When Ben was about 2 and a half–maybe a little closer to 3–Potty Training began in earnest. We lived with my then-boyfriend The Daver part time and we made sure that any time that we used the bathroom, Ben was dragged in with us. Just so he got the idea.

(perhaps, as an aside here, if I may–and I always may–this is why my children all flock to the bathroom the moment my pants are unzipped. It’s the hang out spot in my house)

We were especially vigilant to make sure that whenever the other member of our household with a penis (this would be The Daver) used the can, Ben was there. Because he also had a penis. And a weenis for a father. Nat was too wrapped up in his hatred of me to bother handling the potty training.

So Sausages UNITE! was the bathroom motto. We made sure that we answered any questions Ben had, made sure that we weren’t too prude about our bodies lest he get all squigged out by them, and allowed him to help with whatever function he could. Just so he got the idea. My parents ARE hippies after all.

This included, flushing, washing hands, and grabbing toilet paper when needed. With this kind of prep, I’m amazed that wiping his ass isn’t more of a thrill for him. But I digress.

One day, as Dave was peeing, Ben got the idea in his head that he wanted to help Daver aim it. So he asked nicely if he could. My poor flustered soon-to-be husband didn’t know what to do so he agreed. I was standing in the doorway watching this and I can tell you that I’ve not seen Dave so red-faced before. And he never allowed Ben to do it again.

A couple of weeks later, we took Ben out to dinner in Oak Park, near Dave’s apartment.

(Oak Park, for those not in the know, is a town filled with a weird yuppie/hippie hybrid. Often, these people engage in competitions to see who can be greener and shop and Whole Foods more often. While driving Escalades. It’s a strange mix of people.)

During dinner, The Daver had to use the bathroom, and per our arrangement, he took Ben in with him (I always took him in with me, too, but this isn’t really pertinent to the story save to assure you that I did my share of potty training work). I’d gotten the check as they were off having a Sausage Party and had thrown my card down to pay for it and relishing the relative silence.

Like a whirlwind, a red-faced Dave and an oblivious looking Ben flew out of the bathroom and Dave practically shrieked “We need to leave NOW!” Dave is easily the most even-tempered person I know and not prone to hysterics or teeth-gnashing, so I was taken aback. I immediately assumed that he’d plugged up the toilet and a mixture of poo-soup was now overtaking the bathroom.

I signed the check and bundled up, preparing to go out to the car.

As we hustled out, he told me what had happened in a panicked, rushed voice, looking over his shoulder every couple of seconds.

“I was peeing, right? And Ben was standing RIGHT THERE. And I was JUST PEEING. And all of a sudden, Ben goes, clear as day, ‘Dave, can I hold your penis?'”

I started laughing, the tears springing easily from my eyes. This was a typical Ben thing to want to do.

“Okay, well, okay.” I gasped, laughing harder than I could ever recall.

“THEN, I realized THAT WE WEREN’T ALONE IN THE BATHROOM! Some guy was in there LISTENING to my son CALL me DAVE and ASK TO HOLD MY PENIS.”

I rubbed my side where a cramp had formed from laughing so heartily and continued laughing. I had a perfect picture of what had happened.

“We had to leave before that dude called the police or something, looking for a child molester!”

The tears were freezing in the wind, but I couldn’t hold it in. The hilarity of the situation was just too much for me. I was thisclose to peeing my pants. The LAST person on the planet to molest a child is The Daver and the ONLY person who’d come up with such a weird thing to ask is Ben.

To his credit, though, Dave maintained his sanity. And as for me, I laughed until Ben spent a good 20 minutes in the Target bathroom with me, chronicling the descent of his poop to a bathroom audience.

Then I didn’t laugh so hard.

————

Tell me I’m not the only one to have such a thing happen to them. My kids are ALWAYS trying to outdo each other in terms of things they can embarrass me for.

About 5 years ago now, I had been taking antibiotics for something or other I’d picked up during my clinical rotations and got the subsequent yeast infection.

