It wasn’t until recently (color me stupid, here, or at the very least, not very introspective) that I realized that the innocuously innocent things that people ask you that inadvertently offend you are the ones that most often offer the greatest insight into your own insecurities. Ask an unhappily unmarried person when they’re getting married, you’ll get the same internal reaction as if you ask a unhappily childless couple when they’re having kids.

The moment I popped Alexander out (but interestingly enough, NEVER before), the barrage of the very same question began to appear: would I have another? And before I could say yay or nay, they would express that I should have another, but this time A GIRL. I assured these Eager Beavers that yes, maybe someday we would have another child, but the sex of said child was completely out of my hands. We’d all have a laugh together and we would each separately move on our way.

(as a complete aside here, should we ever decide that having another child is, in fact, a good idea, it had BETTER be a girl, not because I don’t adore having all boys: I do, but because I have no good boys names left. Between my two sons and their 17 names apiece, as a couple we have no names left that we can agree upon. So, our hypothetical (very strong hypothetical these days) third son would be named “Jack Bauer” (my last name), “Vincent D’Onofrio (my last name) or better yet “Hugh Laurie” (my last name). Yes, my kid would be ranked out and beaten by his peers, and it would be COMPLETELY MY FAULT because I had used up all of the decent names already.)

Now, to painfully highlight MY own inner demons, just ask me “What do you do?” and I assure you that my answer will be stammered out, while looking at my feet and getting progressively misty-eyed and upset.

As much as I adore staying home with my children (and I do, I swear), this was probably the last place in the world I’d have expected to be. I’d always equated staying home with my children with dying a slow painful death (and somedays, I am spot on here), and always assumed that I would be much more a Career Person (you know, the kind with 4 inch heels and power suits COMPLETELY DEVOID of spit up. Possibly with a shirt that was ALWAYS BUTTONED UP.). I’d probably even have a House Husband (or two) and I would TOTALLY have a cabana boy.

Well, heh-heh, WELL, things didn’t exactly go as planned(what does, really?). Despite having the best intentions with getting my degree and license, it’s one of those things that I’ve learned that I simply cannot do. The integral flaw in my reasons behind getting this degree was that I didn’t realize that with nursing, you cannot half-ass it. If you want to do, really do this job, you must be willing to put in 150% at all points in time, a devotion that I was unable to muster. I saw it merely as a means to another end: I would do this until such point as I was able to go back to school, once my small children were older, and pursue my true passion.

But (there’s always a but with me, isn’t there. And not even the GOOD kind of butt), now I must just hurry up and wait. Maybe I’m not always the most amazing mother (CHOCOLATE CHIPS IN HIS LUNCH, SWEET JESUS, KILL ME NOW), but I am not willing to half-ass rearing my children either, at least, not at this moment. Eventually, there will too-soon come a time that I will not be quite as needed as I am now by The Sausage Factory.

I cannot half ass an advanced degree, either (at least for very long. I’d soon get kicked out of the field, and rightly so). When I am ready, I will go balls to the wall with it, kick ass, take names, and occasionally smack a bitch up (well, here and there), and some days this thought is all that keeps me going (especially those days that the baby manages to shit all the way up to his hair. It sounds completely impossible, but I assure you it is not).

Strangers do not want to listen to this. Why? Because it’s fucking boring.

What they’re looking for is a succinct “I am a nurse,” or “I am a doctor,” and possibly even a “I am a telemarketer” (although the last statement might be met with a similar response as I received when I would say “I work for an insurance company. As a nurse.” The responses varied from spitting in my general direction to lobbing nearby objects at me. Not sure that I blame them, especially since they would march away in disgust before I could justify that I never! denied! anyone! EVER! I! EXTENDED! BENEFITS!). Not one soul cares about the justification I have for staying home (my husband works 80+ hours a week! Daycare is damn expensive! I’m breast feeding! I am a leper!), nor do they care IF I stay home at all.

*I* alone am the only one who cares about that sort of thing. And I’m pretty damn certain that I’ve probably freaked out a few strangers with my dissertation. I have since learned to censor myself, give a vague “I’m home with the kids,” and move the hell on with my day.

It has, however, made me FAR more sensitive to what I ask and say to complete strangers. Anyone who knows me well can see right through my idiotic comments to people who I don’t know (somewhere along the lines of “you wear shoes! ME TOO! They’re so good at covering your feet, aren’t they?”), but that, too, is okay with me.

Now that Aunt Becky has aired some of her considerably large pile of dirty laundry, why don’t you tell her what bugs the pants off of you when asked about it? Maybe it’s not just things that highlight insecurities, maybe it’s just how damn PRYING complete strangers can be. Whatever it is, though, I am totally dying to hear it.

