Hey Aunt Becky,

My husband hates my pets. I have 5 smelly guinea pigs and he is always reminding me of how smelly and worthless they are. I love them, of course, so I am not sure how to find that perfect marital compromise with this situation. What is a lowly hog-keeper to do?

And yes, I know they are delicious food animals but we are not yet in *NEED* of eating them.

Yet.

Okay, so I added the “yet” in there myself because it felt good, but I should tell you, my Internet friends, that my delicate reader is not in any danger of eating her darling guinea pigs. Which, I would say, are probably not edible. I mean, *shudder, shudder* I can’t eat meat that looks anything like what it did when it was alive, so there’s that, but moving away from MY neuroses.

This, Gentle Reader, is a tricky situation indeed.

Obviously, your husband knew about your pets when he married you in the same way that I knew that The Daver had a roaming colony of socks that follow him wherever he goes (Oh LOOK! They had TWINS!!), but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it or cherish it or worship it and the socks, one would hope, aren’t alive. So, he knew, but it annoys him, that’s fair.

What’s also fair is that your husband is also not, I presume, perfect either.

Something that I would probably remind him of when he is harping about your annoying guinea pigs. Providing that you are not making him take care of them, which is NOT fair, and that you ARE taking steps to reduce their…annoyingness (I truthfully find guinea pigs adorable, but I know nothing about their odor or what living with one is like. I asked Dave and he informed me that they are “cool pets.”).

I might, if I were you, keep a detailed list of things that you can refer back to when he prattles on about your precious pigs, not to be HURLED HORRIBLY at him, just as a gentle nudge like a soft puff of air to remind him that we all have annoying hobbies.

If you need proof of this, ask The Daver to do a guest post about Tate, the world’s SHITTIEST hedgehog.

Marriage and compromise, she says with gritted teeth, go hand in motherfucking hand.

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Dear Aunt Becky:

I am a nursing student. But, hey, I actually want to be there. I could tell you long stories about mishaps as an office manager and my tearful story of being laid off, but…I’ll refrain. For now.

My question (even though you aren’t a fan of nursing any longer) is: LPN or RN? Should I stop in 10 months with my LPN, or go straight through and finish with my RN diploma?

I’m tired of teachers and professors and nursing school deans (aka salesmen) who, natch, want that rest of my poor poor wallet and student loans and would rather get the opinion of the ‘been there, done that’ crowd.

This would probably depend on where you’re living, but if you’re in the US, get thee your RN degree and DO NOT STOP WITH YOUR ASSOCIATES DEGREE IN NURSING (the associates degree, for those of you playing along at home, is the 2 year degree offered at many community colleges) if you can swing it. If at all possible, get your Bachelor’s degree (RN-BSN).

I know when I left the field, there was a lot of buzz about hospitals in my area hiring ONLY Bachelor’s prepared nurses. It will open up far more doors for you, although, to be fair, the associates prepared nurses I met had much better clinical experience that we did coming out of the bachelor’s programs. Many hospitals do offer programs for employees now, though, to turn their RN’s into RN-BSN’s, so keep that in mind as well.

Where I live, LPN’s mainly work in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, so if that’s what you want to do, then, that’s what you should get, but if you have the wherewithal to get through nursing school, DO IT.

And I happen to know a Super Overachieving Retired Nurse who used to TA for Organic, Inorganic, Biochemistry, Anatomy AND Physiology AND Pathophysiology* who lives in the computer and now goes by Aunt Becky, RN, BSN who’d be happy to help you out.

*Told you I was Super Becky, Overachiever

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What, exactly, is dark matter?

How the fuck should I know?

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Why does the rabbit have a mirror on a chain coming out it’s arse?

Wait, don’t you store your watch in your colon? Because I totally do.

I also store my car keys (well, one set of my car keys), one of my children (this varies), my iPhone, a wallet, my AmEx, a 12 pack of soda I picked up on sale for The Daver now that I can’t drink it any more *sobs*, a pack of mint gum to soothe my stomach, a pen I stole from a waitress at the Thai place down the street last week (the Pad Thai is phenomenal, you should try it!), a pack of salami just for kicks and some soap.

Because you never know when you’ll need soap. DO YOU?

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As always, please submit your questions to my dwindling stack (I’m making a neat stack of questions to be answered in kind of order!!!)(note the added exclamation points for added emphasis) of questions through the link on the sidebar because I’m not clever to comb through the comments.

If you feel kindly enough and you heart me, I have some awards I’m up for on my side bar that I would be ever-so-honored if you voted for me. I feel like a douche asking, but you know, I’d feel like more of a douche NOT asking, so, you know, obviously I do NOT win at life any more.

I know I wrote a love letter to my new BFF Topamax at some point recently. I’d go through my archives but all of the punctuation looks wonky when I do that and then I get stabby because the only way I know how to fix that is to do it by hand. For all eight hundred of my posts.

Like I don’t have anything better to do than, you know, that. I’d rather pluck my leg hairs with my teeth, thankyouverymuch.

And I do loves me that drug, trust me. Today, for the first time in 5ish months, I haven’t had to take anything for my head and that, trust me, is something that kind of makes me want to pop a celebratory Vicodin.

