When I was 16, my best friend Rory and I were lazing about my bedroom on a Saturday afternoon like a couple of kittens when we had the most brilliant idea in the history of awesome ideas: Rory offered to cut my hair. Here is the point in the story where I must declare two things:

Rory is not gay.

Rory is also not a hairdresser.

I’ve always had decently long hair, alternating between being about shoulder length and covering the bottom of my boobs. I have hair so thick, when not in the throes of a postpartum thyroid crisis that if it were much shorter, I would likely resemble a cactus, I find anything above the shoulder is sort of bad news for me.

So a couple of times a year, I drag ass to the salon and get it chopped to about shoulder length and let it grow on down until I realize that it’s officially gotten “too long.”

“Too long” for me is anything that makes me look like I might be a member of one of those religions that doesn’t allow women to cut their hair, or when wearing it in a pony tail becomes painful for my neck.

I’d always envied those women with the adorable pixie cuts but never quite had the guts to lop off all of my hair into one. It seemed like an awfully huge commitment for a 16 year old whose relationships were still measured in weeks.

But somehow, to Rory and I, who, I must admit were stone cold sober (as a matter of fact), this now seemed like the perfect cure for boredom. So we grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors and Rory lopped away.

Finally, he told me that I could turn around and when I did I was shocked to see a boy with big dark eyes looking back at me from the mirror. Uh-oh. Rory had given me a boy’s haircut. I gulped. Audibly.

Quickly, I raced upstairs and grabbed a shit-load of barrettes that I’d had laying around and began sticking them in the inch long tufts of hair that I had remaining. I grabbed an eyeliner–it was turquoise (hey, I never claimed to be tasteful)–and smeared it on. Satisfied by my appearance, I went back downstairs to show off my new haircut.

Surely, it was just new-hair-cut-jitters. Right? I hadn’t just committed teenage suicide, had I?

About an hour later, Rory and I had been watching The State on MTV (which, I got on DVD for my birthday and holy BALLS is that fucking funny) and the doorbell rang, our band of merry pranksters had arrived and we were off to do whatever it is that you do when you’re 16 and you have money and nowhere to really go but the world is all so new and wonderful and it’s all so fun.

Everyone had been over to my house BEFORE my haircut and, well, 8 mouths dropped open when they saw what had been done to my now-pin head.

To their credit, everyone was kind to me, probably, in looking back, kinder than I deserved.

(This, I should add, is where I’d humiliate myself by putting in a shot of me with my ridiculous hair so that you, My Internet, could tell me that “it’s not THAT bad” while you snicker into your cupped palm.

But, alas, I lost the book of pictures with all these snaps in my last move and I am actually so devastated by this that I cannot make a joke. I have no digital copy, so these pictures are simply lost. They’re gone forever and I cannot get them back.)

It was only from the back that one of my friends spoke the truth, “Hey Becky, you look like a lesbian now.”

I sucked in my breath sharply at this statement because he’d identified it exactly. I was now sporting the exact same haircut as all of the lesbians at school.

Always someone who had her own sense of style, which, one might properly argue is “tacky” and “unrefined” as noted by this iPhone cover that I am currently crushing on, or the belt buckle with my name on it or any other number of awful tacky things in my closet, I’m not always very quick on the uptake with things.

Something YOU might see as painfully obvious, I won’t notice for YEARS. I’m someone who could wear anal beads as a bracelet and not understand why people were snickering at me while I preened over it, so the haircut? Wouldn’t have realized it.

Well, I might have once the lesbian posse at school started hitting on me, but that was neither here nor there.

Truthfully?

I made an ugly lesbian. The haircut I can safely say was never going to be flattering on someone like me, no matter how much glitter I sprinkled, how many barrettes I clipped or diamonds I wore, short pixie haircuts aren’t my thing.

They make me look like I have a baseball where a head should be.

Thankfully, my hair eventually did grow out, although it took painfully longer than you’d think possible, and I had to go through all the stages of awful: cactus, Bozo the clown, Pig in a Wig, and eventually, back to my shoulders again.

And I learned a very valuable lesson that day.

I have a teeny, tiny head.

———————

So, loves, tell Your Aunt Becky all about your worst haircut experience. Was it a bad perm job that took on only a fraction of your hair? A home dye job gone horribly awry? Did half of your hair fall out? Did you routinely get mistaken for a lesbian?

No, Fair Reader, your eyes are NOT deceiving you, I did change my layout! It wasn’t that the lovely and talented Admin’s design wasn’t awesome, it was just that I needed something that was widget ready.

