Last night, as I was blearily trying to tuck in some dinner, talking to The Daver and waiting for the Vicodin to kick in to stop my eyeballs from trying to pop out of my head with a loud SLOP! sound and slither down my face onto my chicken sandwich, our eldest son came in to read aloud.

He’d been reading, I knew, from a book that The Daver and I had bought him when we’d found out that we were pregnant with his brother (Benny was 5), called It’s Not The Stork. Why he had the renewed interest in baby-making, I didn’t know, but he loved the book, and that was good enough for me, so for reading time, which he has every night, he was opting for that.

Last night, though, he came in with that book and a horrified look on his face.

“LISTEN TO THIS,” he said to us.

I couldn’t see what page he was turned to, but already I knew I wasn’t prepared. We’d been over most of the book together, and the only stuff we’d sort of skipped was how the sperm made it INTO the vagina in the first place.

(Oh yeah, in my house? We have sperm and vaginas and penises and ovaries and fallopian tubes and uterus’s (it’s not uter-YOU! Becky, it’s uter-US!) because those are the names of the organs. And I don’t believe I could call his penis a “tinky-wink” without then thinking that the next time I got into the sack with The Daver. *shudders*)

Autistic kids have memories like traps, so anything we’d talked about before was stuck firmly in there, so I knew whatever was coming had to be about those pages we’d sort of ignored.

And I was right.

“LISTEN TO THIS,” our son crowed. “THE MAN PUTS HIS PENIS IN THE WOMAN’S VAGINA IN A SPECIAL SORT OF SLEEPING CALLED MAKING LOVE, OR HAVING SEX.”

He said it so loudly that I’m pretty sure the entire neighborhood heard.

The tone though, that sent me over the edge and I snickered into my hand. I didn’t WANT to. I mean, I’d been preparing for this chat for YEARS. And yet, here I was, laughing. It was just the way he said it.

And the look on his face afterward. Sort of a mixture of awe and disgust. Kind of the way I felt when I first found out about The Sex.

All I remember is thinking to myself when I got The Sex talk, “when I grow up, I never want to stop having it.” He certainly looked more horrified than that, which means he’s probably going to be a more upstanding citizen than I.

So, dutifully, Daver and I dragged our sorry assess out to the living room, after I scooped up the last of our “results of making special sleeping” named Amelia and asked if he had any questions.

We informed him that this wouldn’t happen until he was much older AND PREFERABLY MARRIED (o! the questions this will no doubt create) and we talked a little about puberty as we both quietly died a little bit inside as we both remembered that this gangly 8 year old was not the tiny 2 year old any more.

He seemed to accept it all remarkably well, considering, and seemed most concerned about his voice changing more than anything else. Promising to order him the book about puberty and continue the conversation tonight as he read more, he went off to bed, as at least 204 more grey hairs sprouted forth atop my head.

And now, I’m just waiting for the frantically irate phone calls from the parents of kids that Ben teaches ALL about this. Luckily, I guess, he’ll have the anatomy down PAT.

——————-

What was your sex talk like? Did you get one? Did I just ruin my son for life?

2,869: Twitter Followers that follow me.

2,800: Twitter Followers that make wonder why SHIT they want to follow me. As proof, I give you an actual tweet that I tweeted last night: “I’m writing about all of the things I would do if I had a penis.” I am not classy.

5: Days I have currently been too sick to even moan about the house moping to angle for awesome presents and/or compliments.

100: Degrees of fever, which is apparently not high enough to warrant Tamiflu.

INFINITY: the amount of pain and suffering that my fever feels knowing that it is NOT FUCKING GOOD ENOUGH.

34: times my fever has wondered if it can go to the People’s Court to sue for pain and suffering for knowing it’s NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

0.4: seconds it takes for my daughter to move from my arms to stuffing her chipmunk cheeks like a squirrel with dog food across the house.

INFINITY TIMES TWO: how gleeful she is about playing in the dog water before I swoop her up because she knows she’s not supposed to be splashing in there.