I’ve been sort of downplaying the side effects though, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life it’s this: the more attractive you are, the crazier you are, cheese in a can isn’t natural, hot dogs are proof that God loves us.

The only thing we can control in life is how we react to situations we’re put into.

I can, for example, choose to take my fucked up childhood and use that as a crutch, as a means to justify my bitterness, my feminism, my hatred of the world, the reason no one loves me or the reason that I hate addicts or people who mock addicts or people who are successful where I am not.

Or I can say, WOW, that was fucked up, have a good laugh, try to remember that at the end of the day we’re all–even OUR PARENTS–only human. And human beings? They fuck up.

But the Topamax is slowly eroding my memory, which, while it can be the butt of many jokes at my expense, and I’m certain it will be, because OBVIOUSLY, and I do expect to get it back, but for now? I can barely remember to wipe my ass. Come to think of it…

Anyway.

The problem with this isn’t that it’s now making me a total nutter with the attention span of a gnat, it’s that no one expects it from me. It’s like going to a steak house, ordering a fillet, and then getting served a stir-fry (this was, come to think of it, the same analogy I used to describe my BlogHer experience!). Totally unexpected.

You can call me a lot of things and make most of them stick, hell, I’ll HELP you call me a lot of things, but absent minded is nowhere on that list. Self-deprecating, fiercely loyal, unable to use a comma to save my own life, totally self-absorbed (dude. I write a BLOG), all of those fit, but having to adjust to having a memory bank so full of holes that dust is pouring out, now, I barely know how to handle it.

The symptoms, the doctors say, will subside. And I’ll adjust. I’m getting a real! live! day! planner! because I cannot fucking stand having a calendar on a PDA/phone/computer, no matter how many times I’ve argued this with Dave. Running tally on this particular argument is 597 and he’s STILL not convinced me.

I’m also making folders in my Google Reader because I realized with 464 feeds (and counting) there is no way I can possibly keep up with everyone every single day and still manage to stay sane. Well, okay, so there’s a good debate there as to if a person who calls herself “Aunt Becky” can ever call herself “sane,” but you know. I do want to stay connected to all of you, but I need some tips as to how.

So, this, my Internet friends, is where Your Aunt Becky turns the tables neatly and asks you how YOU manage to do it all? Do you have any tips for me on how to get and stay organized?

When I was a kid, on the list of things I would have happily gnawed off my own limbs for was a sibling. A whole MESS of siblings. Didn’t matter which brand–Japanese mushroom or cheeseburger–I just wanted more.

I had a pack of neighborhood kids that I chummed around with from sun-up until sun-down during the summer and after school most days (I don’t remember having as much homework as my kid gets) and that was all well and good, and I even was always pretty well liked in school. But I wanted a pack of siblings. A HUGE family.

My tiny nuclear family, well, most of them ignored me and I was a really lonely kid. I did have an older brother whose attention I vied for like an overzealous puppy, always shocked when he kicked me away, but eager to try again. Even at age 8, I was nothing if not persistent and shockingly transparent in my desire to be liked.

Luckily, while I didn’t outgrow my persistence, I did outgrow the gene that made me care if people liked me, but I never did outgrow the desire for a big family.

If you haven’t poured through my archives with a fine-toothed comb to discover that *gasp* my eldest was born *gasp* out of wedlock *gasp* and sired by another *gasp* father, well, he was, but if you haven’t, it’s because we don’t make a big deal out of it here at Casa de la Sausage.

Anyway. It’s not a dirty little secret or anything, it’s just not that important to us, because, really, it’s kind of old news now. But after I was pregnant with him and before I had met The Daver (this was a shockingly narrow window), I knew that I wanted to have more children, and, being the planner that I am, I wanted to have them closer together than my own brother and I are.

Part of the problems (but really, only a small part) that my brother and I faced were that we are ten years apart. What do an eight year old and an eighteen year old have in common? Fuck-NOTHING. The other problems are farther below the surface and much more purulent, so let’s just stick with the age difference, shall we?

Luckily, The Daver came along before I had to think about begging my male friends for a shot of their Man Juice–can you imagine the awkwardness? Because I can’t–and I would happily have dropped trou and tried to start makin’ babies well before I was Mrs. Aunt Becky Sherrick Harks.

The Daver is more traditional than I am (I know, you’re shocked), so we waited until after the wedding to cook up a couple of crotch parasites. I got pregnant with Alex as we were nearing our one year anniversary and Amelia as we were nearing our third. And no, to clear up any pesky rumors, we have no affection for the letter “a”.

I mean, it’s a good letter and all, and it’s a vowel so that makes it awesome by association, but if I had to BE a vowel, I would be “sometimes y”. Wouldn’t you?

It was weird the amount of ominous flack I got from people as I lugged Alex and Ben around, largely pregnant with my third.

“You’re going to be busy…” people would cluck meaningfully at me, obviously disdainful of my “delicate condition”

“Wow… you have your hands FULL,” others would sort of sneer, as I heaved a box of diapers and Alex, never offering to lift a finger to help.