So after school one Friday, I trundled off to the pharmacy and absentmindedly grabbed the cheapest Monistat cream–hey, I was a poor college student–I could find and headed back home, eager for some relief.

I’d had a case of the yeasties before, but never one that was quite so…irritating. If you haven’t had one, be grateful. It’s itchy and uncomfortable and gross all in one big pile. And there’s no good way to itch oneself in public without drawing major attention to it and I’ve never had the luxury of staying home to lay around with a fan blowing on my naked crotch.

This may have been the only time I’ve ever prayed for camel toe.

I’ve never been so happy to go home and shove something gross up my vagina before. After I’d inserted the first of seven pre-filled applicators, I noticed a little tube of what I can only describe here as ‘œClit Cream.’ I’d never used it before, but man, it sounded pretty good. I would have happily slathered horseradish down there if I had any idea it would relieve my pain.

I sat back, lubed myself up, and laid down for a nap. I fucking heart naps.

Several hours later, I was abruptly awakened to an even MORE uncomfortable feeling; it felt as though my entire crotch was on fire. I rushed to the bathroom, quickly applied more ‘œClit Cream,’ figuring this was a particularly nasty bug, and took a look at my privates. (not something I ever relish doing, TRUST ME)

Even taking a crap post 4th degree tear (thank you, enormous baby head) has not made me scream so loudly. My mother came running. I kept screaming. My delicate girly bits had swollen to the size of a fucking grapefruit.

It was Friday at about 4:30 PM. My doctor’s office was about to close.

I hobbled my broken crotch down the stairs, crying out from the pain as I made my way to the phone. I couldn’t imagine going to the ER or Urgent Care for a broken vagina and I wasn’t about to use any more over the counter shit.

I got Pinhead, RN who was ready to leave for the day and most unhappy that I was asking for a prescription for Diflucan.

An approximate recounting of the conversation:

Me: “I have a yeast infection. I need a prescription for Diflucan.”

Her: “Take a hot bath.”

Me: “I need a prescription for Diflucan. My crotch is busted.”

Her: “Eat some yogurt.”

Me: “I need a prescription for Diflucan. I’m in pain.”

Her: “Get some over the counter Monistat.”

Me: “I had an allergic reaction to that. My crotch is now the size of an inter-tube. I am not putting any more stuff up there. Now I NEED a prescription for Diflucan.”

You would have thought I was asking for a Dilauded drip.

Since it was Friday, Ben and I were heading out to our apartment in Oak Park (ed note: this was the norm back then), so I had the nurse call the coveted prescription in to the Osco out there. I was also instructed to get a vinegar douching kit and some hemorrhoid pads. Can we talk about sexy shopping lists or WHAT?

Ben and I got bundled up to combat the January cold. To provide some relief, I shoved a plastic baggie full of ice in my pants. At the time, my car was a manual transmission vehicle, and during the first 5 minutes of our hour long trek the bag busted a leak.

I was now sitting in a pool of cold ice water, in January, with an aching burning crotch. Every time I had to shift–which was about every 3 seconds–more water spilled out onto my pants. I have never been more done with a day.

The icing on the cake was that I had Benner with me. I had to look for The Worst Shopping List of All Time while trying:

a) not to noticeably drip water down my leg so that it looked like I had totally had an accident and

b) wrangle a 2 and a half year old child while

c) alone.

Ben jaunted happily up and down the aisles, playing the bongos on a couple of packs of Depends while I slowly realized what being pecked to death by a chicken would be like.

By the time I got back to our apartment, I had given up on being upset about the whole thing and decided to see the intrinsic humor in the whole situation.

After locking myself in the bathroom for awhile to take care of my crotchal region (imagine me gesturing wildly. It’d be funnier) I rummaged through our kitchen to find a Sharpee.

