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.

What do you do if you have an annoying friend who lacks all originality and copies the shit you do while all the while trying to pretend she’s totally authentic? Buys the same stuff (clothes, accessories), tries to dress her kid like yours, and let’s not start on the blog…

*sighs*

So first off, let me say that I’m sorry and that it’s annoying and that while people will tell you to be flattered, I’ve never once been flattered. Mostly I’ve wanted to make sure that my brain matter didn’t pop out through my eyeballs because I was so mad. I loathe being copied nearly as much as I loathe pretentious American people who add a “u” in words like “favourite”.

(you get a pass if you’re European, Canadian or were raised that way. Because, obviously.)

Just like, I’m sure, you do.

It’s the highest form of flattery, MY ASS. Maybe when you’re 8 or something, but not when you’re an adult. But it happens.

Here’s the rub though, my love. You can’t go swinging around, accusing people of ripping off your ideas, your catch phrases, your awful awesome sense of style without looking like a complete jackass.

There’s just no polite way to say “STOP COPYING ME” without sounding like you’re either so full of yourself that you need an extra chair for your ego or like you’re 12 and decorating your Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper with heart stickers.

If it bothers you as much as it bothers me, I’d delete, delete, delete and get as far away as you can. Or I’d ignore her blatant rip-off and hope like hell that people see that she’s obviously the copy-cat.

Frankly, I don’t think I could be the bigger person here because I am highly immature like that.

You must let me know how you handle it, love.

So, my son has this doctor that people from all over the world come to see for a very specific problem. He has a great team of researchers, nurses, nurse practitioners, and office personnel. He, on the other hand, while as brilliant and smart as anyone I’ve ever met, has the bedside manner of Dr House, perhaps worse. We have to keep him. He’s hard to get, and knows what he’s doing. But for the love of all things good, how on earth can I handle this man’s attitude?

Ah, Dr. Asshole. My favorite.

Obviously, you can’t break up with him and that sucks. Any way that you can sneak in a Xanax for yourself to take before you have to see him? I know Mimi’s neurosurgeon was brilliant but was abrupt and made me want to kill myself, so I always went in medicated. I was also in crisis mode, so I didn’t feel a thing anyway and sat there hysterical anyway.

If that isn’t an answer, I’d arm yourself with a notepad and pen and write down whatever questions that you have to ask him and try to focus on the notepad in front of you. That’s how they teach smokers to get through a craving, to focus on one small thing in front of them, and it works.

I’d try and distance myself PERSONALLY from his attitude as much as I could–because I assure you that he’s not being kept up at night wondering how to deal with YOU–and remind myself through clenched teeth that he was a cocky motherfucker, but that he was a cocky motherfucker who got the job DONE.

What should you do if you keep thinking of your ex – in a good way? Not a terrible break up, divorced because of needing to be in different places at once. It’s been 10 years, and haven’t spoken to him again. He still lives where he originally moved to, and I still live where I wouldn’t move from. (and never the twain shall meet)

I just think about him more than normal I guess. Wonder what things would have been like. How dangerous is this thinking? And, do you think he is thinking of me? :o)

Oh Gentle Reader, Your Aunt Becky SUCKS in matters of the heart, but for your heart, I will make a stab at answering this very honest question to the best of my ability. I’m sure my much more qualified readers will be able to help wherever I leave you hanging.

I think that some people leave a mark on us that’s ingrained into our psyche deeper than we can ever erase, no matter how much time or distance we can put between us. I don’t mean that we all have some unrequited love out there, just waiting to have some crazy Hollywood ending, but just that some people leave a bigger impression on us–for some reason–than others.

In times of weakness, or happiness, or sorrow, or any sort of strong changing emotions, we draw back to those people, consciously or no and think about them and the what-might-have-been’s. Sometimes, these are just nice daydreams and fantasies and other times they can send you to places you probably shouldn’t go.

It’s up to you to figure out which this is.

I’m sure your ex husband thinks of you, probably fondly sometimes, maybe not so much others (your split certainly sounded amicable, which deserves a round of applause from me)(*applauds you*) but you need to remember that you got divorced for a reason.

Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton twice and divorced him, well, twice.

Perhaps you’re just thinking fondly back to that time in your life and remember how wonderful things were back then.

If I were you, I’d take a step back and try and figure out where these emotions are coming from. I wish you the best of luck, my friend. I’m sure my readers will have excellent advice for you wherever I screwed up.