12,000: decibels that Dave manages to chew potato chips, burrowing into my aching head like a sea of mini jackhammers with each.and.every.single.crunch.

87: times I wondered if I could sue pigs or whatever for the swine flu.

87: times I wondered if that could be a People’s Court episode.

42: times I thought that the pig appearing as the defendant had to be wearing loads of gold medallions

14: times I’ve thought about writing and rapping a hardcore gangsta rap album this week under the name The Notorious B.E.X.

Want to be my back up singers?

Hey, The Internet, did you hear? There’s this flu out there called the Swine Flu. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it. Also, there’s this website where you can upload pictures of cats and write hilarious (and not AT ALL ANNOYING) captions like “I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER.”

AWESOME.

and

ANYWAY.

I figured you could thank me later for letting you know about these two things that managed to fly under the radar.

Because LORD KNOWS, every time you turn on the television, they’re not doing another FEAR MONGER SECTION about the Swine Flu and how it killed yet another innocent family of 41 who was just casually minding their own business, not showing any symptoms (certainly their T-cell count was off the charts normal and not, you know, 1).

Or maybe how of the 6 billion people in the world, The Swine Flu has somehow infected 6 billion and ONE people because it is just THAT wily and awful.

Trust me, it’s not that I don’t take it seriously, because I do. I’m just tired of the media whipping the public up into a fucking frenzy about it. The flu happens every year and every year some people die from it and it sucks every year, but do you have to scare people into going to the ER in droves for a cold? I feel sorry for anyone in heath care right now.

Maybe the media should go back to stringing up people Mothers who Drink (FOR SHAME)(THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!) and burning them at the stake.

We had an outbreak here. A substantial one, truthfully. The high school was shut down for a week when 1,000 kids called in sick, and, well, now Casa de la Sausage has it too. Mostly, Your Aunt Becky has it. My kids seem to have developed minor symptoms while I am, apparently, dying.

So I tested the theory that the Swine Flu was universally scary by telling my children that I probably had it. This is what happened.

“Hey, Amelia, I have the Swine Flu. OOOOOOOH!” (pantomimes scary faces until overtaken by coughing fit)

Amelia’s response: “Amamamamamamama” (laughter) (gnaws on my leg)

Then I interviewed Alex:

“Hey Alex, I have the Swine Flu.”

Alex’s response: “OH NO MOMMY. THE STARS, MOON AND EARTH IS STUCK!” (falls on ground dramatically) “HELP ME FIX IT!”

Hoping that someone might care about my very important sickness, I interviewed Ben next.

“Hey Ben, I have the Swine Flu.”

Ben’s Response, “You should have washed your hands.”

Touche.

Lastly I informed The Daver.

“Hey, The Daver, I think I have The Swine Flu.”

The Daver’s response, “Well, SHIT, that means I can’t go into work and I have to work from home FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK.” (paces around the room nervously)

Aunt Becky, picturing the prospect of being home with The Daver, pacing the halls and chewing loudly ALL WEEK LONG: “I’m OKAY I’M OKAY.” (tries to get up and faints)

It seems as though no one in my family is altogether impressed by the flu. I’m certainly not, although the amount that I’m sleeping could put my high school self to shame.

And what’s keeping me giggling is the mental picture of some guy walking up and down my street ringing a bell and yelling “BRING OUT YOUR SWINE.”

The fever, she rages mightily.

—————–

Strap on a mask, kiddos, grab a bottle of vodka and come and tell Aunt Becky a story as she battles the mighty flu virus.

What is going on with YOU? Oh yeah, I’m talking to YOU!

It’s Tuesday, Internet, which means that my column over at Toy With Me is up. Today, I’m talking about the possibility of friendship between men and women. It’s weirdly safe for work, yo.

Click the smiling beaver to be whisked away, or stick around for a rewritten blast from the mother-humping past:

—————————-

The summer after Alex was born, I decided to sort through the Tupperware coffin of loose pictures in my parents basement and take the ones that I wanted. I was tired of not having any pictures of me as a baby around and imagined huge battles between my brother and I over who got to keep the picture of our stupid dog Silas.