Rather than try and be all discrete and shit, I festooned the container of Tucks with the phrase, ‘œASS PADS!!!’ which I left out for all to see, proudly displayed on top of our toilet tank. If your privates are swollen and aching, they might as well be PROUD privates, right? More importantly, I wanted to see what other people would do if face-to-face with such a container. The reactions could have been Pure Comedy Gold.

The only people who managed to see it, though, were my super-conservative in-laws, who probably never had seen such vulgarity until The Daver brought me home. Is it any wonder they don’t adore me?

Don’t answer that.

Okay, bitches, your turn.

After writing this post (last year), I’m pretty sure I’m going to get turned away from the airport and sent squarely back to the Midwest. But I’m gonna try, dammit, to make it past the airport this time. June 19-22, my hammy arms are goin’ back to Cali so that I may wrap them around my friend Heather.

Every winter, ’bout this time, when the cold days have dragged on and on to the point where a 100 degree day (Celsius even!) sounds more tolerable than bundling up the kids AGAIN and having the boogies in my nose freeze for the forty-millionth time that day, and when getting the mail at the end of my driveway seems like a drastic undertaking, I start to have this fantasy in which we move to more temperate climates.

And because, in my fantasy-land, I am also slightly practical and don’t have visions of moving to a completely foreign country and having to learn a new language (you mean people don’t speak American EVERYWHERE?), I envision us moving to one of the coasts.

For a good 290 days of the year, I like where I live, honestly I do (and probably in part as a defense mechanism, as moving out of state would be brutal as far as custody arrangements go for The Big One), and besides a small jaunt away from here several years ago, I have lived in the same town most of my life. It’s a sweet river town, full of character and pep (and a number of the exact same strip malls), and it’s great BECAUSE I KNOW WHERE EVERYTHING IS.

But, for as teeny as my family is, I do happen to have some that live out of state in California, where I have been any number of times. And I genuinely love it out there, it’s interesting, it’s clean, people are nice, and if it weren’t for such amazingly high property prices, we might live out there for reals.

Well, the cost of living AND the fact that I am not positive that I am good-looking enough.

California is weird like that, and I’ll never forget being there as a teenager to attend my cousin’s wedding. A busboy (a BUSBOY!) in the joint where we were dining nearly caused me to choke on my steak, so uncanny was his resemblance to Brad Pitt (the 12 Monkeys/Seven version, whom I had many a naughty fantasy about).

A couple of years later, I was back again, and I noticed that even the bums on The Haight were sexy. BUMS were SEXY! Even the one who flashed me his penis was good looking (and well hung)!

It was like entering an alternate universe.

As I got older and every time I went back to Cali, I noticed more and more unlikely and attractive people. Airport baggage claim guys were hot! The chick at the rental car place looked as though she’d stepped off the runway to make my car rental experience a complete nightmare. I kept expecting the dude who took my toll money to start selling me shampoo, so magnificent was his shiny mane of hair, so full of body and style.

Just based on experience (and without real knowledge), I would even venture to guess that the people who worked at the DMV were extras on a movie set in their spare time (away from being nasty to people who were stupid enough to get into the wrong line– EVEN THOUGH IT WASN’T LABELED).

I don’t know about your state, but typically the DMV workers are thought to be the bitchy Missing Link anthropologists are always harping on about (I wonder if their studies would take them to the DMV, because it should), but I would venture a guess that in California, they, too, are beautiful, attractive, and of the highest genetic pedigree.

Even if I were rich enough to buy a shack in California, I’m fairly certain we’d be turned away at the border for being undesirably unattractive.

For now, I will take comfort living here in the Midwest, just outside of Chicago, knowing that while we may be ugly and dumpy, at least we’re landlocked, so no hurricane will make it to our doorstep.

DENIED ENTRY INTO CALIFORNIA DUE TO EXCESSIVE UNFLATTERING GENES.

1,495,485: Number of times I have openly guffawed when I saw a bumper sticker on my neighbor’s car that reads “I (heart) My Wife.”

1,495,485: Number of times I have wondered if hearty laughter was an appropriate response to this.