Do let me know if you see something wonky and let me know which operating system you use, because I have a Mac, which should mean something to someone besides the guy on the Mac commercial.

Also, I added a feature called “threaded comments” which, means that I can now easily reply to your comments VIA EMAIL. So, rather than adding a pithy and no doubt insightful comment inside the comment box, I am now attempting to reply through email.

This means two things:

1) if you actually care to see what I have to say, check that you’ve left me a valid email address

b) don’t reply to the email directly because I think that it would go to email purgatory.

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Back at the beginning of the summer, I went to see a shrink for exactly one visit before determining:

1) that I would never be the sort of person who would be comfortable sitting around discussing My Feelings without feeling like more of a narcissist than I already do (I blog, people. Come ON!)

b) My mental health benefit sucks balls.

But while I was there, I got to take this big fancy test, which thrilled me intensely, because I happen to adore taking tests. ESPECIALLY ones that have questions like, “I have flown across the ocean 45 times this week” because the answer is an obvious YES.

From this inventory, among other things, it was determined that I have incredible difficulties with Feelings. I don’t understand them. I don’t know how to express them. I don’t know what to do with them when I feel them. He suggested that I might need to go back and somehow relearn all about feelings.

Some of you are probably rolling your eyes right now because it sounds pretty far-fetched, but I think the dude and his 212 question inventory was probably on to something here.

While I have managed to escape my fucked up childhood relatively unscathed, I’m not sure that you can say to your husband, like I did on Sunday night conversationally, “Well, no matter what you do, I mean, don’t feel TOO bad, because you know, at least YOU didn’t cancel CHRISTMAS for me, heh-heh-heh. Sure, maybe you were late coming home this week, but you didn’t cancel Christmas.”

Did you catch that?

I made a joke about the time my mother canceled Christmas for me to make someone else feel better. Because it happened. She did. Everyone else had Christmas as usual. Except me. Other people got me stuff, just not her. I’d been “too bad that year.” And the kicker? If I brought it up, no one would remember it.

Now, that situation is a lot of things, but it’s not very funny. I don’t find it funny, I think it’s awful and it’s sad.

I do that a lot of the time when I shouldn’t: I discount the things that I’m going through. I’m sure there’s some jargon for it, but I’m not a psychologist and I wouldn’t know how to Google it if I could, so I won’t. So, here on Mommy Wants Vodka, we can call it the Other People Have No Legs Syndrome.

Or the Reverse Pain Olympics, if you prefer.

Because in the Pain Olympics, if you have a splinter in your finger, I have a stake though my arm and require immediate blood transfusions, sympathy cards, a parade in my honor and several crosses to get on.

But in the Other People Have No Legs Syndrome, rather than allowing yourself to feel badly for, oh I don’t know, maybe having a bad day just because you had a bad day, you’re stuck thinking “well, how can *I* be upset about being overtired when there are people in the world WITHOUT LEGS.”

So you don’t feel bad about your day, you move on. Eventually, though this builds up.

I’ve had a really hard year.

I don’t tend to blog about it anymore, because I’m kind of tired of how those kinds of posts bring out the leg-less, armless, fingerless masses. One might wonder how these people type, but, I’m fairly sure that even assholes can figure out how to make their point clear. Maybe they can type with their tongues, which must make them amazing at performing oral sex.

But somehow along the lines I’ve decided that’s how one is supposed to deal with these sorts of hard situations, you know, being a single parent during the week, having had a stressful childhood, day-to-day bad days: by just pretending that they just don’t exist.

As one of my wise commentors and friends pointed out, denial is a very powerful and often useful thing because it allows you to get through the hardest times without falling apart into a blubbering pile of goo.

But when that’s the only way that you can manage your problems, is by saying, “well, at least it’s not cancer!!” That takes away from the very real day to day problems that I do have and you know what?

That isn’t fair. So this is me, trying to give myself permission to have feelings and allow myself to feel them.

This isn’t an earth shattering revelation and probably to many it seems like it should be a “well, DUH” sort of moment, but even the very act of writing this down here, having to form coherent thoughts (shut UP) has really helped me. I feel like a weight that I didn’t know I’d been slogging around behind me has been lifted now.

And don’t worry, before all of you frantically claw your way to the “UNSUBSCRIBE” button, I don’t plan on turning this into a blog about my feelings. They’re still boring and trite and don’t make a whole lot of sense and while it may not seem this way, I do keep some amount of things to myself.