While I appreciate that everyone is entitled to have an opinion on everything, and what comes out of (or, apparently, goes INTO) my vagina is no different, this was really not their call to make. They never liked to hear it when I told them as much, but come on, how rude could you be. I had 3 kids, not thirty. My uterus wasn’t exactly a clown-car yet.

But no, thank YOU, Mr. Fuckface, I appreciate you loudly judging me in front of my children, I have it under control. And you know what, I do. I still have it under control even now that I’m only pregnant with a burrito baby.

I sit in the other room sometimes, the baby banging merrily away in her saucer, gnawing on a pair of metal measuring spoons that were her older brother’s favorite toy too, screaming joyfully, her voice echoing against the glass door and bouncing back again.

Mingling with it are the indistinguishable voices of her older brothers, who have–5 years apart–the same tone and timbre of voice (without the words, I cannot tell them apart) as they scream delightedly together, piling on top of each other like squirmy puppies.

They are happy. My children, they are happy.

And I smile quietly to myself, as I sit there listening, knowing that if I do nothing else right for the rest of my life, I have done this right.

My children, I have done right by.

In a stunning fit of anal-retentiveness rivaled only by the time I found Bath and Body Works doing a 5 for 10 sale on antibacterial soap, I went through my blog roll the other day when I was having a particularly dreary, maudlin day. I don’t know if you have one, a blog roll, I mean, not a maudlin day, because, let’s face it, I think that emo music exists for a REASON, but blog rolls are a total annoyance.

I’ve operated thus far, as you can, by the length of it, tell, under the assumption that they are worth the hassle of upkeep of it. But, when I update it, I inevitably delete someone by accident. Mainly because I am stupid and also because I am dumb.

SO. Here is your chance, my band of merry pranksters, so gather ’round Aunt Becky’s knee: please, if you care to, go to the side bar, and click on the link for “Aunt Becky’s Band Of Merry Pranksters” (I’d link to it, but it gives YOU a dead link if I do that because of the aforementioned stupidity on my end). IF you are not listed AND you are a friend of mine (you comment here, you have me on your blogroll, etc, etc, you make me cookies, I wash your car for you, we make out, whatever):

SEND ME AN EMAIL and SEND ME THE LINK WITH YOUR BLOG NAME.

Do not leave it in a comment or I will forget it.

Currently I cannot remember the last time I gave Amelia Motrin for her fever, let alone to go back and try and piece together anything greater than two words. And I will obviously be too busy cross-stitching all of your comments to remember to add them to my blogroll. So shoot email to aunt.becky.sucks (at) gmail (dot) com or auntbeckyrules (at) gmail (dot) com.

(I’m always torn on the whole HAVING a blogroll thing. Is it worth it? I really don’t know.)

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Some of the links that you have subscribed to are broken. I do not know what this means other than some of you that have subscribed via Google Reader or Bloglines have told me about this. I do not know what to do besides gnash my teeth and wring my hands and occasionally pace around the room.

I have been told that you can unsubscribe then REsubscribe and that fixes the problem. Beyond that, I am bewildered.

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The first thing that I was told after I pushed Alex rather quickly from my nether bits was that he was “beautiful.” Upon first glance, I thought he kind of looked like a wet rat, and even after he was toweled off, I wasn’t entirely sure I was off base in my assessment. I didn’t CARE, mind you, what he looked like.

The older he got, the less rat-like he looked and the more frequently I was stopped by strangers so that they could admire my child. I never really thought of him as beautiful, in fact, the only adjectives I could think to describe Alex were “devilish” or “payback” because he wouldn’t let even his own father lay so much as a pinkie finger on his delicate ass without him screaming violently.

(as an aside: Alex is the only child of mine whom anyone has stopped–often–us for to comment on. When he was younger it was all.the.time. And I mean all.the.time. It’s not that I don’t think Alex is cute, he is, but…I don’t know, he’s not THAT cute.)

(As an aside TO the aside: If you are going to stop a family that has 2 children, one who is a baby and one who can not only walk and talk but is talking TO YOU, why don’t you fucking pay attention to that child instead of the fucking baby who hates you because you are not his mother and you’re in his face?

Poor Ben. Seriously, poor Ben.)

Alex was a Momma’s Boy.

A Momma’s Boy who, according to the people who stopped me as my son was dressed head to toe in blue, looked like he sported a vagina.

I may have a mullet because my mother refused to cut my hair, but I do not have a vagina, people. Thank you.

The other thing that I heard with such alarming regularity that it started to make me want to rupture my eardrum with a red hot poker is this: “WOW! He looks just like Dave.” Which, he does. Sort of.

After 9 months of pure pukey torture, 12 months of being attached at the nipple, the kid could have had the common courtesy to at least SORT OF look like his mother, you know?

But no. He doesn’t LOOK like me. But he IS me. From the tippy top of his hard headed I-will-get-my-fucking-way-if-it-kills-me down to his I-will-cut-off-my -nose-to-spite-my-face butt.

I didn’t KNOW that anyone on the planet could possibly be as stubborn as I am, but yes, Internet, I am here to tell you that not only it is possible, it is currently upstairs, refusing to say “I’m sorry” not because it is not sorry, but because I insisted upon it. Had I NOT insisted, he’d have done it, but because I had, he won’t.

