEN BETTER about myself and so on and so on.

3) I started listening to music again. Because I’m home with the kids so much, I’d stopped jamming out with my clam out to things that made me happy because if any of them get a whiff of music coming from my computer, they’re all over me to watch stuff on my computer. Which, hi, TOTALLY NOT MY THING.

I do important stuffs here like surf porn and write on my blog, not watch CARTOONS (for the record, I hate cartoons).

But I love music. It’s one of the things I love dearly and since I stopped commuting every-fucking-where it’s something I stopped doing: humping on my music. Music makes me Aunt Becky again and it makes me feel alive.

4) I’m going out to California next weekend with The Daver even though we couldn’t find anyone in my family to watch my kids. There’s a certain baby shower that I’m pretty stoked to go to and to miss that would be like gnawing off an arm, but getting anyone to watch my kids is always like pinning Jello to a wall.

I know they have sitter sites out there, but I’m not entirely comfortable leaving my kids overnight with someone I don’t know. By the grace of God, my friend from high school is going to do it for me and I owe her SO MUCH.

5) I’m back to looking for places to submit my work (let’s agree that “work” here is a very loose term) and expand My Empire.

Most importantly, I’m allowing myself the opportunity to make progress without expecting perfection. I tend to expect things from myself that no one really should expect of themselves and I’m going to stop.

————-

I may never own Moon Boots, because maybe I DID own them when I was a kid and maybe they weren’t NEARLY as cool as I thought they’d be. But slowly, I’m digging myself out of the hole I’ve sunk into and rediscovering who I am. Turns out, I’m the same person I always was.

Progress, not perfection. Unless I’m listening to Britney. Which is total perfection.

——————–

And if you’re looking for me elsewhere, I’m talking about the time I got courted by (no shit)(seriously, why would I lie?) Wife Swap.

Over at Skirt! this is the link to the post I threw up yesterday (Sunday = The Internet is closed) about Finding Myself Among The Dirty Diapers.

Dear Aunt Becky,

I gave birth to the most wonderful baby boy – my first kid – several weeks ago and am in absolutely in love. However, I was I labor with him for 36 long and insanely painful hours that finally ended in a c-section, after which he was taken to the NICU for so something which has now been thankfully resolved. During my stay in the hospital, he was fed formula and I was so drugged up on painkillers that I was unable to start breastfeeding right away. He never really got the hang of breastfeeding and I decided to pump and supplement with formula, because really, kid’s gotta eat and hi, screaming baby biting at your nipple? Not pleasant. Of course, in the interim, my dad got sick, and I’ve been taking care of his business as well as working at my own job. , I started losing all hours of sleep and I haven’t pumped for a while now.

My son is now eating nothing but formula and I’m getting nothing but criticism for abandoning all efforts to breastfeed. I would love to…but I’m gonna have to split myself in two or five. I feel terrible, nevertheless. I want to provide my own milk for him and give him the immunity and benefits of breastmilk and all that good stuff. What say you? Am I a bad mom? I feel like I suck for just throwing the formula his way.

No. You’re not a bad mom AT ALL. HEAR ME? YOU ARE NOT A BAD MOM AT ALL. Don’t you DARE let a single person let you feel like shit about it because until they’ve walked a mile with your tits, they don’t have the space to judge you. And if they do? SEND THEM TO ME.

Sometimes? BREASTFEEDING DOESN’T WORK OUT AND THAT IS OKAY. You’re not feeding your kid apple juice or vodka or Diet Coke so you’re fine. Please, give yourself a break on this one. You’re one person and dealing with feeding issues on top of the stress of life PLUS a new baby? So. Not. Worth. It.

Want to step into the Way Back Machine With Aunt Becky?

I had every intention of breastfeeding my first son, Ben. Bought all the gear including the ugly ass nursing covers they made and when he was born? He was having NONE of it. I had no C-section, no sick mom or dad. I tried to feed him and he refused to latch on every time I tried. I do mean every time.

I tried SNS, the nipple shields, skin to skin, lactation specialists, I was bullied, I was shamed, I pumped and eventually? I said FUCK THIS and gave the kid formula. Because mealtime would end with us both in tears. Not. Worth. It. Ben was a colicky horrible baby and I didn’t need the extra stress.

I went on to nurse Alex and Amelia who had no problems (turns out that Ben had sensory issues) after feeling like a failure for five long years. I was ashamed of my inability to nurse my kid, which was “supposed to be” so easy. Well, it wasn’t.

What I’m saying here is this: you matter too, sweetie. Your son will love you every bit as much if you give him formula because he’s a baby. They’re love buckets. That’s what they do. And people are going to judge you for the breastfeeding thing because people are fucking assholes. They’ll judge ALL of your parenting choices, but the breastfeeding one is particularly annoying.