So, I dug in one day, and gathered a bag up.

I had lofty goals, Internet, you see. I was going to:

a) sort the pictures chronologically

b) throw out repeats/crappy pictures and

niner) place them all neatly in a book or thirty.

I got to about age 6 in my life before I threw in the towel and shoved the whole lot into a far smaller Rubbermaid bin and shoved it into a corner. My father and grandfather took pictures the way I collect orchids: obsessively. I was, apparently, a favorite target.

Years later, it’s still sitting there, collecting dust and mocking me quietly.

I shudder when I think about having to sort through the amount of things that my in-laws have saved. To call my mother-in-law a pack rat would be a grave disservice to pack rats everywhere. She is a pack rat times approximately 6,879. I don’t pretend to understand, so I just smile and nod, which seems easier to all parties involved and wins me more Daughter-In-Law Of The Year* trophies.

So I go through our house about every 3-4 months and purge the fuck out of everything, while, of course, Dave and Ben are away so that they cannot protest when I get rid of their collection of ancient reciepts and old moldering socks. It’s great for my soul.

When Alex was born, I badgered my mother-in-law in the patented Becky-Drip-Drip Method, which I liken to being pecked to death by an overly large chicken, for baby pictures of The Daver. I love baby pictures of people that I know, and I was dying to see them.

Each and every time I was met with an excuse. Turns out that in the vast multitude of boxes, she has lost them somewhere. But during a visit, she’d brought up a handful that she’d had lying around and whipped them out to show me. Turns out that Alex looked very little like The Daver. Who knew?

Having recently given up on the task of placing my pictures in an album I pulled out a stack from my own babyhood to show her.

So we flipped on and on through the pictures of Baby Becky, while I commented on my fathers’ Iranian Taxi Driver glasses and his David Crosby mustache. She’d laugh uncomfortably, obviously trying to get away from me, but having nowhere to really go, she was stuck.

Eventually, it dawned on me that I was showing my EXTREMELY CONSERVATIVE mother-in-law naked pictures of daughter-in-law. As a dimpled baby. Occasionally being nursed. But nearly always naked.

Including the bear skin rug set.

“Heh, heh, heh,” I sputtered, trying to recover from the situation and perhaps mend the ever-widening chasm between us.

“What’s up with kids in the eighties? Heh-heh-heh.”

I couldn’t stop myself.

“It’s like they were never wearing clothes. Heh-heh-heh.” Trying to salvage the situation.

“WELL,” she replied, her irritation seeping though her tightly clipped words, “Maybe not in YOUR house.”

Great, I thought to myself, just fucking GREAT, barely suppressing the laughter. Now she thinks you come from a NAKED Family. I snickered into my cupped hand.

Oh well, I thought to myself as she got up in a huff and walked away, leaving me stranded on a couch, in a pool of naked baby pictures. That’s better than thinking you came from The Jello Mold Family.

*I am the only daughter-in-law. Therefore, I have to be the best.

As I type this post to you, I hate to tell you this, but I may or may not be dying. I know, your Google Reader* probably thanks you. It’s through a haze of Delsym that these words are arranging themselves into sentences that may or may not make more or less sense than normal, but onward! Onward and upward we will forage, Internet!

Because that is what we do!

Halloween. Yes, Halloween. This is the obligatory after Halloween post where no one will read these words anyway, because, oh! look! funny looking cute kids! A blue car! A frog reading Aristotle! HA!

On Friday, I was all Mr. Burns cackling that I was gonna pay Alex back for sleepless nights and being an overall difficult baby by making him dress up in ridiculous costumes before he made me buy him costumes like dragon warrior stealth slasher or (the bane of my existence) Star Wars Characters.

Exhibit A:

The Halloweiner:

I mean seriously, how much worse can you get? The kid was a HOT DOG! HA.

(also, I was in the wild throes of sleep deprivation).

Exhibit 2:

The Hedgehog (which everyone thought was a rat. Which, hi, NO)

Okay, so this costume was funking adorable and he was thirty quadrillion times cuter than my own! live! hedgehog Tate, who was an ASSHOLE. Also, I bribed Alex to pose for this picture by giving him candy because I win at life and motherhood.