Did you catch that?

If I say, “Hey Alex, you say, “THANK YOU, BEN,”” he will dig in his heels, and refuse. No length of time out will persuade him to do something that naturally he will do–it isn’t the thanking his brother part that he’s refusing, it’s because I told him to.

Dinner Time has become an equally shall we say hair-raising event, if “hair-raising” is code for “makes me desperately want to tongue a bottle of Nyquil” and then cry hysterically to someone who won’t just tell me “eventually, he’ll eat.” Because, wow, the kid is WILLFUL.

Alex, he used to be my eating child and it was so lovely after having a child with bona fide food issues relating to his autism. Ben would happily live on a steady diet of saltine crackers and lukewarm tap water and Alex would have–at some point in his life–eaten food that would sustain more than an ant.

No more, ickle grasshopper.

But Ben eats now, mostly, now that getting Alex to do anything he doesn’t want to do is akin to backing a wild boar against a metal wall, so we just choose our battles and remember that multivitamins, like beer, are God’s way of reminding us that he loves us and wants us to be happy.

While Dr. Spock would probably call this a “phase” and tell me that Alex will “grow out of it,” Alex and I both know this is pure bullshit. The only way Alex is going to change his nature is the only way I’ll change mine: traumatic brain injury. Which, God willing, won’t happen.

So, until then, Alex and I will put on our boxing gloves and get into the ring to fight to the bloody end every time we need to determine who gets the last packet of barbecue sauce.

Good thing I still outweigh the SHIT out of him.

• I am pretty sure that showing remarkable restraint by waiting until ALMOST like, the last week of September to listen to Christmas music makes me Super Awesome.
• That fact alone nearly negates the dorkiness that I love Christmas music like it was my job.
• And no, I do NOT own any gaily decorated, bedazzled Christmas sweaters with any of these: rhinestones, pearls, dancing snowmen, bells, Christmas trees, snowflakes, or whimsical gingerbread men.
• Also, no matter how it now sounds I am not a crazy cat lady.
• My cats, while they are still walking around and not being turned into coats for very small people for waking up the baby AGAIN, are named “Charlotte” and “Peekachoo.” I named neither. But if I had, they wouldn’t have been “Snooky” or “Mr. Snugglesworth.” They would have been, “Vlad the Impaler” and uh, “Chuck.”
• Okay, so the last cat that I did name was “Little Cat” because, well, she was a little cat, but she was a foster cat and I barely saw her anyway. I think that such a pathetically stupid name helped further her adoption process along anyway.
• Sometimes I miss fostering cats until I remember that Little Cat brought us all giardia parasite that she ejected from her butthole at the exact same time that I brought us all home a crotch parasite that I ejected from my lady bits. Then I don’t miss fostering cats any more.
• That’s sort of how I feel about my stats program.
• I can no longer laugh at all of the weird ass searches that bring people here, but then I don’t have to look at all of the sick Uncle Pervy crap that people search for and bathe in bleach and wish that I could somehow scour my eyeballs.
• I am alternating between being thrilled that tonight is Glee Night, which, dude, on a scale of one to awesome, that show is super great, and being in full out dread mode, because today is also Dosage Increase day for my Topamax.
• On a scale of one to lousy, that is super craptacular because I will be sick for the next 4 days.
• I sometimes worry that I will become one of those insufferable people who thinks that the entire world is fantastically interested in the most mundane symptoms of an illness.
• Maybe I should start sending out press releases to my imaginary legions of fans describing in minute detail how I feel every hour, rather than putting together a power-point for the holidays. I just KNOW my family wants to hear about it.
• I have been informed that if I want to make my blog more PR friendly, I should refrain from using colorful language, especially the eff word.
• I have some of my own words to say about that.
• Fuck, shit, cock-bag, motherfucking, asshole, bitch, shithead, fuck-wad, dick, meat curtains, ass-bag. Oh, and fuck.
• I trust PR driven blogs ALMOST as much as I trust that the people on television who tell me that that their product really!! works!!! have MY best interest in mind.
• Pretty sure that’s how to lose advertisers and not influence people.
• Anyway. LOOK! My daughter is giving me the stink eye so YOU DON’T HAVE TO:

• What’s on YOUR mind today?

First, this is the post that I am the most proud of, and, of course, it is not here. Which makes no sense, but, you know.

Today is Tuesday, and all of you brilliant and gorgeous readers (wait–have you lost weight? Your looks hot as hell!) readers know what that means: Beaver Talk With Aunt Becky, over at Toy With Me.

Thank you to anyone who has come by to support me over there. I’m still getting my sea legs and feeling a bit wobbly. All of your comments are cherished and loved and crocheted into tiny wee plaques that I hang onto my walls. Or maybe just really, really appreciated.

For anyone who–understandably–does not want to hear me talk about my lady bits, I am rewriting a (probably) unread old post from the vaults, written shortly after Alex was born, and airing it below.

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I weighed myself this week.