My advice to you is to try and NOT MENTION IT if people ask. Make a joke about feeding him steak or something and try and deflect it. If they persist, remind them that it’s REALLY none of their business and if they still persist, ask them how much they weigh. It’s none of their fucking business. It simply isn’t. That’s between you and your son. That’s it.

You’re doing a great job. That little boy is thriving and that’s all that matters. Take care of yourself, okay?

Dear Aunt Becky,

I’d like to know how to handle my Hitler-esque husband when it comes to watching programs we DVR.

You see, we have a toddler and cannot watch the shows we like when he’s around due to either bad content or the extreme guilt that The Man puts on us for rotting his brain. So, we DVR.

After he is blissfully sleeping, we trudge to the basement to indulge and that’s when it happens. It doesn’t matter what or how many backed up episodes I have, we will watch whatever he wants.

I mean, really. What can I do? Sometimes I just want to watch a cake challenge instead of someone in a motorcycle club get brutally beaten. Am I asking for too much?

Signed,
Not Hailing to My Hitler

First off, Gentle Reader, you have a DVR? I am VERY jealous right now because, you see, Aunt Becky lives in The Dark Ages and has no DVR. She is lustful after yours.

*lust*

*lust*

*lust*

Anyway.

What I would do, my televisionally controlled friend, is to insist that a certain portion of the night be Your Part Of The Night. Because I’m sure that just as you hate the Motorcycle Gang beating each other, he hates the Ace Of Cakes or Biggest Loser Marathon (side note, be sure to eat cake while WATCHING Biggest Loser because it burns more calories if YOU are on a diet, FYI).

But he needs to compromise. I personally would rather gouge out my eyeballs with a spork than have to watch Star Trek and I’m pretty sure The Daver would rather eat his own vomit than be forced to watch reruns of Sex In The City, so we simply go our separate ways when we want to watch these things.

Otherwise, the heavy dramatic “I HATE that you’re making me watch this” sighing would never end. Ah, TRUE LOVE.

So a friend of mine at school and I are both graduating around the same time with similar degrees and we’re looking for jobs. She applied at a company for position X. Two weeks later a new position Y opened up and I applied. I let her know that I applied to the company for position Y and NOT position X. Although she claims that everything is a-ok, it is clearly not. She’s acting different and generally being very cool towards me. I feel that I didn’t do anything wrong, because I didn’t apply for the same job and I told her that I did it (didn’t try to hide it from her). I know I can’t change her reaction, but here is my question for you Aunt Becky.

How can I stop dwelling on the fact that she’s mad at me (but unwilling to admit it)? Any advice on how to let it go? She is (was?) a good friend, and I miss chatting with her. Help.

It looks like your friend is pulling a “Melissa.”

Let me explain the term. Melissa was a friend of mine from nursing school and one day she mentioned that there was these positions opening up at a hospital. Eagerly, I asked her for the HR information, figuring that, like I would, why not pass along the info to a friend? I knew she was going for it, but there were a couple positions because the hospital is a pretty big place.

She never did.

When I asked her about it (because I am oblivious) she ignored me. Obviously, she had no obligation to help me, but I couldn’t fathom why she wouldn’t help a friend.

Same way I can’t imagine why your friend could possibly be upset with you, except that she’s insecure about herself and afraid that you’re going to eclipse her and somehow take her position. It’s really stupid, but I’d be willing to guess that your friend is threatened and/or jealous of you.

I’m sorry, but this is clearly because you are full of The Awesome.

Good luck. I hope that you get the job.

——————–

As always, my Gentle Readers, please feel free to fill in where I left off, although I must insist that you do not berate my first guest for her choice to formula feed. Like I said in my response, you may take it up with ME, but not her. I’ve had years to make my peace with my decisions. She needs some good lovin’.

If you’d like to see some places I’ve been:

I’m over here at Skirt! with an column about finding yourself.

I’m here at Sodahead talking about Preppers, who are people preparing for The Worst, and here where I’ve posed a question about online support groups and whether they have an obligation to help.

Proving that I am a creature of habit, I couldn’t let the year end without completely my one and only meme. For past experiences, go here: 2008 here, 2007 here, 2006 here. The rest I believe have been lost somewhere. Probably for the better, eh?

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?

I got myself a daughter, I watched my daughter go under the knife and defy all odds while I’ve struggled with some serious PTSD.

I’ve sent my second book proposal out with my agents and decided to incorporate and expand my freelancing career.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I’ve decided that I’ve put my own life on hold for long enough and that 2010 will be the year that I bring Aunt Becky back. Period. What that means is sort a nebulous “eh.” A constellation of things I’ll do.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes. I had a baby. So did a lot of people that I love.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Yes.

5. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

An Empire and a discernible waistline.