So this is me, Your Aunt Becky dipping a toe in the water here. I can’t ever picture myself as one of those people sculpting what “anger” looks like in clay form and I don’t think I’ll devote years of my life writing bad poetry about my sadness, but maybe I’ll learn something.

Maybe I won’t.

Progress, not perfection. Because if I were perfect, I totally have flown the around the world 45 times this week while curing cancer and baldness and world hunger.

Today over at Toy With Me, I’m telling the story of my first (and only) visit to the strip club. I can only hope that you have similar stories of abject molestation to share with me. Or, at least perhaps you can get a laugh at my expense.

Just don’t ever say I never give you anything.

Click the smiling beaver below to be taken away:

Or stick around for a Blast From The Past, for those of you not wanting to imagine me with a pair of testicles on my face (I do not know why not):

———————

Becky: “Do you like my manicure?” (playfully wraggles black fingernails in Daver’s face)

Dave (grabs hand for closer inspection): “Ooooh. Freaky! Won’t Ashley be mad that you had black nail polish put on for her wedding?”

Becky: “Nah. It’s perfectly vogue now. It’s no longer JUST for goth chicks.”

Dave: “Ah.”

Dave (grabs her hand again. This time her right hand, although not unkindly): “Wait a minute…is your wedding ring STUCK ON?”

Becky (sheepishly, in a small voice): “Yes.” (pauses) “I kept in on too long after I got pregnant with Amelia. And now I can’t get it off.”

Dave (eyes take on a mischievous gleam): “You know what this means, right?”

Becky: “Please don’t take me down to the fire station to get it cut off. I’m so ashamed. I HAVE FINGER FAT NOW.”

Dave: “No, no. I wouldn’t do that. And your finger looks great. But…”

(pauses dramatically for effect)

Dave: “You SEE this ring? IT MEANS I OWN YOU.”

Becky: “That’s MY line, assface.”

Dave: “And look at how badly it blew up in your face.”

Becky: “Touche.”

I’m a purger.

I can hardly go a week without finding something to pass along to someone else, give to the Salvation Army, throw away or recycle or otherwise dispose of. This is probably a good thing because once, while we were moving from our condo in Oak Park to our current house, I found a receipt that Dave had saved from Target.

Curious as to what he had bought that he had so steadfastly guarded for so long, I saw that it was 3 years old and had 4 things on it: a plastic garbage can, beef jerky, Fritos and…wait for it, wait for it….

…..

…..

…..

kitty litter.

Oh yes. You read that right, Internet.

Thank sweet merciful sweet baby Jesus in heaven hallowed be thy Halloween name that he had carefully thought to store that receipt so lovingly on the floor of his office and move it with him not once, not twice, but three times since then.

Before you call “Hoarders” on me, a show that I cannot watch because I think that I would physically hurt myself either clawing at my skin or eyeballs (and because I don’t find people with obvious mental illness really gosh darn hilarious television), it’s not that he was saving it because he had any attachment to it, it just never dawned on him to throw it away.

Just like it never occurred to him to get rid of his box of cassette tapes that I personally lugged from apartment to apartment and I finally lugged DOWN to the dumpster after I realized that we didn’t own anything to play Milli Vanilli’s greatest hits, (an oxymoron of a tape if I ever saw one) any longer.

(Although in the interest of full disclosure here, I still sing “Blame it on the Rain” in the shower)(what? Like you don’t.)

Lately, I’ve been itching to purge my house of stuff, and while I have managed to go through several of the cabinets in the kitchen, ridding myself of such awesome condiments as a mysterious can of “Kraut” I have an entire genre of stuff that I cannot seem to go near:

Baby Stuff.

You see, my uterus, it’s vacant.

With the exception of an IUD, should Daver continue to be “too busy” to get his vasectomy, I’m done having children. 3, like that wily School House Rock says, has always been the magic number for us. Although I’d always imagined having an assload of children, Dave assures me that 3 kind of IS an assload of kids.

If anything, skating so closely by with Amelia’s neural tube defect reminds me of just how fragile life is and how fucking lucky any of us are to be walking around upright, presumably not dragging our knuckles, slack-jawed and drooling (unless, of course, you’re me, in which case this IS the norm).

I’d read somewhere in my scant research about NTD’s that they are more common in siblings, which reminds me that I must do more research for something I’m writing for the March of Dimes, and since I’ve been on folic acid since dinosaurs were my classmates, well, I don’t know. Would you want to risk that one?