So, readers, HALP ME.

And, as always, click the Ask Aunt Becky link on my sidebar to submit a question for my crappy noteworthy amazing should be banned from the internet advice column.

I made a big fuss a couple of months ago after I started getting lumped in with the Mothers Who Drink about how I am not an alcoholic. It’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever written so if you haven’t read it, you should.

Anyway, it wasn’t a joke. I’m not an alcoholic.

I’ve always been fearful of becoming a pill-popper, though, so when I got a standing prescription for Vicodin for my anniversary (from a real doctor! Not, like The Internet!) for my my grains I was a little afraid I’d pass out in a pool of my own drool after having a little too much medicated fun.

I haven’t.

Turns out, I’m not a pill-popper either.

I’m not a smoker, I don’t drink coffee, I don’t hoard cats, kids, dogs or Precious Moments figurines (shudder, shudder).

But I am an addict. I know that now.

(don’t worry, I’m not rehashing a boring plot of a show because that’s nearly as dull as a dream sequence and I don’t do that either. Bear with me now.)

I watched an episode of House, MD where the lead character looks frantically for something to replace his Vicodin habit with and he ultimately decides on cooking. He spends all day and night making spaghetti sauce, eschewing sleep to make the sauce until he perfects it.

I watched that scene, my mouth agape (likely a thin filament of drool hanging merrily down) tears coursing down my cheeks with my hands around my Orchid’s for Dummies book, after I put down my iPhone where I’d been looking up the precise humidity level my particular species of orchid likes and spec-ing out the dimensions for a light box so that during the semi-dark Midwestern winters, my flowers get the exact precise amount of light they’ll need.

I slowly swiveled my head, my eyes as wide as saucers to The Daver who looked back at me and I said crying, choking a little, “Oh my God, I didn’t know, why didn’t you tell me?”

He looked back at me, slightly bemused and said, “Baby, I thought you knew.”

No, no I didn’t know.

In hindsight, though, it all makes sense.

I get asked a lot, sometimes kindly, sometimes in awe, sometimes in a oh-my-god-you’re-an-asshole sort of way, how I can write in my blog most days of the week and well, now you have your answer, my friends: that’s how. I’m an addict. I’m compulsive.

And I’ve channeled any of the energy I might have put into less wholesome activities and put it somewhere wholesome. Creating instead of destroying.

It gives me a sense of accomplishment to come here and peck out an entry for you that writing an essay for myself wouldn’t give me. You give me feedback that the blank Open Office document won’t and I can interact with you and it’s a hell of a lot more satisfying than washing the floor.

Maybe I need to get addicted to housework. I’d get laid more.

It was pretty clear from the moment I trudged back to the train from my first day as Student Nurse Aunt Becky weeping like a crazed fool that I wasn’t going to make a very good nurse. I knew it when I signed up for the program that this probably wasn’t going to be a career I could actually stick with, because I don’t do well taking orders from people, no matter how adorable Precious Moments scrubs are.

They’re not, by the by. Precious Moments anything make me want to heave.

But anyway.

I was as welcome among the ranks of Student Nurse as a bout of gonorrhea and that was made clear right away. I don’t know why, except that I’m probably a gigantic puckered poohole, but the rest of the class (mostly) hated me. Never one to let people get the best of me, I hated them right back.

Especially since they’d interrupt our four hour lectures, hands waving feverishly in the air only to have something like this come out:

Umm…so I work in a hospital right now as a tech, right? And yeah, on your Slide Show, you show the pads that we put under the patient as blue? But where I work, they’re pink?”

Blink, Blink, Blink.

For the first couple of weeks, I’d wait patiently to hear the statement/question followed up with something more important, something that would make an outburst like that really worth interrupting class for. Nothing ever came. Just observations.

Not witty observations like, “Why does my cat insist upon licking his empty nutsack for 5 hours?” or even ephiphones like “Arbys = RB’s = Roast Beef’s!!!!” No. Just bullshit like, “One time, my grandma was in the hospital and her roommate had a Code Brown.”

Blink, blink, motherfucking BLINK.

Torture. Pure torture.

At the end of my senior year, we rotated through the ER and finally, I felt like I had found my calling. No more shoving suppositories and wiping butts for me. No more bathing old people or young people or hiding from overbearing Nurse Ratched.