6. What countries did you visit?

Unless you count my head, none.

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why:

January 28, my daughter’s birthday. February 26, the day she had her surgery to fix her neural tube defect.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I’ve successfully decided what I want to be when I grow up. An heiress.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I clogged the kitchen sink.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Shockingly, few.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

My iPhone is pretty fucking awesome.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

I’d have to go with Mimi’s, who kicked BRAIN SURGERY in the balls. I mean, how much cooler can you be?

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Okay, this one I can’t answer because it’s mean. If I answer it honestly, I’ll get bitches on my back, and if I don’t, I mean, okay, let’s go with, uh, OH LOOK A CUDDLY KITTY!

14. Where did most of your money go?

Diapers and pink frilly things.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I got excited when I figured out what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?

Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

(if you haven’t heard it, you really, REALLY should give it a listen. It’s gorgeous)

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder? Happier. Much.

ii. thinner or fatter? Thinner.

iii. richer or poorer? Richer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Noming on baby toes.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Crying. Because I am very ugly when I cry and I pour buckets of boogies out of my head and really, you’re welcome for that mental picture.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

This is awkward. Christmas is over, Meme. Perhaps you should GET WITH THE PROGRAM.

21. There was no #21. I don’t know why there was no 21.

I’ll make up my own question here, then. Hmmm.

Name one random thing that people would be surprised to know about you.

I am a (former) concert cellist. I know. Who the fuck knew?

22. Did you fall in love in 2009?

Only with myself.

23. How many one-night stands?

If you could my Husbands From Television, probably like 4,129.

24. What was your favorite TV program?

Glee! And House! And Dexter! And…uh. What else?

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

This seems awfully loaded, doesn’t it? I’m going to go with yes. And then, no.

26. What was the best book you read?

US Weekly.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Glee! I’m a sucker for pop music and a capella groups.

28. What did you want and get?

A direction in life. Also, Hello Kitty Sushi!

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

Pan’s Labyrinth. I’m saying this because I seriously cannot remember seeing a movie this year.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 29 this year. I celebrated by… *scratches head*

……

Apparently it was very exciting. So exciting that I can’t remember.

OH WAIT. THAT’S RIGHT. I bought myself a vibrator. That’s really boring. And of course, it’s a crappy vibrator because I cheaped out on it. BAD CALL.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

More cowbell. Definitely more cowbell.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

*sniff, sniff* IS THIS CLEAN? *sniff, sniff* CLOSE ENOUGH.

34. What kept you sane?

My Internet. Thank you, my friends.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I dunno. I normally answer with Britney Spears, and I guess that’s probably my answer again.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Shaken or stirred? GET IT? Bwahahahaha! I don’t go political. You should KNOW that, Meme, because we’ve been together since 2005. Which, CREEPY.

37. Whom did you miss?

I still miss my friend Stef, who died in 2007, every. single. day.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

My cadre of Virtual Internet Pimps.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:

When someone tells you that you can’t do something, the very best thing to do is to prove them gleefully wrong.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

“I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah”

–Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”

So the rest of the meme calls for tagging, which I don’t do because I’m not A List person, so rather than tag you, I’m going to tag YOU to answer this meme on your blog OR in the comments.

“Now my friends are wearing worried smiles, living out a dream of what they was.

Don’t you think it’s sometimes wise not to grow up?”

–Rolling Stones, 100 Years Ago

In terms of blogging years, I’m practically a geriatric and I often have to stop myself from being all “IN MY DAY, BLOGGERS WERE HONEST AND DIDN’T EXPECT…” so I can safely say things like, “normally in my New Years wrap-up posts I say something about how happy I am to kiss the year goodbye” because I’ve had enough of them to choose from.

This morning, I sat here trying to figure out what I wanted to do for my New Years post because it felt weird to not mention that today is the last day of 2009. Normally I do the only meme that I ever do, but today it just didn’t feel right. Then I thought about doing a year-in-review-through-posts and that didn’t sum it all up either because seriously? January and February alone could have each had 10 or so links to posts.

So instead, I’m going to be uncharacteristically honest about my year.

2009 was not the worst year of my life. I don’t know how a year that started by bringing my last child, my daughter Amelia Grace Sherrick Harks, into this world could possibly be a bad one. I was so proud to finally have a daughter and nearly a year later, I am still so proud to have a daughter that even as I type this, my eyes fill with tears.

She was born with an undiagnosed neural tube defect, yes, an encephalocele and I very much feared that I’d birthed her only to send her in for neurosurgery to sacrifice her on the operating table, but would I have traded those three weeks with her? No. Even if she’d passed, I wouldn’t have traded those minutes with her. She’s my daughter.