(that really wasn’t up for debate)

Dave’s done, and I’m pretty sure that no matter how many crotch parasites I popped from my delicate bits, I’d always be sort of wistful for one more. Just one more.

Chicago has 2 seasons: Balls Hot and Balls Cold and last week it went from being Balls Hot to Balls Cold and I noticed that my daughter had nothing to protect her rolling rolls from the searing wind.

I also noticed that denial is a pretty powerful thing: she’d been pretty quickly outgrowing her 6 month onesies (she’s 8 months old now) to the point where she was regularly popping open the snaps of the crotch as she scooted along the floor.

I hadn’t wanted to see that.

Just like I hadn’t wanted to go through her clothing bins to sort out the teeny tiny clothes and hats because unlike the last time, this really was The Last, Last Time.

Never again will one of my children wear that frilly dress or that spotted onesie with the frog that Alex used to wear or the hat that was Ben’s or the pink sweatshirt that I bought with my friend Steph when I found out I was pregnant with Ben who I just KNEW was a girl that I’ve carefully saved for my daughter for 8.5 years.

Those wee hats and tiny mittens won’t go on my gnome-like babies, and the bassinet that we so carefully picked out for Alex will have gone completely unused by any of our kids.

I know in my heart that I prefer my children to be children rather than garden slugs, but there’s just something so…sweet about a new baby that you just can’t get back again. I look at pictures of all of my babies as ickle babies and I can’t believe they were ever so small.

I’m not going to let their things go, though, like I normally would, chomping at the bit to get it out of here. For now, all of those memories sit in bags in Alex’s room along with the broken swing where Alex slept for the first 7 months of his life and the bouncy seat where Amelia spent several of hers.

I hope that the smell of their babyness will stay there, in the fabric, so when they’re big and gruff and smell like the woods and grass and dirt and rocks, I can go and grab a bag and open it, and inhale that sweet baby smell, the essence of their babyhood and where they began.

And remember when they were so small and good and when I could fix everything with some warm milk and a cuddle and a blankie. When I could stick my face in their neck while they slept to breathe in their smell so that I could carry that with me as I went about my day.

When we could curl up together like peapods, just the two of us against the world.

I hope that will always be enough for me.

Why Aunt Becky, I can hear you exclaim, you look positively AMAZING for having pushed what appears to be a 30 pound 4.5 year old out of your cootch!

And I will tell you, there, there, Internet, this is what happens when you have children when you are a broke 21 year old: you don’t have any digital pictures handy.

PLUS, you look WAY better in postpartum pictures this way.

Notice how much BETTER I looked in the picture with Ben than I do in this one taken after giving birth to Alex?

Juuuust kidding. Wear a condom, kids. Not kidding. No glove, no love, okay?

If you look closely, you’ll see why Ben is The Person of The Year. This is Ben meeting Alex. Look at Ben. Now look at Alex. Ben still adores Alex. I do not know why.

Ben deserves a medal or something.

And lastly, my Cinnamon Girl. My sweet baby Amelia. My last, last one.

Dear Aunt Becky,

I am a mom of an 8 month old beautiful (and perfect, of course) little girl. One of my closest friends has a 6 month old son. During our pregnancies, we were both really excited to have kids so close together, saying they could grow up together like siblings.

But after my friend had her baby, she changed. I know everyone changes after they have their kids, but this is extreme change. She has this holier than thou attitude, judges all of my decisions as a mother (and everyone else’s parenting choices), and it just seems that now that she has a child, she’s looking down her nose at everyone. I love my daughter, and do what’s best for her, but my friend takes the cake when it comes to overprotective. She won’t take her child outside for more than a trip to and from the car for fear of mosquito’s and *gasp!* the sun. She won’t let anyone hold her baby for more than a few minutes. I could go on and on. Normally, I’d find this behavior to be overprotective, but wouldn’t think much of it.

However, she’ll make rude comments to me when I do take my daughter into the sun or let other people hold her, or even babysit her. I let this go in the beginning, thinking it may be a postpartum issue, but it’s gotten to the point that I’m sort of ready to end this friendship, but I feel horrible for doing it. When you have a friend that goes absolutely insane judgmental after having a child, do you stick by and hope it will go away, or say “Peace out” and head your separate ways? Is there a way to suggest she speak with her doctor about postpartum depression without offending her?

———————

There are a lot of really cutesy terms people could make up to call your “friend.” They’d probably involve a lot of hyphens and Capitol Letters and maybe some RANDOMLY CAPITALIZED WORDS, but I’m going to be uncharacteristically brief here: I’m afraid that your friend has turned into a kind of bitch.