Revenge, this year was a dish best served, well, you’ll see…

This is what Alex went dressed as for Halloween this year. A Skelly-ton. A Skelling-ton.

When posed with the question, “do you want to put on your costume?” Alex said, “NO!” and then threw his wee body with the head the size of a globe on the floor and began to flail about.

Somehow, it seemed unfair to force it upon him, although I considered it for a millisecond. In fact, he’s squawking indignantly, if you can imagine, at me taking this picture, because the flash is bothering his wee eyes. Delicate flower, that one.

Speaking of delicate flowers, here is his sister:

Also as a Skelling-ton, pre-Halloween (this was on Facebook, so I’m sorry for those of you squawking at the outrage of a repeat), a much calmer child in the eyes of the paparazzi.

My very own Flower Grrrrl, who was a freaking trouper and a half.

I should have some additional pictures up on Facebook later in the week, so as not to slow the load time of my blog any further. Because I am not only a Queen among Men, but a considerate soul.

And lastly, but certainly but not least, the person certain to win biggest brother of the freaking century. The person who made sure to ask at every house for candy for his brother, even when his brother was too afraid to go up to the house himself, my first son…

First the Wayback Machine:

And this year:

A ninja. Which proves that I am not a little boy because a ninja? REALLY? I don’t get it AT ALL.

Aside from being on my Death Bed now, Halloween was a rousing success (SHOCKING) and I’m pretty sure that no one tried to poison the kids.

How was your Halloween?

This post was totally powered by Delsym and a wicked fever.

*your Google Reader can also send me diamonds and other precious stones to thank me for NOT signing up for NaBloWhatever, that daily posting thing that runs through the month of November. Because, obviously.

Hi!

I recently found your blog. I love your blog and read it all the time! Anwyay, you mention that you almost lost it due to sleep deprevation because your son Alex never slept. I felt like I almost lost it this week. I was not sure if I was depressed or sleep deprived. How could you tell the difference between needing medication or needing a good night’s sleep?

Signed,
Sleepy

One of the things that got me through the intolerable first year that was Alex’s life was remembering hearing that they used sleep deprivation as torture for POW’s in prisons. They’d let the prisoners go to sleep only to wake them up just as they drifted off to the land of nod, which, coincidentally, was EXACTLY what Alex did.

Every night for nearly a year straight.

(I also remember hearing that they used Britney Spears songs as torture, which I listen to voluntarily, but this is neither here nor there) (hey, you, laughing at me, BITE ME)(no, not you, Sleepy, I know you’re too tired to laugh)

By the end of that year, I will tell you now in a moment of uncharacteristic honesty, I nearly killed myself. I’m not saying this because I’m trying to be coy or tragically glib, or funny or cute or any other thing you can associate with that statement.

I’m saying it because I was so trapped by my life that I saw no other way out. I fantasized about killing myself.

With chronic sleep deprivation, the line between needing medication and needing a good nights sleep blurs very easily and getting meds for the wicked case of post-partum depression I was suffering from (Alex was a HORRIBLE, AWFUL baby. String me up from the rafters by my toenails for saying that motherhood was anything less than the best! thing! ever! but he was).

I urge you, my friend, to please talk to your doctor. If you feel like you’re losing it, it’s best that you two discuss it. Sleep deprivation is a motherfucker and trust me, even now, it plays with my emotions when I’ve not slept well.

I got help and I let Alex cry it out because you know what? No matter what, sacrificing my own life for my child’s temporary happiness really isn’t fair. Any way you cut it up, a dead mom doesn’t make anyone happy. Even the most attachment-y of the attachment parents can’t fault you there.

If they do, send them to me. I have a foot I’d like to connect with their ass.

Please, talk to your doctor. PLEASE.

Dear Aunt Becky;

Do I have to apologize after every hormone indunced mood swing outburst including the ones that don’t involve any physical threats?