Amelia, all 8 pounds of her didn’t pass on the table and she’s gone on to beat all of the odds of her grim diagnosis and has proved to me that just because someone tells you that you shouldn’t be able to do something, doesn’t mean that you can’t. It’s a lesson we all could stand to remember now and again.

While Amelia has thrived and continued to place at or above level for every single test that she’s been given, I’ve sort of managed to tread water this year managing to keep my head mostly above water. Lately, I’ve been drinking gasoline to keep warm.

I’m not sure it’s working.

I was diagnosed with PTSD stemming from her traumatic birth and I don’t know if it’s that, or PPD or some other weird acronym, but I’m not sleeping well or eating well, and some nights I manage fight off the demons and others, I’m slain by them.

But I’m hopeful. I’ve been here before and I’ve always managed to claw my way back out of the hole and into the light again.

So I approach 2010 full of renewed hope for the future, because no matter how full of the darkness I feel, I can feel the light on my face and I know it’s all around me. Soon it will be within me.

I am hopeful.

I have hope.

Happy New Year.

Besides, “how does Dave put up with you*?” and “would you describe yourself as more achingly or hauntingly beautiful**?” people are always interested to know why the fuck I call myself Aunt Becky.

Because I am Your Aunt Becky. I adopted you. Sorry about that. The upside is, the Internet is a large place and it’s entirely likely that I WON’T show up on your doorstep on Thanksgiving in a festive Christmas Sweater, reeking of vodka and vomit, demanding that you cook me some motherfucking stuffing because I have other nieces and nephews to annoy. The downside is that I might.

There’s plenty of Aunt Becky to go around.

But I wasn’t ALWAYS Aunt Becky. Before I was Aunt Becky, I was Stimpy on my old blog, Mushroom Printing, when I could remember to be all cloak-and-daggery about my name. Pashmina, who I talk about here as my college roommate and the person I humiliated with the Butt Sex Check, was Ren.

When I moved here, I was just Becky. Because it’s my name and it’s full of The Awesome the way it lilts off the tongue, you know? Anyway.

Proving my theory that people with half a brain can pick any-fucking-thing to be incensed about, one day I was commenting on a friend’s blog and I saw someone else named Becky. Well, I thought to myself. Her parents were obviously very smart for naming her that. She must be a rocket scientist with a name like that!

Skimming the comment left by my new friend–I already had our slumber parties planned out because we just HAD to be friends–I sighed when I realized that she couldn’t spell to save herself and her grammar appeared to have been pecked out by a blind mole rat, but I decided that in the name of our friendship, I’d forage onward!

Several days later, revisiting the blog of our mutual friend, I happily checked the comments to see if my new BFF had commented, eager to see if she’d seen that she had a friend in me! I was shocked to note that where the space for “name” had been previous filled with “Becky” it now said “THE REAL BECKY” and the comment made hideous references to an IMPOSTOR BECKY.

Then she had the audacity to make some snide remarks about me and the “cussing” on my blog and how tasteless I was!

Oh HELL NO Becky, oh HELL NO you didn’t. For your information, I do not “cuss,” I fucking swear. I will be put down by someone who can spell without the aid of a spell checker, and I will happily correct my own grammar with a motherfucking SMILE on my motherfucking face when it’s pointed out tactfully to me, but I will NOT be put in my place by someone who accuses me of PRETENDING to be some toothless mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, slack-jawed yokel who happens to go by the 22nd most popular name of 1980. The year I was born.

Fucking bitch probably collected Precious Moments dolls.

Like I’d MAKE UP MY NAME OR SOMETHING.

What, you want proof or something?

No, I am not cross-eyed. It’s the water damage distorting the view of my AWESOMENESS. And no, no one had just threatened to kill me if I smiled. SHOCKING.

Maybe I was just remembering my earlier years. Like this one:

When my parents had BRUTALLY made me pose in front of a bear like that. Look at the mock terror on my toddler face!

Or maybe I was thinking about this:

The time when I was left with the creepy guy who I wanted to get away from.

(he was actually my dad, and I was TRYING to get into the greenhouse)

Anyway.

So, I figured that I’d have a couple of different personas for my blog and change them around depending on my mood. I’d be Smoove B one day, Aunt Becky for a week and The Notorious BEX the next. Sometimes, I’d just be Becky, As Herself. Or Becky, In Real Life.

Well, guess which one stuck? (hint: it’s not The Daver) Can’t be all bad. Especially since it means that I’ll never have to cook for the holidays ever again.

Are you a nickname person on The Internet? Do you go by something else on your blog other than your real name? How did you come up with your nickname? Also, should I cock-punch The Other Becky***?

—————

*Bad karma in a past life OBVIOUSLY

*Why have OR when you can have AND?

***I swear on all that I am that I am not lying. If I could find the blog, I’d show you the comment but I never went back because I knew my head would explode.