Maybe I’m the only person on the planet who will occasionally wonder how other people view me (no, my days are not filled with wondering what people think of me. Most of the time, I could care less. This is why I publicly blog: I don’t much care what people think of me), but somehow I doubt it. I always find it strange when someone has a perception of me varies wildly from who I actually am. Sometimes, it makes me want to correct the misconception, yet other times it tickles me pink to let them think what they want. Life is absolutely filled with more humor that way.

When I got pregnant with my first son, I had a role in my family: The Fuck-Up. Disregarding all of the surrounding circumstances (my mother’s relapse and subsequent torture of me), the blame for all of my actions fell squarely on my shoulders, at least as far as my family was concerned. Although many of my actions were not *ahem* the most mature, my family gave me far less credit than I deserved, especially considering that I was 20 years old.

When my pregnancy was announced, my parents were shockingly supportive of me, well, at least until I found out (much later, of course) that they had asked my brother (who is 10 years my senior) and his future wife if they would adopt my child in the event that I “freaked out.” They had such a low opinion of me that they honestly believed that I wouldn’t assume responsibility for my child (note: I am amazed that the keyboard has not ignited with the fury of a thousand suns as I type this).

As my family (save for me, of course. I get a special CHARGE when I get to confront people who have pissed me off.) is so non-confrontational that one might assume that each member is far meeker than they really are, I rarely heard about what a Fuck-Up I was considered to be. Aside from snide comments here and there about responsibility, everyone was pretty mum.

When I met, and subsequently married The Daver, was the point in which I realized just how poor my family’s opinion of me truly was. You would have thought, by their reactions, that Dave had rescued me literally from the streets, where I was selling crack and dancing badly for spare change (Dance Monkey, DANCE) and somehow turned my life around for me. You would never have guessed that I was at the top of my nursing school class, TA’ing for Organic/BioChem AND tutoring for A & P, while working as a waitress 20 hours a week BEFORE Dave walked into my life.

My brother, who I have a long and sorted history with, decided that if Dave (whom he adored/s) liked me, then I couldn’t be all THAT bad. My parents finally accepted that I had become a more mature and responsible person, although their time line was off by a factor of about a year and a half. In their minds, I only began to turn my life around once I had met my husband.

I do, of course, appreciate that my family loves my husband as one of their own (honestly, if we were to divorce, I have a feeling that holidays would have to be split up into Dave-time and Becky-time, or more likely, just Dave-time. I’d have to find myself a new family to celebrate the holidays), but I just wish that they could see that as wonderful as Dave is, he did nothing to change who I am and what I will do with my life.

It dawned on me, as I prepared my home for hosting Thanksgiving this year, that if asked, my family would probably mention that they were “having dinner at Becky’s house” and something to the effect of “she’s really turned her life around, hasn’t she?” Like I was some sort of street urchin in a Lifetime Original Movie who had some sappy predictable plot line: unmarried, younger girl gives birth to a child out of wedlock, heads down the “wrong path” until she meets “the man of her dreams,” and she miraculously changes her path, learns to cook and clean, and becomes a responsible upstanding citizen with an immaculate home. Who can, and does, crochet platitudes to hang on the wall.

While I can never discount Dave’s role in my life, the Lifetime Original Movie would be completely wrong (and not just the part about crocheting platitudes), but because I never, ever open up to my family about this sort of thing (in my family, despite the mental illness, we almost never talk about our feelings, because that would be too corny), it’s what they think of me. It’s incredibly doubtful that I’ll ever change their misconceptions of me, try as I may or may not to show them my true colors (I see your TRUUUUUUEE COOOOOLLLLLORS, and that’s why I LOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVE you.). I’ll chalk trying to explain who I really am to my family as yet another exercise in futility, because, honestly, it’s probably going to be easier to train my cats to unload the dishwasher or teach the coffeemaker to speak Ebonics than it would be to change their opinion of me.

It just sucks that they have to be so off-base with their perceptions, I mean, why can’t I be mistaken for a Fighter Pilot rather than a Fuck-Up (more accurately now: The Becky Formerly Known As Fuck-Up)?

I know that I’m not alone here. I just can’t be.

What do people think about YOU that is completely inaccurate?

For some computer related reason (read: I have no earthy idea, but my darling geek of a Daver did, which is why I married him. My Internet is always in a row.), my blog was down for about a day and a half. This happened to stress me out FAR more than it should, which reaffirms my stance that I NEED to get out more. MUCH more.

Regardless, my blog got moved (again, no idea what this means in actual terms) so some of the comments that got left yesterday are miraculously missing. Everything should be easy-peasy now, so my apologies.

(The blog being down happened to coincide with the winners of NaBloWhatever being announced, and I randomly got selected to win, but since it couldn’t be verified that I did indeed post each day, I didn’t actually win. This is ALWAYS what happens to me when I am in the position to win something.)