Well, now, see I hail from the Midwest, and here, land of the Pillsbury Dough-Boy and the Pot Pie, we’re apologetic to a fault here. It’s obnoxious how apologetic we are. I almost want to apologize for it.

Let me give you an example.

Why don’t you step on my foot at the grocery store, okay? And watch ME fall all over my asshole self apologizing to you. It’s absurd. If it’s another Midwesterner, it’ll take twenty minutes, the two of us standing there going back and forth like a couple of old people,

“No, I’M sorry!!”

“No, see, it’s MY fault. I’m the one who clearly had the audacity to have the misfortune to have a foot in YOUR way.”

It’s fucking bullshit. I know.

Long story short: yeah, I’d apologize. Unless the motherfucker really deserved it. Then I would revel in my good fortune at being able to site premenstrual psychosis and milk it for all it’s worth.

Orange Flavored Hostess cupcakes??

I can only presume that my friend is both shocked and thrilled to find another lover of Orange Flavored Hostess Cupcakes, as we both know that I happen to consider them a Dream Food. My friend is aware, no doubt, as this has made my list of 100 boring ass things about me (see sidebar, if you have no idea what I’m talking about)(I’d link, but that seems to just give you guys dead links), coming in at #4:

4. I think Orange Flavored Hostess cupcakes are the best food in the world.

So, my new found friend, obvious Foodie and connoisseur of all things Plastic-Tasting And Dyed Orange, I’m thinking that you and I should form a Secret Society. Because there are not too many of us out there. Certainly, the people who prefer the CHOCOLATE version of this tasty treat are a dime a fucking dozen, but you and I, well, we’re in a league of our own.

Perhaps we can come up with a whimsical name like Secret Society Of People Who Love Hostess Orange Flavored Cupcakes and have meetings where we serve our delicious treats on sterling silver platters and write odes to our favorite snack foods in leather bound notebooks. We’d, of course, have to do it with fountain ink pens because, well, if one is writing an ode, it should be in fountain ink, don’t you agree, oh, wise friend of mine?

Of course you agree.

(note to self: buy fountain ink pen to write odes to Hostess Orange Flavored Cupcakes with new Best Friend and Secret Society Member).

Oh, this Secret Society is going to be delicious fun, my friend. I can hardly wait for our first meeting! Why, I think we should kick it off with a rousing reading of the nutritional facts followed by maybe an impassioned dialogue of how it makes us feel to know that we cannot buy our treats at any store, but must resort to gas stations! Like commoners! THE SHAME OF IT ALL!!

Well, I can hardly wait to have our first meeting and exchanging of the keys. Trust me when I say that the honor is truly all mine.

———————

As always, questions may be submitted to Ask Aunt Becky through the link on the sidebar. Feel free to add your comments below, yo.

And, thank you genuinely to everyone who has helped me with voting for Mimi and my blog and has been graciously spreading the word. If you haven’t voted, and you want to, the links are on my sidebar.

I owe you. I mean that. Aunt Becky has got your back. I know you have mine.

I realized yesterday, as I was responding to comments, (which is what makes me look like I get a zillion comments, FYI, every response I give adds a comment) that I probably didn’t explain properly to a good chunk of my readers who came into the story pretty late in the game.

I showed you a picture of the back of my daughter Amelia’s head after a post about my lame, clumsy ass and made a joke about a baby bar fight over my integrity. This would probably lead you to believe that her scar was the result of some sort of accident, as the post implies, because I don’t assume that most of you have read back into the depths of my pathetic archives.

Mimi was born with a previously undiagnosed birth defect called a neural tube defect.

What this means is that sometime during the first month of pregnancy, the spinal cord (called during this stage of life the neural tube) didn’t fuse together properly . It can happen anywhere up and down the spinal cord, causing a condition like spina bifidia, where the delicate spinal nerves poke out.

Or, an encephalocele, where the skull is malformed, and the brain develops outside of the skull.

Like this MRI slide of my daughter’s brain, taken 2 days after she was born.

The full story here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

(what, ME long winded?)