It happens sometimes to new parents, and forgive me if I’m wrong here, because maybe I am, but their personalities, well, sometimes they change.

I don’t imagine that there’s any way that you’re going to politely be able to tell your friend that she’s being insane because she won’t see it and that she should seek help because I’m sure that she thinks that she’s being nothing but rational.

YOU, my friend, will be made out to be the asshole no matter how delicately you phrase it and I’m sorry. I know a couple people that I have thought about politely nudging toward Prozac and have decided to keep my wide trap shut for once in my life. There is just no way to say it without looking like a jackass.

Maybe, just maybe, your friend will return to who she was, but only if she realizes that there was a problem on her own (or at the suggestion of her spouse). Could you speak with the spouse?

If you can’t, I’d walk, nay RUN away from this person, because if there is ANYTHING that I have learned from being a parent for over 8 years it is this: people who live their lives FOR their children are not going to be your friend.

*Gasp, won’t SOMEONE think of the CHILDREN?!?*

They will constantly be comparing their Darling Johnny to your much less adorable Little Billy. Noting you will ever do will pass muster. I’m sorry. In this case, it’s really not you, it’s her and her Perfect Little Suzie. I promise. You cannot possibly win.

Being the eternal optimist in pessimist’s clothing, I’d probably distance myself as much as possible, because REALLY, who needs to be badgered by a friend that often, while hoping that my friend would come back. But really, I’d probably prepare myself for the worst.

You do always seem to lose people during the major transitions in life. I’m sorry, love. It’s not you, it’s her.

——————-

Will I ever reach a point where my appearance matters more to me than the appearance of my kids? Or will I go through the rest of my life licking the PB off their cheeks and brushing the hair out of their face but personally shunning a mirror like the vampire I am?

With the way that my mother still lunges toward my brother and I if she detects the slightest hint of a pimple forming on either of our delicate hairlines, I’m assuming that the answer is no. But she was wearing earrings today and, well, I didn’t brush my hair when I left the house to go blow a wad of cash on clothes for my kids. I own 3 shirts that fit properly and my children could go months without doing laundry.

Also: do you want to make out with me now? I’ll let you touch my boob.

—————————

How do I win at LIFE, Aunt Becky?

I’m pretty sure it does NOT involve mayo, pickle relish OR John Mayer, but I’m sensing that a lot of you may disagree with me on this one.

—————————-

Because this felt like I ended it really abruptly (AND because I felt all naked today from not posting today–posting every day of the week is kind of—stalkery on my end, isn’t it? Like, I should I give YOU a break from me and my stupid antics or something.) I am presenting you with a festive shot of my daughter:

She’s too young to run away yet, but the look in her eyes is pleading, Internet, please, please…

….pass me some yogurt.

In a rare moment of altruism and because he happened to come across a set of *ahem* incriminating photos of *ahem* me that he *ahem* threatened to share with you if I didn’t, I sweetly offered the use of my blog to my friend Kevin, even though I am a control freak of the highest order.

Normally, I don’t give it up for PSA’s and what-not, although you’d be surprised that I do get people emailing me to remind you, My Gentle Reader’s about about important water safety tips and stuff. Those go immediately in the trash, because, obviously, but, you know, pictures and blackmail, and shit, if I were Kevin, I’d want as much help as I could get too. I know that you’d help me out if the roles were reversed. EVEN WITHOUT THE PICTURES OF ME AND THE HORSE.

It’s the right thing to do.

Kevin of Always Home and Uncool has asked me, The Coolest Person he knows, the only one who would return his emails, to post this as part of his effort to raise awareness in the blog-o-sphere of juvenile myositis, a rare autoimmune disease his daughter was diagnosed with on this day seven years ago.

The day also happens to be his wife’s birthday.

*

Our pediatrician admitted it early on.

The rash on our 2-year-old daughter’s cheeks, joints and legs was something he’d never seen before.

The next doctor wouldn’t admit to not knowing.

He rattled off the names of several skins conditions — none of them seemingly worth his time or bedside manner — then quickly prescribed antibiotics and showed us the door.

The third doctor admitted she didn’t know much.

The biopsy of the chunk of skin she had removed from our daughter’s knee showed signs of an “allergic reaction” even though we had ruled out every allergy source — obvious and otherwise — that we could.

The fourth doctor had barely closed the door behind her when, looking at the limp blonde cherub in my lap, she admitted she had seen this before. At least one too many times before.