16.7: Number of boxes of cupcakes eaten between Amelia’s birth and surgery

0: Boxes I’ve eaten since I’ve been on a diet

856: Times I wondered if anyone would notice if I ate a whole stick of butter

0: Times I couldn’t believe it’s not butter.

0: Pounds I’ve lost since giving up cupcakes and butter as a food group

25: Times I’ve wondered if a tapeworm was actually a decent idea

5: Days Daver will be gone to London at the end of the month.

4,364: Times this has made me stabby with jealousy.

2: Red cats named Pete I’ve foisted upon my brother and sister-in-law

6.3: Hours spent online looking for a replacement blankie for Alex

1: Pair of crocs I bought to haul my fat butt out to the garden in

48: Times I wondered if it was suicide time for me. Again.

2: Meme’s I’ve tried to do before I realized that meme’s are Of The Devil.

98: Times I’ve compared eating Splenda to licking The Devil’s butthole.

739: Times Daver has mocked me for loving such songs as “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” and “Something About The Way You Look Tonight.”

762: Times I’ve mocked Daver for listening to I Am So Deep And Meaningful Emo Music citing that it makes my balls itch.

9,576: Times I’ve fantasized about getting a vanity plate for my mini-van that says “Goes To 11.”

34: Times I’ve said, ‘Holy shit, that baby DOES look like an ostrich.”

87,463: Times I’ve gained–then lost–the nerve to post an older, very graphic yet high-fucking-larious post about yeast infections.

647: Times Dave and I have acted out a Valtrex commercial.

“I have genital herpes” (me)
“And I don’t.” (Daver)
(in unison) “And we’re going to keep it that way.”

647: Times this has made me bray with laughter.

0: Times I’ve eaten bacon since eating half a package while pregnant.

576: Times I’ve wished desperately for an Enzyte pen to go with my Valtrex, Wellbutrin and Viagra ones (my father is a pharmacist).

45: Emails from Nigerian princes who are going to give me money!!! I didn’t know Nigeria had so many princes who were related to me!!!

45,821: Times I’ve wondered what would happen if I really did try and order Vicodin through the Internet. Would a smiling pharmacist REALLY be filling my order?

Hands are nom, nom, nom, nom.

Every time you masturbate, a Domo eats a cookie. Please, think of the cookies.

This was in my iPhoto archive. I did not take this picture. Uh. Yeah.

Someday, he might kill someone with those lashes.

——–

How are YOU today? I’m full of exhausted thanks to a sweet Lil Miss who decided that sleep is for babies.

Man, I feel like I *just* guest-posted. Like last week or something. This is, I need to tell you, maybe the 3rd time I’ve done a guest post for anyone. I think people are afraid (rightly so) of what sort of shit I’d spew onto their blog.

But my friend JJ at Reproductive Jeans, didn’t fear. I’m at her place today. Come and visit. I’m super-nervous. What if her Internet hates me?

Oh, and leave me a topic here to post about. I’m digging the suggestions.

Some of you, especially those of you who have been reading my blog for any length of time will know that my childhood wasn’t quite…normal. I don’t mean this in a woe-is-me-my-life-sucked sort of way, because with the aid of a lot of smashed glassware and torn up flower beds, I’m pretty zen with the whole thing. My birth coincided with my mother’s mental health decline so I spent a lot of my young life in the role of caregiver and caretaker.

The most unexpected side effect of all of this chaos that Young Aunt Becky was my astonishment that some Things That Remain The Same. There was a movie out a couple years ago (and by couple I mean a lot longer than that) with Julia Roberts who is a serial jilter, leaving a couple different dudes at the alter.

It comes to pass that you find out she’s been morphing herself to be whatever that man wants her to be over a plate of eggs. First, she likes them over-easy, with the next guy, they’re poached, and finally scrambled. When confronted at the end, I think, she claims she doesn’t like eggs at all.