On February 26th, 2009, 2 days before our daughter celebrated her 1 month birthday, we checked into the hospital to have part of her brain removed and her skull repaired. The surgery was a complete success and while the scar takes up most of the back of her head, it’s part of who she is, just like the plate in her skull.

We’ll never know why it happened to us because that’s not given to us to know, but I do know this: somehow what I was given was a platform and a voice and I intend to use it as best as I can. Because I can’t believe this all was in vain. I just can’t.

So, this spring, I’m going to Walk For Mimi in the March of Dimes March For Babies, bug the ever-loving SHIT out of my family to donate (don’t worry, you guys are safe from me here), and beg YOU to help me with this:

The first thing my mother said about me after I was born was that I had a “face only a mother would love.” According to the doctor, I’d been in some really awkward birthing position, shoved up against some bone or another, and that lead to my black eyes and nose so swollen it took up damn near half of my face.

I politely, respectfully disagree.

Not with the whole “face only a mother would love” because obviously I found someone who if he doesn’t LOVE me, at least tolerates me and my face, but with the “awkward birthing position.”

No, I’m pretty sure that Baby Aunt Becky had lost her way while trying to get out of the womb and was desperately battling to exit THE WRONG WAY. Or maybe I slipped and fell, cracking gnomish my face open. That’s probably more like it.

With genetics like mine it’s a wonder I ever learned to properly walk.

I suppose the term “walk” is debatable since I have tripped over lines in my Pergo floor, routinely fall UP the stairs and just last summer fell through the screen door. All stone-cold sober as a matter of fact.

My father, tasked with teaching me to ride a bike, swears I didn’t learn until I was close to 11 but I think that it was probably closer to 14 by which time many of my friends had cars, so I didn’t ever really get a chance to hone my sweet-ass bike riding skills.

The problem with being a Super Klutz, Overachiever is this (besides those pesky ER co-pays) you have to explain to people how you sustained injuries like these:

*Twisting your ankle while walking–NOT running–down stairs

*Breaking a toe while making a sandwich

Or, maybe even THIS:

Das BOOT.

This would be what I got to wear during most of my pregnancy with Mimi, thanks to a miscalculation on my part where I slipped on a rogue BABY GATE and broke some tendons in my fucking foot.

No, there was no fire. I wasn’t saving cuddly kittens from a burning building or curing world hunger. I was simply walking down stairs and made a misstep that cost me a whole hell of a lot of pain, suffering and dignity (what dignity?).

(As a side note, people who wear walking casts are not retarded. Just because I was wearing Das Boot does not mean that I was any stupider than I was before. It did not require that you speak to me in slow small sentences.

“Dooooooooo yooouuuuuu haaaavvveeee annnyyyy queeesstttiiiiooonnnss?”

The only question I have, mother fucker, is how far up my ass I can shove my boot before I hit your small intestine.

Also? People with disabilities don’t deserve to be STARED at. Just because I was pregnant and crippled did not mean that I was any more of a freak show than I was before. So take a picture, motherfucker, I fucking dare you. I’ll shove that camera so far down your throat you’ll be flashing people for months.

ASS.

So to you people with disabilities that don’t go away after months in a walking cast? I am sorry. Genuinely. People treat you like a fucking freak show and seriously, wow, that fucking sucks.)

Anyway. Coming up with new and inventive ways to explain away dumb ass injuries is always really tricky because you can only say, “I broke my toe making a sandwich” and get the standard blink, blink, blink response before you realize that you have to come up with something more…heroic.

Like, “I broke my toe making a sandwich in a third world country for a starving kid!” Said with just the right amount of conviction, you could pull it off, because it would be pretty hard to question that! What kind of assbag would LIE about flying to a third world country to make a sandwich for a starving kid!?!

Or even, “I twisted my ankle running down the stairs of a burning building trying to save a basket of orphaned puppies!” Everyone loves a feel-good story about adorable fluffy puppies or kitties. Just watch the news!