She brought in a gaggle of med students. She pointed out each of the physical symptoms in our daughter:

The rash across her face and temples resembling the silhouette of a butterfly.

The purple-brown spots and smears, called heliotrope, on her eyelids.

The reddish alligator-like skin, known as Gottron papules, covering the knuckles of her hands.

The onset of crippling muscle weakness in her legs and upper body.

She then had an assistant bring in a handful of pages photocopied from an old medical textbook. She handed them to my wife, whose birthday it happened to be that day.

This was her gift — a diagnosis for her little girl.

That was seven years ago — Oct. 2, 2002 — the day our daughter was found to have juvenile dermatomyositis, one of a family of rare autoimmune diseases that can have debilitating and even fatal consequences when not treated quickly and effectively.

Our daughter’s first year with the disease consisted of surgical procedures, intravenous infusions, staph infections, pulmonary treatments and worry. Her muscles were too weak for her to walk or swallow solid food for several months. When not in the hospital, she sat on our living room couch, propped up by pillows so she wouldn’t tip over, as medicine or nourishment dripped from a bag into her body.

Our daughter, Thing 1, Megan, now age 9, remembers little of that today when she dances or sings or plays soccer. All that remain with her are scars, six to be exact, and the array of pills she takes twice a day to help keep the disease at bay.

What would have happened if it took us more than two months and four doctors before we lucked into someone who could piece all the symptoms together? I don’t know.

I do know that the fourth doctor, the one who brought in others to see our daughter’s condition so they could easily recognize it if they ever had the misfortune to be presented with it again, was a step toward making sure other parents also never have to find out.

That, too, is my purpose today.

It is also my birthday gift to my wife, My Love, Rhonda, for all you have done these past seven years to make others aware of juvenile myositis diseases and help find a cure for them once and for all.

To read more about children and families affected by juvenile myositis diseases, visit Cure JM Foundation at www.curejm.org.

To make a tax-deductible donation toward JM research, go to www.firstgiving.com/rhondaandkevinmckeever or www.curejm.com/team/donations.htm.

57: gallons of baby yogurt Amelia eats per day

2: times I’ve wondered if I could actually *make* baby yogurt before reminding myself that I am, in fact, the same person who ruined jello and has destroyed multiple muffin tins.

98,493,003: times I’ve wondered if people were actually bragging about their babies height/weight percentiles.

98,493,003: times I’ve decided that yes, people will find ANYTHING to feel smugly superior about

3: times that I’ve decided to feel smugly superior that my dog eats his own poo. Because, you know, he’s EFFICIENT and GREEN.

9,330,287: times I’ve considered donating him to the next motherf*$%ing person who wants to talk to me about being more EFFICIENT and GREEN.

2,220,128,203,494: times I’ve considered taxidermy instead.

89: prediction of trolly comments about what a POS pet owner I am this will evoke over the next 6-12 months.

7: bonus points for each use of the words or phrase: “irresponsible” “lawn” “neighbor” “pet shop” “puppy mill.” Double points for anyone who uses guilt, like there is anything I can do about it NOW.

36: syllables my middle child can currently stretch “Mooooooooom” out into

4: times each day I want to grind out my ear drums with a red hot poker so I do not have to listen to aforementioned version of “Mom.”

Super Great: on a scale of 1- 10 how awesome I am.

16: orchids I currently own, making me officially 2 steps shy of the crazy cat lady, only with orchids

2: times I’ve said to myself, “well, at least the orchids don’t get me UP OVER NIGHT” officially making me MY MOTHER and therefore warranting a scrubby bath in bleach

0: current number of television husbands

4: current number of possible candidates, all of whom are flawed in some way or another. Momma’s still on the prowl for a new leg to hump.

4,329: squirrels in my 3 x 5 foot backyard currently trying to find AND hide nuts for winter.

56: times I’ve maturely cackled at the term “hide nuts for winter,” because OBVIOUSLY.

207: times I’ve craved a potato in the past two weeks reminding me a) of the time that Dan Quayle misspelled that word (which, who am I to talk?)(answer: nobody) and b) being pregnant (which who am I to talk?) (answer: not pregnant)

79-ish: comments roasting me about my delightfully tacky cellphone cover, all of which made me laugh so hard that I cried. You guys, YOU I love.

79-ish: times I was equally grateful that while although you guys rake me–justifiably–over the coals, you seldom get all Grammar Police on me.

——————

So, wanna make out?

And, more importantly, should I make my kid be the Land Shark for Halloween and knock on doors and say “CANDYGRAM” instead of “Trick or Treat?”