(Side story: when I was about 8, I entered a coloring contest for Easter put on by my local grocery store. I colored my heart out, and when I got the call announcing that I had won, I rushed my mother down to the store to claim my overly large Easter basket. When I went to customer service to claim my gift, which of course, thrilled me to no end, the lady at the counter regretfully informed me that although I had been called, it had been in complete error.

I had not actually won the prize.

Oh, the tears. OH the tears. I wept copiously and hard bitter tears at my loss. So much so that one of the cashiers took pity on my sad self and bought me a candy bar. The candy bar was good, but the whole experience has left me a bit shy of anything relating to contests. I don’t win, therefore I don’t bother.)

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The second blood-letting netted me with a fancy new prescription for a brand spankin’ new dosage of my Synthroid.

What this effectively means, is that I have successfully warded off The Crazy, for awhile longer. Yay for not being full of The Crazy.

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Despite my repeated whining about how slowly my weight loss is going, and complaining about a lack of winter coat, I have lost an additional 2 pounds this week. This brings my total up to 14.5, leaving me .5-5.5 to go by Christmas Eve to hit my goal of 15-20 pounds. My goal will be revamped to lose the additional baby weight by Alex’s first birthday, give or take a month or two.

All whining aside, I’m nothing if not realistic about my weight loss goals.

Let’s see if I can do this.

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On a completely non-selfish note, I’d like to talk about giving this holiday season (and no, not to me).

When I was a child, there was always a huge Christmas tree at the mall that you could pull names off of and buy gifts for a needy family. Each and every year, we did this as a family, and I always thought of it as a nice tradition. The holidays must be a terribly hard time for the destitute, especially the children, and it always reminded us that although we may not have had a home with a moat and servants as I wanted, life was pretty damn fine.

But the trees have disappeared, likely because people would pull names and then not follow through with the gifts, which makes me terribly sad. Kids and animals (all kidding aside here) are some of my favorite creatures on Earth, so much so that I literally cannot watch violence towards them fictional or not, and I don’t believe that any of them should go without during the holidays (or any time, really).

Since the trees have gone the way of the condor, I have yet to find anything to donate toward during the holidays, and this makes me sad, as I’d wanted to pass that tradition down to my children.

One of my favorite bloggers, Baggage, aside from being a kick-ass chick, is a foster parent of several young children, which is awesome. I honestly don’t know how she does all that she does, 2 kids are kicking my ass, but I digress.

Today she posted about a site that you can donate to foster children who otherwise will go without this holiday season. I personally have picked out some things today that I will likely purchase tonight (scroll down to the end of the post to see the link).

I’m asking you guys to do the same. It’s not hard and you can only imagine what this will mean for a child.

Despite having owned many and loved a few, my knowledge of the innerworkings of my cars leaves much to be desired. My answer to “why is the engine making that knocking noise” is a very typical “I don’t know, call the goddamn mechanic.” I’d sooner breastfeed a baby camel in my backyard for fun than learn how to change my own oil. For the 30 minutes it takes to get my oil changed by someone who knows what they’re doing, and is therefore held accountable for their mistakes (the selfsame reason that I will never again ask people to help me paint my house, I cannot yell at my friends, but I CAN yell at people I pay). Color me lazy, but it just seems easier that way.

When I was 6 or 7 months pregnant with Ben, due to an unfortuante error in judgement on my part (which is not the subject of this blog post), I was loaned my recently deceased grandmothers car, which I used to tool back and forth to school.

On my way to my beloved jewelry making class, I rounded a corner, and a most mysterious thing occured. The car was filled with a horrible flappity-flap noise while becoming increasingly difficult to stear. Being the amazingly intelligent person that I am, despite being late to my class, I dilligently pulled the car off of the main road and into a brand new subdivision. Upon closer inspection, I realized that I had blown a tire.

Well, this was slightly before I’d gotten a cell phone, and I was a mile or two away from a pay phone, so I opened the trunk. It took several minutes of staring at the jack and the donut tire incompetently before I realized that I had absolutely no clue how to change a tire. Truth be told, even if I had, my burgeoning belly would have likely impeded me from getting into the required position anyway.

After several minutes, it dawned on me that squatting on the well-manicured easement and shaking my fists at the sky impotently while weeping copiously was going to do absolutely nothing to help my situation (aside from possibly landing me in a straightjacket). So, I looked around at the brand-new pre-fab subdivision, with it’s trees so young that they appeared to be houseplants, and noticed that most people were not yet home from work.

If there ever was a situation in which I need help, this was it, so I set off to find someone to give me a hand. I shuffled along, waddling all the way, looking for some sign that someone was home at ANY of these identical houses. Several houses down from where I had pulled over, I saw some teeny bikes in the lawn, and yay! the front door was open. Figuring that anyone who had small children wasn’t apt to be a serial killer, and would likely take pity on an obviously pregnant woman, I rang the bell.