Now I’m just going to have to teach Amelia to carefully explain that this:

Is from a wicked bar fight. When people question how a baby got into a bar fight, she’ll have to carefully say, “You should SEE the other baby…” And then, BAM! the scar will be easily explained away. No one can question a kid with a scar that takes up half of her head (it’s, well, stretched since this picture was taken).

Twitter informed me last night that I’m not the only one with really ridiculous injuries which sent me to bed laughing my ASS off. Especially the conversation in which I was planning to sue the sandwich for breaking my toe and appear on both the People’s Court and Maury (paternity testing)(duh) for it.

THIS is why I adore Twitter. The mix of the absurd and the sublime.

So gather ’round Das Boot, The Internet, and tell Your Aunt Becky if you’ve had any wacky injuries.

While normally, my sex column is fairly PG, with the occasional unable-to-be-scrubbed-away-no-matter-how-hard-you-try-image thrown in for laughs and spits (porn-n-eggs?), this week, I’m talking about the time I got busted. By my boyfriend’s mother.

And I’m warning you, it’s probably not, well, for the faint of heart, those who may be pregnant, those wanting to become pregnant, those with heart conditions, and please call your doctor for erections lasting longer than four hours.

Do not stare directly into the sun.

(it’s really not very graphic at all)(or is it?)

(click to go)(scroll down to stay)

——————–

After I had Ben at age 20, I was left looking around and figuring out what the hell to do with my life. Professionally, I mean. I won’t bother getting into how PERSONALLY having a baby really crimps your style, especially when your kid is the one that screams like a banshee whenever he’s, well, awake.

I’d finished half a degree with a dual major in Bio/Chem, and had some pretty lofty Follow In The Males Of My Family’s Trek To Med School ideas of what I would do. Lofty, perhaps, but also the only damn thing I could think to do with my life. Whomever decided that 17/18 year olds should be in charge of choosing a profession is a wicked genius of a person (and also the reason majors like Media Studies are invented).

There’s a stupid commercial out there and the tagline is something like “Having a baby changes EVERYTHING.” I call it stupid, because I’m pretty sure that’s the most annoyingly obvious statement I’ve heard in my life, for a seasoned parent or not. But in the case of my schooling, it was irritatingly spot on.

Even if I’d been able to get into med school, which is either highly or only slightly laughable, as a single mother, I was aware that something was going to have to give. And if I’d chosen school, my son would be without a real mother at home (although I could have gotten a life-sized cut out of my picture and insisted that it follow him around creepily watching him as he went about his day), until he was approximately 26 years old.

Figuring I’d take my chances on extra-massive therapy bills for him later on (mental note: deposit money into Future Therapy Account every time I tell The Internet about my kid), I buckled down and made my choice: Ben.

Which left me with another choice: what the shit was I supposed to do now? I had to finish A degree in SOMETHING, and preferably something I could, oh, I don’t know, get a salary upon graduation WITHOUT asking if they wanted fries with that.

And as I saw it, my future was a toss-up between teaching and nursing. Neither of which were anything I’d ever considered as actual career options before then, so I chose what I considered to be the lesser of two evils. For approximately 12 minutes.

Yes, my friends, it’s true: I considered becoming a teacher for about 12 minutes. I even went as far as to try and say “I’m going to be a TEACHER” out loud. It was when I couldn’t contain my laughter AFTER that statement that I reconsidered my initial thought. The thought of me as a teacher was as laughable as the thought of me as a nurse.

I have the highest regard for teachers, really, I do. They’re tasked with wrangling OUR CHILDREN (or at least the children we know) all day long, and trying to teach them as they bounce off the walls like monkeys.

I pictured myself standing there in front of The Youth Of America, trying in vain to get the kids to stop eating each others’ boogers, my cardigan (I’d have to wear a cardigan if I became a teacher, this I knew) stained and buttoned incorrectly, my eyes puffy from a long night of drinking to make the voices go away, and I knew I just couldn’t do it.

This weekend, the care of 7 of The Youth Of America in my incapable hands, was like a vision into The Future That Could Have Been, and I hated every moment of it. As soon as we got there, the incessant questioning began. It’s like the kids could sense who was least equipped to handle their weird questions and glommed onto it.