And really, threaded comments (the ones that you get an email reply to)? As awesome as I think they are?

Gather ’round Aunt Becky’s knee, Internet, because she’s gonna give you today’s word of the day.

Tacky.

Bejeweled.

Unrefined.

Be glad that you’re not ACTUALLY related to me so I don’t whip THIS out in front of your friends or family:

Behold my old cell phone, which not only was delightfully bejeweled, but also weighed about 3.6 pounds.

Happy Wednesday.

Today is Tuesday, which means that it’s Time For Beaver Talk with Aunt Becky over at Toy With Me. Today, I’m talking about songs to hump to, which is surprisingly safe for work. Totally interested in seeing what gets other people in the mood, since all I could come up with was either pop music or O! Canada.

Click the smiling beaver below to be taken away:

But for those of you who prefer not to think about me having sex, which I COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND, I’ve pulled yet another one from the vault to amuse you. Or annoy you.

1. It should come as no shock to anyone who has seen me dress myself that I am actually color blind. I’ll take a moment here to let those of you who have seen my fashion sense (or lack thereof) collect yourself from the gut-busting laughter. Try not to pull a muscle, mmkay?

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Done, now?

Fuckers.

See, it’s actually pretty rare for women to be color blind as it’s an X-linked disorder (meaning both of my chromosomes must have it). I’ll avoid going into further details so that you are not forced to gnaw your arm off with boredom.

It has been the cause for many a (stupid) marital dispute over the shade of a particular color. In the end, I’ve learned to rely on Dave’s opinion (smart as that may not be) about certain shades.

My kids are going to have to get used to looking as though hobo’s have dressed them, eh?

2. I have an intense phobia of canned fruits, in spite of my unrequited love of fruits in general. There’s something about canned anything, floating happily in a goo sauce that completely freaks me out. Ditto for Jello molds.

This may be a throw back to the dissection craze of my 5th grade teacher, who, in all of her glory, decided to spend a large portion of the year showcasing the various creepy jars full of deceased animals suspended in Formalin (or the famous carcinogenic Formaldehyde, it was the 80’s, after all) to us. Now, I loves me my dissections (seriously), but seeing floating suspended baby chicks in glass jars was enough to give me nightmares.

I think this is where the phobia stems from (that, and my hippie mother would likely rather have eaten her own feces than served us something suspended in SUGAR.), but I can’t seem to shake it, EVEN IF I LIKE THE FRUIT IN QUESTION.

3. When I was in my first semester in college, I took an introductory biology class and one of the tasks that we were required to learn was all of the organ systems of the fetal pig (which are similar to the layout of a human).

While half of my class was left gagging into their Bunsen burners, I took to the task like a pig in, well, shit. The instructor insisted that we learn this inside and out (oh pun, pu-pun, pun, PUN), and suggested that we take ours home to study (due to limited laboratory time).

Well, I took it a step further and named mine. It’s the same name as my former heating pad boyfriend: Stu.

To maximize the shock value to my mother (and to ensure that the dogs did NOT have a tasty snack while I wasn’t looking), I decided to casually slip Stu into the meat drawer and then leave the house, knowing full well that she’d discover him in my absence.

She was underwhelmed.

4. Because in the academic realm, I am 110% An Annoying Overachiever, I became a TA for both Inorganic and Organic chemistry as well as a tutor for Anatomy and Physiology I and II.

It was only then that I developed a complete and total appreciation for teachers. Wow. Some of those students were not the brightest bulbs in the sconces.

5. Despite the fact that I blog like it’s going out of style (isn’t it?), I have never in my whole life written for fun. Ever. This includes journaling of any sort. Mainly because, what the fuck would I ever journal about?

In high school, I would occasionally try to write in a journal but it always ended up something like,

“I really like Shawn X. He sat next to me in Brit Lit and I swear he smiled at me. Oh, I don’t know WHAT I’ll do if he doesn’t ask me to Homecoming!”

And then I would look back on it and be embarrassed FOR myself.

6. One of the things I hate most about being a grown-up is that the older we get, the more PC we have to become. As someone who has never NOT laughed at a dick-n-fart joke, and whose all time favorite word is fuck (I actually gave it up for Lent one year DESPITE the fact that I am not Catholic. Maybe it’s better that I’m not Catholic, because I didn’t do a very good job of it.), I hate having to be all conscious of what I say in public and to other people.