This is kind of a masochistic big deal, considering that I had no earthly idea what kind of poundage I put on with this crotch parasite. After I continued gaining weight WHILE BARFING MY BRAINS OUT, I decided that maybe I just didn’t need to know just how efficient my metabolism could be.

Turns out, you don’t have to look when you get weighed in.

I mean, I gained a bunch with my first and all, but I ate garbage nonstop, so yeah, of course I got fat. Well, this time, I did not. And yet I STILL got fat. I feel loftily sure that I would kick some major ass in a famine, but now, my dimpled white ass needs some major work.

Let’s just say that I have my work cut out for me.

Operation Remove My Fat Ass has begun.

So after I got my good cry out, I decided to get productive and go on a walk as I have not been cleared to lift anything heavier than the baby, a walk would be nice and low impact.

I bundled Cletus the Former Fetus (ed note: Alex) up into my fancy stroller, threw my iPod over my ears to drown out his indignant “I can’t believe you’re not holding me to your breast Slave Woman! Where is my nipple? It’s not in my mouth where it belongs, you bitch!” screams, and began to enjoy the motherfucking scenery.

(as an aside, I can only imagine the horrible mother that my neighbors thought that I must be, letting my child cry like that while I grimly, determinedly walk on. I CLEARLY do not deserve to be a parent.)

As I rounded a corner, I saw the strangest thing. For the *second* time in my life.

There was a dog on a roof.

There was a (motherfucking) dog on the roof of a (motherfucking) house.

He just stood there, staring back at me as thought it was the most normal thing in the world for dogs everywhere to lounge about on tops of houses reaching two stories high.

Having had to run on no appreciable sleep for the past six weeks, I many had problems deciding how to react to the situation.

Do I call the dog? Do I keep walking? Do I want a tuna sandwich? Do I EVEN LIKE TUNA? Slowly but surely, my memory banks began to cross reference the situation: where had I seen this before? A whimsical romantically comedy? Possibly a dream I had when I was a kid? Do I even like tuna sandwiches?

And it dawned on me: several years ago, my neighbor called me outside to bear witness a dog sitting on the roof of a house across the street. A couple of us gathered out there, discussing the dog, who looked as befuddled as we were, unsure as to how it got up and as to how it was going to get back down again.

Somebody needed to do…something. If this was a made-for-TV-movie, a hot-as-hell fireman with twinkly green eyes would rescue the dog and maybe he and I would fall in love. And live happily ever after.

I offered to call the fire department, since my neighbors all seemed more interested in gawking and gaping than the poor pooch who was stuck up on the roof.

Figuring this was my shot at my one true love, I did. They directed me to animal control. Who directed me to the police. Who directed me to public works. Who told me to call the fire department.

I’m pretty sure they all looped to the same person, because I had the same fucking conversation. Either that or it was my own version of Groundhog Day:

Me: “Hi, my name is Becky Sherrick and I live here. My neighbor has a dog on his roof.”

Pick One (fire dept, animal control, police): “What?!?”

Aunt Becky: “I *said* that there is a dog on my neighbors roof. A big one.”

Public Service Official (incredulous): “You’re kidding me.”

PSO (to coworkers): “This lady is calling in a dog on a roof! Bwahahaha!”

Aunt Becky: “Why would I joke? I’m seriously afraid it’s going to jump.”

PSO (to coworkers): Now the dog is suicidal! Bwahahaha!

PSO: “Well, there’s nothing *we* can do about it. Try calling (choose one: fire dept, police, animal control, etc).”

(click)

Me:”That’s what (fire dept, police, animal..) said. oh NEVERMIND!”

Finally remembering that the public works in town have absolutely no idea what to do with a (motherfucking) dog on a (motherfucking) roof, I decided that the best course of action was one of complete inaction.

I just kept on walking, the dog and I eyeballing each other warily as Alex wailed for his breast, bitch.

And then, just like that, like a bolt of lighting out of the clear blue sky I remembered that I loathe tuna sandwiches.

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What’s the weirdest thing you’ve come across lately?

It seems only fitting that, like the dead horse this is, the first article I was actually INTERVIEWED for–about Drinking Moms (WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!*) would have aired yesterday, when I was working on the post about using–and abusing–prescription drugs.

Here is the link.

And here is the guest post that I wrote for The Drinking Diaries. I am very, very, very proud of it, but since I didn’t know it was going to put up until right now, I will re-run it later in the week here.

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My Dearest Topamax,

I can call you Topamax, right? I know that technically I know you as Topiramate, but that simply doesn’t roll off the tongue with the same lilting lift as “Topamax” does, so we’ll just pretend.

Shh, baby, don’t be like that. It’s the insurance companies coming between us, that’s all.

Because for you, I would do anything. ANYTHING.

Until you, I was in a bad place, Topamax, see, I had a headache for 5 whole months. Maybe even 6. Now, wipe that look off your face, Mister, don’t you be acting like you don’t believe me. I don’t have secrets from you. WHY WOULD I LIE?

Shh, there, there. I’m sorry, baby, I didn’t mean to shout, I’m just tired of people giving me that look. That look that says, “I don’t BELIEVE you.” That look that says, “how could any SANE person last for 5 whole months with a splitting headache?” That look that says, “Bitch, you be looking for my sympathy AND my Vicodin.”