It was all holding organs in body cavities and blood and guts and sputum and hearts falling onto the floor and suicides and it was like mother-fucking heaven. IV-drips, patients who have to go elsewhere and doctors who stay put and nurses who love their job and techs who, wow.

I’m not sure why I didn’t end up working in the ER.

It’s hard to get in there, for one thing, and I probably would have had to work for a couple of years on a Med/Surgical floor (which may as well be called an Ass/Butts floor in my book) which probably would have made me insane before I could have applied to the ER.

I really don’t know why I didn’t go for it. I should have.

I drifted to a Cardio unit–the same place I always said I never wanted to work–at the intense urging of a over-eager HR manager and lasted there only a couple of weeks, because, well, I know myself.

From there I went into hospice case management (they didn’t call Your Aunt Becky “Nurse Death” for no reason) and then I’ve stayed home with my kids after I had Alex. I plan on doing a stint with Doctors Without Borders when my kids stop needing their momma so damn much, but that probably won’t be for a couple more years.

Dave works pretty much at the same rate he consumes oxygen and while I could go back to work, at this point, it would create more problems than it would solve.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, my three remaining brain cells rattling about my brain cavity like ball bearings about how much I miss that part of my old life.

It’s great to use my medical knowledge to be smugly superior and occasionally solve the medical mysteries on House, MD before his team does, but I miss using the rational and analytical part of my brain. That’s what I do best: analyze.

I’m going back to school soon, I’ll get my PhD in virology like I always said I would and I’ll get to pursue my dreams, a little derailed thanks to a couple of crotch parasites, but intact and burbling just below the surface

I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to nursing and it’s likely that the next time I’m in the ER will be with one of the kids and most days it probably won’t make me nostalgic, or maybe it will. I can’t be sure.

Are we all so conflicted?

I’m not much of a tech person.

I mean, I appreciate that it’s there, and I still am impressed every single time I turn on my iPhone that it’s just so fancy pants (also: I am impressed that I haven’t bedazzled the shit out of it yet. But have no fear, I will. Better yet, I will find someone on Etsy to do it for me) and I can work my blog mostly.

I’m the person who didn’t get an email address until my friend in college set me up with one (which is why it was sex_kitten23) and an AIM account until I started dating someone who suggested I get one (stinkybutt234) and I doubt I’d have a blog, twitter or Facebook page were it not for The Daver and his ever-expanding attraction to social media sites.

While I may not be into tech stuff, The Daver obviously is. So is my father.

My addict-like nature did come from somewhere and for him, he’s always been really interested in computers and as far back as I can remember, he’s subscribed to Porn For Geeks computer magazines by the truckload. Hey, you knew the orchid thing didn’t come from nowhere, right?

If nothing else, these magazines have made my father p-a-r-a-n-o-i-d about the security of his network. Because, yeah, the man has at least 3 computers hooked up there protected by a state of the art firewall set up by my engineer of a brother. His network is the Fort Knox of networks.

Which is interesting, because no one–not even my brother or Dave–can get onto it. I guess my brother is pretty good at his job.

What makes the situation even weirder is that my father doesn’t really house anything too important on his computers. He doesn’t work for the CIA or FBI or any of those cool acronym agencies. He doesn’t write novels or tomes of poetry. He doesn’t take gigabytes of pictures, painstakingly, lovingly retouching them.

No.

He plays games. Reads blogs. Surfs the web. Occasionally reads my Facebook status, ashamed that he has a daughter who pollutes the Internet with her drivel. Wonders how to disown her.*

Reads up on spyware and how it means that the terrorists are WINNING and how reformatting your hard drive is a great way to solve all of the world’s ill’s. Reformats his hard drive. Figures he’ll call Dave to help him fix it.

Needless to say, waving the one piece of swag I kept from BlogHer–a Flash Drive–near the computer didn’t work. I had no idea what the password was and my mother was just as clueless and Dave just rolled his eyes. My father has locked us all effectively out.

Don’t worry, though, I haven’t forgotten about the picture I owe you for voting for me (you can still vote for me! HOORAY!), neatly locked away from me on my father’s computer, inaccessible and sad.

It will be taken care of, though, my friends. Soon *cackles wildly* o! soon you will see the Halloween costume that many of you won’t realize is a costume. Which makes it that much awesomer.

So, that makes me curious, Internet. Why don’t you tell Your Aunt Becky what your favorite Halloween costume was?

*Sorry Dad, I’m not going ANYWHERE. You see these grandchildren? THEY MEAN I OWN YOU.