When the children went to get their father, I feverishly explained my situation, my panic escalating by the moment. Through a strangled voice thisclose to tears, I explained that I needed someone to help me change my tire, could he please help me change my tire, I’m pregnant and I need someone to change my tire, please, please, pleeeasssse help me.

The man rolled his eyes at me.

He ROLLED his EYES at me.

Then he sighed audibly at my shear stupidity, rolled his eyes again, glared at me, and opened the door.

I trailed him like a sad, lost puppy dog, explaining my situation while drawing huge gulping nearly hysterical breaths, apologizing profusely, all of which he ignored. But being who I am, when I get upset, it’s like my internal switch goes from “Talks Paint Off Walls,” to “11” so I continued peppering his minstrations with an irritatingly apologetic monologue.

He said not a word as he changed my tire for me. Not one single word.

After he finished, I began thanking him repeatedly for helping me out, all of which he ignored. After sighing dramatically, giving me one last withering glare, he promptly got up from the curb and began walking angrily back home.

I have no idea how long I stood there, rooted to the spot, watching this man walk home. I was completely dumbfounded, hell I still AM completely dumbfounded. And a touch hurt: I have never, ever asked a complete and total stranger for much of anything, except for maybe the time, and I suppose that my expectations were too high. Anyone else I knew (and know) would drop anything to help someone in such a situation, I’d sure help out if I thought that I would be doing much good by occasionally commenting on the sky while other people did the manual work.

Maybe this is just another one of those things in life that I’ll never understand, up there with the popularity of skinny jeans, and propensity for cats to piss on anything plastic and/or vinyl. Why would someone who very obviously didn’t want to help me, help me? He could have very easily sent me on my (waddling) way, and I would have understood: it’s not his mess to clean up, my flat tire.

While I am completely aware that this was a dumbass move on my part, even now, I wouldn’t change a tire while pregnant, and seriously, what was I supposed to do? Hell, when I’m pregnant, I can barely walk in a straight line, let alone jack a several ton car up on a spindly little jack. It’s likely that I would at the very least attempt to change a tire when I’m not pregnant, but still, I have no freaking idea what I’m doing, so the experience would likely net me a trip to the ER AND SOME VICODIN. Mmmmm, Vicodin.

Am I the only one who gets confused by these interactions? Has this sort of thing happened to other people?

For the first several months of winter, here in the Midwest, where winter lasts until you blink and oops! it’s summer again (and every year I wonder why we don’t move to a more temperate climate as I chisel ice off the windshield of the car while trying not to cry out when the boogies in my nose freeze), I love it. The first snowfall of year is always a day of magic and wonderment for me, it makes me want to bake Christmas cookies and listen to Christmas music and build snowmen and whitewash The Daver. Well, I guess that MOST things make me want to whitewash Daver, not just the first snow of the year.

Today was the first day that we have gotten any snow, and I got that annoyingly gushy feeling in my heart as I suggested that maybe we could do some Christmas shopping or something festive to commemorate the day.

It was as those words slipped out of my gaping pie-hole that it dawned on me, highly unpleasantly: I don’t have a winter coat this year.

Before you start chastising me for not taking proper care of myself, let me assure you that I do, in fact, own at least 25 winter coats. My hallway closet is filled to the brim, bursting at the seems, even, with the products of being a Midwestern native for my whole life. I collect coats in the way that some women collect shoes (I have plenty of those, too, but it my shoes are not the point here, as they happen to fit just fine thankyouverymuch.).

I could remedy this situation post haste, should I choose. The stores are chock full of sassy winter coats this time of year, and no one would fault me for picking up a new one. Problem is, I’m stubborn and don’t want to buy a coat in a bigger size (think circus tents here) to drape my 26 pounds heavier frame (12.5 down, 26 to go!).

It’s depressing enough that I STILL have to wear my maternity clothes (again with the stubborness), and/or shirts with a V-neck to allow my wee one access without having to pull my shirt completely up in public (I swear, I am NEVER even THINKING about wearing anything v-neck EVER AGAIN after I quit nursing. Those shirts will be burned along with my hideous nursing bras when Alex is weaned), thereby rendering those around me to have to throw up in their soup.

But having to pull out the damn maternity coat is just breaking my ickle heart today. It’s a nice enough coat, for sure, although since it’s a trench coat, it gave me a decidely Grimace-like (or Weeble, think Weebles) appearence when I was 9 months pregnant. Now, thankfully, Alex is no longer residing on my person (although he’d probably like that better. There are days when I’m pretty sure if he could find the entryway, he’d happily climb back inside), so the belly is gone which = no Weeble, but the boobs, HOLY SHIT ARE THEY CRAZY HUGE.

Oh well, I suppose it’s not the end of the world. At least the coat’ll fit.