While it’s true, I WOULD take Vicodin over pretty much anything, including (but never limited to): vodka, whiskey, diet Coke (*sobs*), food, water, air, my dogs, my cats, and Dr. House, I’m pretty sure you, Topamax, kick his pasty ass squarely out of bed on his chalky, addictive ass.

Now, sure, your side effects are, well, I don’t know how to put this delicately, so I’ll just be out with it: they suck.

My friends on Twitter warned me so, my friends on Facebook pleaded with me to take care (ed note: how the hell did I function before my friends in the computer could tell me important stuff I wouldn’t otherwise know?) so I knew after popping the first of the delightfully teeny-tiny pills that I was in for a doozy of a ride.

First to go was my beloved diet Coke, but for you, Topamax, o! love of my life, anything, even the first love of my life. Honestly, I didn’t mind. If you rid me of my evil demon headaches, I wouldn’t mind if you turned my arms purple and green spotted. Priorities, people.

And, Topamax, please don’t tell anyone, especially that hateful bitch Imatrex, but I’m pretty sure that I’m pregnant with your baby because I am rife with the morning sickness and the nausea. I’d be stuffing my urpy face with saltines if my chemically exhausted butt wasn’t glued to the couch, so instead I moan pitifully at passersby. Like my children. Who are now so sick of me that they’re regularly petitioning for a new mother.

(can you blame them? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!)

This is chemical nausea, so I know better to pee on any sticks, so we’ll keep this between me, you and The Internet, but secretly, I’m thrilled. This is the only pregnancy with which I may actually lose weight instead of grow to water buffalo dimensions! The downside is, of course, chemical nausea which is very different than pregnancy nausea, but shh, honey, it’s okay, Momma still loves you best.

Because with you, my headaches, which have plagued me, making me wonder if maybe, just maybe I was slowly going mad(der), have slowly dissipated. They’re not gone, no, but they’re going. Which is more than that stupid whore Robaxin could ever have claimed to have done for me.

With you, Topamax, I may not be able to drink any longer. Maybe I can’t drive or operate heavy machinery. I may no longer be able to remember the words for certain things, but, between you and I, let’s face it, I couldn’t have done it before, either.

I may suffer morning sickness without the hint of a crotch parasite and vomit at the sound of mac-n-cheese being stirred in a pot. I may be the only un-pregnant, pregnant woman who loses 60 pounds (God willing) by eating approximately 8 calories a day, but I don’t care.

You, my sweet, sweet drug, are worth every blood draw, every dry heave, and every tingly extremity.

Always and forever, or at least until my body goes into toxicity and my organs shut down,

Aunt Becky

*You can quote me. OR Maude Flanders, which is who I am shamefully zoinking this from. But I’m pretty sure she’s a cartoon character who was killed off, so we’re probably all good.

What makes a blogger a great blogger? You’re awesome and I’m fascinated on a daily basis when I read your blog. I have a blog, and I imagine I have a few readers at least, or I hope. I get 2 or 3 comments every time I blog, which excites me…but what can I do to get more people to comment on my blogs, and how do I go from just having a blog to having a great blog?

Well, first, thank you kindly for your sweet words. Flattery will, as you well know, get you everywhere with me, so would you like to come over so that I can maybe wax your car and cook you a ten course lunch or something?

First, my not-so-inclusive-list-of-Blogging-For-Dummies-Tips

Blogging is a tricky thing to quantify, because although there are a lot of “experts” who write articles about it on google, as any quick search will pull up, most of them don’t have jack shit to say. Seriously. I totally don’t have jack shit to say either, but I have never claimed to be an expert on anything whatsoever.

Except AWESOMENESS! And winning at LIFE!

But since you asked, I’ll try to answer. If you’re talking about starting a blog about a niche market, though-knitting, gardening, cooking, technology-make sure that you scour those site and stick with that topic. Join a forum about said topic and try to connect with like-minded people. But don’t expect people interested in Linux to be wowed by your Orchid Lovers UNITE!!! (or UNTIE!1!!) blog.

Cross pollination rarely works unless you have an established core audience, and even then, they’re probably not reading about your Fantasy Football Picks if they came to read your cookie recipes.

If you’re talking about personal blogs, like mine, well, it can be a really tricky niche to break into (with the saturation of blogs onto the web, let’s face it, they’re ALL tough to break into) as well.

In the blogging world, you need to have a product that other people want.

Some people offer advice. Or recipes. Or humor. Or pictures. Or tips and tricks. Or porn. Or escapism. If you can successfully offer this to people, you will have a great blog.

I’d start off by just… writing. Stories are a good place to start, but not everything makes a good story and not every story needs to be told. You’ll learn what works by reading what other bloggers that have been at it awhile do. The best personal blogs offer readers something that they are able to relate to.

Unfortunately, there is no THAT WAS EASY button when it comes to blogging.

Blogging successfully takes a lot of work. It’s mostly unpaid, it opens you up to all sorts of criticism and it’s about as glamorous as saying that you clean toilets with your tongue for a living. I spend hours a day blogging, writing, reading, commenting, tweeting, and keeping up with my friends and readers.