“Why aren’t you serving pizza?” (the party was at 2:30 PM)
“Why are the cupcakes green?”
“I thought there would be more kids here” (me too, sweetheart, me too)
“Can we go to Pizza Hut?”
“Is Ben’s baby (points at Alex) a girl?”
“Why isn’t he a girl?”
“What’s his name?”
“Why’d you choose that name?”
“Are you having another baby?”
“Is it going to look like Ben?”
“Can I have some more money?”
“Can I have some more money NOW?”
“Why is that called air hockey?”

This was pretty much all I heard for the last 30 minutes of the party (thank you moon bounce for making them be quiet for an hour and a half), and while 30 minutes sounds like no time whatsoever, I found myself wishing that I had thought to bring a telephone number list to call their parents to pick them up EARLY. See, I’m not so patient. Or teacherly.

So, to all of the teachers out there, Aunt Becky salutes you. I consider you to be among America’s Finest; standing in the trenches and educating Our Youth while I hide at home. Away from the questions I can’t answer.

What job would YOU be unable to do, my Internet peeps?

“You don’t understand the real world, Becky. It’s just things that happen around you while you sit by.”

—Captain Asshole, at age 21, my ex-boyfriend*

I have two tattoos.

The one we’ll talk about today is this one:

It’s a seahorse and it’s on my left foot and yes, it hurt like a mother-fucker, actually. It was a 25th birthday present to myself from, well, myself and it’s easily disguiseable under a pair of shoes which is why both of my tattoos are on my feet. They’re all disappearing and shit.

ANYWAY.

I got this one right before I got married to remind myself of something.

See, I met The Daver while I was going through my Seahorse Period. I was bobbing along, accepting that I was probably going to go out on my own, Ben and I against the world, and I was coming to terms with this.

23 year old guys aren’t exactly known for welcoming single mothers and their 2 year old sons into their lives with open arms, and besides, I figured, I never was the marrying sort anyway. So I focused my energies on going to school and to work and carving out a life for myself and my son.

Bobbing along.The two of us. Together. Benner and I. My Seahorse Period.

Then BAM! POW! SPLAT!

Suddenly two became three and we weren’t alone anymore and I learned to rely on having another person to help carry the burden. And while having someone else to rely on is exquisite, I wanted to make sure that I had a physical reminder on my person that no matter what, I could make it on my own again.

Part of crawling out of my shell again after being so dependent on Daver after my miserable pregnancies has been a process of relearning who I was before and part of that has been a realization that I’ve become too complacent.

I haven’t tried to learn the things that I consider The Daver’s Realm (and not just Prime Minister of Clogging Toilets) because I’ve made the faulty assumption that he’ll always be around. Problem is, I haven’t factored into the equation that of the 168 hours in a week, he spends probably over 100 of those working on any given week.

That means that the smoke detector I bought in March sat on our table to be installed for 6 months before I finally got him to do it. Why didn’t I do it myself?

I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO WORK A DRILL.

Which, considering I didn’t properly learn to ride a bike until I was 12 and still walk into walls at 29 is probably a good thing. The less power tools, the better. Because I probably WOULD drill my eye out.

But at 29, there are a whole cadre of things I probably should know how to do that I don’t. Like change the bag to my Kirby vacuum. Or turn off the water to the hose for the winter. Or get into the attic (altho Aunt Becky + ladders is probably bad due to previously mentioned walking problems).

Maybe this is my year to take the world by the balls and make it my bitch. I see no time like the present to learn to drill shit into walls and wire the fuck out of, uh, light fixtures and *gestures around* take care of shit that needs to get done.

So wish me luck, The Internet, and any tips about how to Live Life and Get Stuff Done are appreciated. Apparently I was too busy playing Bejewewled on my phone when they covered this stuff in school. PROBABLY should have paid attention then.

*the ironies I could list are so extensive that let’s just say that this statement is so full of contradictions and bullshit that I’m surprised it didn’t self-destruct when he said it. WHATEVER THAT MEANS.