I hate having to worry about offending people if I tell them what I think, and I hate offending people even when I’m not trying to. I use certain words to be humorous, not to be offensive (because I promise The Internet that if I am actively trying to offend someone, I will do so), and I hate having to censor myself in order to maintain the peace.

7. I genuinely believe that everything tastes better with bacon.

Now, here’s the catch: see, I’m supposed to tag a couple of people to do this meme, but I’m pretty sure everyone who has a blog has done it and is probably not as full of weird things to do it over and over again.

So I am tagging anyone (this means YOU! LURKER!) who reads this to give me a weird fact about themselves in the comments (use a fake name if you must). Because seriously, the comments are high-freaking-larious and might just help with poor, OH POOR Aunt Becky’s blinding headache.

Laughter IS the best medicine, after all (or so Reader’s Digest tells me, AND WHY WOULD THEY LIE TO ME?).

Now, before a zillion of you click away disgustedly, this won’t be another boring ass garden post, well, okay, it won’t be TOO MUCH of a boring ass garden post. Because sometimes, Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch, I can’t help myself.

*ahem* Fantasy Football posts *ahem*

Besides, most of you read me in a reader (when the reader is working properly *angrily shakes fists at the sky*) and that ‘mark all as read’ button is just so damn handy.

After I got a house, I got a dog. Well, no, let me rephrase that. I got a dog that is actually a ficus in dog’s clothing. Sure, he may LOOK like a corgi/beagle mix/stuffed sausage, and his breath may smell EXACTLY like a vagina, but I assure you, o! wise, Internets, he is a house plant.

May I present to you Exhibit A (I’d add more shots here, but the only things that change are location and the length of already insanely-long page load time. Which I do not know what to do about):

Before you alert the authorities, Internet, let me assure you that this is not a dead, taxidermied dog that I’ve inexpertly displayed on my couch. No, this is how Cash lives, 98% of the time: he naps on the couch, suns his belly, licks his pooper, and then rounds it out with a snack and another nap.

So to all of you Dog Trolls who drop in to critique my Crappy Dog Skillz, let me assure you, Cash pretty much has a life that I want.

No intruder is going to be terribly deterred by the rancid vagina smell coming from his mouth or the awesome way he can totally nap while laying ALMOST entirely on his back, so yeah, I had to come up with another strategy.

The cats, although fiercely annoying as they yodel and scream hello to anyone and everyone and occasionally just for the hell of it–often scaring people into thinking that I have small children trapped on various floors of my house–which yeah. They might end up tripping someone in a desperate plea for attention as a potential Bad Guy (or Girl, let’s not be Sexist Here)

Then we got Auggie, The Most Feared Dog in all of The World, and by “most feared” I mean, he’s effing adorable and if you saw him you’d be all “squeeeee! Lemmie take him home!” and I’d be all “BE MY GUEST!”

And as you were leaving with him, I’d say all ominously, “You do know he eats poo, right?” and then you’d take a scalding water bath with a brillo pad and refuse to take my calls. But he’s cute and he weighs 16 pounds, and his only real defense tactic is that you don’t want his tongue on your person because it has recently eaten poo straight out of the butthole of another dog.

That’s right, he likes his poo ON TAP.

But, awww!

And The Daver, God Bless him, isn’t here very often, and let’s not forget the curious incident of The Thing In The Garage In The Night-Time, shall we? Dave weighs all of 45 pounds soaking wet (knock off the Jack Sprat jokes, people, I’m losing the mother-fucking weight) and, well, he’s as intimidating as a wee baby sheep. Actually, I take that back, a baby sheep is probably scarier.

So I did what any average suburban housewife with waaay too much time and science background and radon would do!

I grew ATTACK ROSES!

Naturally, The Devil was in the mother-effing details and I planted them in the BACK of my house instead of the FRONT of my house, but, you know, those wily burglars can come from any given angle, right?

You can see that my ATTACK ROSE has already eaten a soccer ball, a hose, and is working it’s way both towards a kiddie pool AND a Smoky Joe. It’s THAT full of Desire To Maim And Destroy.

(if you look closely, next to it is another rose, the Attack Rose of DANGER! is pink–naturally–which is thumbing it’s nose at the autumn weather and blooming like crazy. That rose, it has spunk)

Why sure, it has been pumped full of radiation:

But really, it’s not actually (read: sadly) been genetically altered. It’s a climbing, “rambling” rose. Which, for someone like me, whose favorite song was once The Dead’s “Ramblin’ Rose” makes me very happy.

It is also a HELL of a lot cheaper than a personal home security system. I guess this means that we can return Auggie, eh?

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How was your weekend?