And as for the comment quandary:

If you want comments and you want to build a Loyal Internet Army, the only way that I know of (save for inviting the spam bots in) is to comment until your fingers bleed on other people’s blogs.

Go to Google reader, hook yourself up with one, add a bunch of blogs, and comment like crazy. I’m a hell of a lot more likely to keep tabs on people who are loyal to me and I know that other people feel the same way. When I started blogging here, I had been blogging elsewhere for several years prior, and my friends (ACTUAL friends, as in people who personally have squeezed my hot ass) followed me here.

It took at least 2.5 months of solid comments and near-daily posting for a single person other than my friends to comment here. So before you feel too self-conscious about your own lack of comments, do remember that. That alone should keep you warm on many a cold night.

Also, a technique for getting comments much less distasteful than outright begging (or whining) for comments is asking a question or trying to engage your readers. If you want to build a loyal community, you should make sure to foster that part of it. Build your blog roll, know your readers, comment like mad.

If that is too much work for you then you probably won’t have a Blogging Empire.

But blogging, they say, is SO like 2002 anyway, so maybe that’s a good thing.

Besides, who the hell am I to tell you anything?

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Does The Daver ever totally freak out on you about your posts? My husband is having a hard time living with me when I write even a whisper that involves him. We normally get along pretty swell, except when he is featured in my blog. Then he gets paranoid and angry. Does the Daver every say, WTF, Becky?!

Will you be shocked to learn that my answer here is actually a “no?”

Hear me out: as I’ve said on countless occasions, and what will serve as Exhibits A, B, C AND D at my trial, Dave plugged me into a blog so that I would stop talking to him. When you see how prolific I am, this must make some sense to you.

If you do go back into the archives during a particularly boring masochistic (or is it sadistic? I cannot be sure.) day, you’d note that I did, at one point talk about The Daver more than I do now.

I’m not sure if I got more self-absorbed or if The Daver got more boring, or a little of both, but I just sort of…stopped. Maybe it’s because I don’t see him much anymore, or maybe because our private time is private and while it does appear that I do let it all hang out, I don’t really, I don’t know.

One time and only one time have I written anything scathing about The Daver and it was on the day before my birthday last year (I won’t link to it, but if you’re industrious, you can find it) and he told me that he just didn’t read it.

It’s weird, I guess, since Daver is really a private guy and I would probably let the mail-man examine my cervix if he asked nicely and it were for med school class or something, but we have it worked out pretty well. I suppose he trusts me not to fuck it up too badly or he knows that he has enough blackmail material on me to shame me underground for years.

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(DANCE PARTY!!)

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Anything you other bloggers out there care to add?

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As always, ladies and gentlemen, feel free to submit your questions to Ask Aunt Becky (the linky-poo on the sidebar). I have been trying answer them in an order that makes sense, in case you’re wondering why I haven’t been answering your question.

Ben, fiddling with a straw, leftover from a *gasp!* sugary soda, as we walk around Target.

Horrible, Awful Mother, “Hey Ben, here’s a garbage can. Please throw that away.”

Ben scowls in her direction and makes no move toward the garbage can.

Aunt Becky: “Ben, now. I don’t need any more weird garbage-y crap to clean up around the house.”

Ben, if looks could kill, she’d be dead and buried.

Dave, “Benjamin MAXWELL, NOW.”

Becky snickers into her palm at the usage of the Middle Name Treatment.

Ben flounces dramatically to the garbage can and makes a huge production of throwing out the straw. Then, he pivots to face his parents.

“FINE, I’ll throw it AWAY” he stamps his feet. “Since you HATE MOTHER EARTH.”

Apparently, our son was brainwashed.

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“Dat a Pumpkin, Mama?”

“Right, Alex, that’s a pumpkin.”

“Dat’s notta pumpkin. Dat’s a GOURD.”

“Okay, it’s a gourd.”

“It’s not a gourd. It’s a pumpkin.”

*headdesk*

For the record: it was a jack-o-lantern.

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(Cacophony of dogs barking after someone knocks on the door)

“Who was at the door?” I barely looked up from my computer to ask Dave. My ass was tired from a strenuous day of sitting on it.

“Some high school kid selling magazines.”

Knowing my husband is a sucker for anyone selling anything, I sighed, wondering if he’d renewed our (never read) subscription to Golf Digest.

“What did you get us?”

“Nothing.”

Shocked, I was silent for a second.

“Wait, did the kid offer a subscription Playboy? Because I TOTALLY would have subscribed to that.”

“BECKY.”

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And then incongruently there is this:

Which leaves me alternately so full of joy and so full of survivor’s guilt that I can barely talk about it. I know it doesn’t make sense, survivors guilt makes no sense, but I don’t understand any of this.

How did we dodge this bullet? I don’t understand any of it. I just don’t understand.

21% with her type of encephalocele are born alive.

55% of those born alive are expected to survive.

75% of those who survive have some degree of mental defect.

She is a miracle. My sweet daughter, a miracle.

I sit here with tears streaming down my face, crying because she made it and crying because I know so many didn’t and crying because I am so grateful that she is so, so blessed to have so many people who have prayed for her and love her.

Thank you. Every day, I am grateful for you. All of you.

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Now if you’ll excuse me, I have something in my eye that requires my immediate attention.

While it was easily one of the quickest decisions we’d made, I haven’t been happier that we pulled our son from the hippie nut ban! school. Okay, so I was happier the one time I realized that marshmallows did really weird things when they were microwaved, but I’m pretty sure that I was wasted at the time.

I was unsure of our motives, because, quite frankly, Dave and I stuck out like a pair of brightly colored, mismatched, rain-forest-chopping-down, as-far-from-eco-friendly-as-one-can-be-without-driving-Hummers thumbs. Now, it’s not as though we don’t recycle or love Mother Earth, because we do, and if you’ve been around for any length of time, you know that I garden like I used to drink diet Coke (read: obsessively).

But, according to the other parents, it just wasn’t enough. Because if we shopped at Trader Joe’s, they shopped at Whole Foods. If we shopped at Whole Foods, they organically grew their own fruits and vegetables. While I am not a competitive person by nature, the other parents seemed to feel absolute moral superiority towards us both and quite frankly, it got old after 4 years.

Adding fuel to the fire was the poor communication between the school and the parents. Like this charmer of an example. What Dave was told was that our son “ran into a fence and got a little banged up.”

What I got was this:

This picture does not do justice to how beaten my child looked. It took ALL MY WILLPOWER not to comment on it, because with Ben, if you comment on something like a paper cut, suddenly he will expect sympathy cards and ice packs. And this? DESERVED SYMPATHY CARDS AND ICE PACKS.

So I admit that I was slightly annoyed by the downplaying of his injuries, mainly because I had to rely on acting skills *I* had never honed to not shriek when I saw him. I was also several weeks postpartum at the time, so the hormones may not have helped.

The nail in the proverbial coffin was the aw-shucks sort of after-thought type letter sent home right before school was set to begin for Ben, though, at the hippie nut ban! school. Because the school was so small, you see, we had to pack lunches for our children.

Maybe for other families, this was like the heavens opening up and shining down upon them, bento boxes neatly packed with nutritious choices like edamame and perfectly cut carrot coins, sandwiched between homemade whole grain crackers and cheese made from the milk of Buddhist cows.

There were, of course, lots of restrictions about what we could and could not pack. No refined sugars. No juice boxes. No chips. No candy. No cookies. No soda. Nothing that needed to be microwaved or prepared. Reusable containers. No brown paper bags.

In theory, none of this should have been an issue.

In theory.

But my darling son, Benjamin, is autistic. With food issues.

For an entire year, I tried all kinds of combinations of foods, and about 95% of the time, he’d come home with a full lunch bag, his lunch untouched. Certainly, while he was not starving to death, this troubled me.

Food issues were nothing new, but this particular medium–lunch food with millions of restrictions–was, and I was at a loss. The only, and I do mean the ONLY thing I could safely get him to eat was a peanut butter sandwich.

So the day that the leaflet arrived informing us that we could no longer pack anything with nuts, or nut oils, in our son’s lunch, The Daver and I looked at each other and (in uncharacteristic unison) said, “oh FUCK.”

(as a jaunty aside, what irritated me highly was that this was a very ill-researched ban. When pressed, after many desperate phone calls, the answer Dave got when he wanted to know how specific we needed to be about nuts–because nuts, nut oils, stuff that’s been manufactured in nut-producing facilities are in fucking EVERYTHING, was sort of a, well “ANYTHING with nuts.”

If you’re going to ban something, shouldn’t you understand it all a little better beforehand? Especially since the allergic child was a sibling of a student who didn’t even go to the school.)

So that was that, we plucked him out and plunked him into the public school system.

Where they have nut-free tables and nut-free snacks, but even better than that? THEY HAVE LUNCH LADIES.

*cue angels singing on high*

And with lunch ladies (*hums the lunch lady song*) comes lunch. HOT lunch. Lunch with choices! Glorious, glorious choices! Every single day *I* am not responsible for providing food for my son! If he doesn’t eat? I am none the wiser.

I no longer have to sadly throw out the old, pathetic, stale and untouched sandwich each night. I don’t have to throw out uneaten shriveled carrots, looking remarkably like flaccid penises (penii?), wondering how my child will gain weight. Nor do I have to flip coins or play rock, paper, scissors with The Daver to determine who is unlucky enough to have to try and make Ben a lunch he’ll never eat THIS time.

No.

It is with great pleasure, pomp and circumstance that I write out a check every month to the lunch ladies, signing my name with an extra dose of pizazz because I am just that mother-fucking happy to be letting someone else cook for my child. I would TIP the lunch lady if I could, I love her so much. I might even bear her children, if she asked me.

And if, for some reason, I had to pack my son a lunch, I could EASILY pack him, like Dave and I were always tempted to do while Ben was at the hippie nut ban! school: a 5 pound bag of white sugar and a can of Mountain Dew. I don’t think ANYONE would say anything.

God BLESS the public school system.