I watched that movie–really stupid if I can remember correctly–and sat there, mouth agape! It was my mother! On the big screen! Only she wasn’t changing to fit herself neatly into a jigsaw puzzle for someone else, she was doing it because that’s what she did.

One year, yellow was her favorite color. Then green. Then cobalt blue. My brother–who is 10 years my senior–remembers her favorite ice cream being butter pecan. For me, it was Jamocha Almond Fudge. She loved french fries, now she claims that she never liked them at all, despite vivid memories that I have of her filching them off my plate as a child.

Thanks to a cocktail of ECT and alcohol, her memory is shot, so she doesn’t remember key things like this.

Now, of course people change over time, and their preferences alter accordingly, but not this dramatically. Since I can recall, my favorite color has been pink, I’ve always had an illicit love-affair with diet Coke, I’ve always hated writing in blue ink, and, if given the choice, I prefer driving stick shift.

Will these always be the way of things? I don’t fucking know. I’ll be 29 in two months and these are things about me that have always just been the way of things.

Occasionally, things will pop up, things I never knew I liked. This blog, for example, would have been something I’d not have thought I’d like to do. I never was a writer (save for a butt-load of research papers), I never kept a journal, and if you’d have told me a couple years ago that I would have written a book AND gotten an agent or two, I would have expected that I had spree murdered a bunch of people and then written about it from my cell.

It was that far off my radar.

(I’ll tell you more about this in another post. o! the cruel suspense!)

Another oddity is gardening. My mother, as my brother and I both remember her (joint memories are a rarity), was a gardener. She’s no longer interested in it, but I grew up playing in the dirt and hoping that my Rich Other Family would swoop in and save me. We’d move to a castle and I’d make the servants garden for me.

My paternal grandfather was an avid horticulturist as well, so we’d spend most of the summers with him up at the Botanic Garden or in his green house. Some of my earliest memories are of the industrial sized fans that the greenhouses, which I was always transfixed by.

Now, I had a scanner (hint, hint hint, The Daver), I’d scan some pictures of me and insert them here to make my point, but you know, I’m sorely lacking in the scanner department…

Anyway, some of the best memories I have of childhood are playing in the greenhouse, the smell of fresh dirt and fertilizer in the moisture heavy air just makes my knees go weak. It’s the closest I can get to feeling safe and at home. There are tentative future plans for the installation of a greenhouse here for me, and I’m giddy just imagining it.

(why yes, I *am* an old woman!)

Last year, after my dueling miscarriages, I engaged in some post-miscarriage therapy in the form of digging out and bagging up approximately 6.2 million tons of moldy mulch from my side yard. I was preparing it for the addition of some peony bushes. Then, in a brilliant move no one could have predicted I not only got pregnant but then I fell down the stairs and hurt my ever-loving foot.

The side yard project was shelved and the weeds grew amuck (The Daver will always make sure I have top network speeds and fancy computers, but yard work is SO Not His Thing).

The peonies had to wait.

I went to the greenhouse (o! be still my heart!) this weekend, dragging The Daver away from the computer and picked up a couple of peony bushes. And a small hydrangea bush. I won’t bore you with pictures because I didn’t take them, and if I had, I’d just point out that my house has ugly yellow siding and that said siding needs a power-washing.

(I also engaged in some killing of buckthorns and snowball bushes this weekend, which, although incredibly satisfying, isn’t going to look as cool as my peonies. Because, obviously)

This year, I’m gonna reap just what I sow.

(that sounds more ominous than I intended)

————-

What’s something you didn’t know you liked that you now adore? Or something you couldn’t have predicted being good at?

Because I am not just stupid, but a masochist too, I get the Pottery Barn catalogue in the mail. And then because ‘Torture’ is Aunt Becky’s middle name (second only to ‘Danger’), I open up the pages and begin to drool.

I enviously covet the end tables with razor sharp edges, designed to shear the fingers of small children off to the bone. I’m enraptured by the very thought of being able to place things on coffee tables aside from Little People and laundry without having to guard them with my (ample) body. I wish desperately that my house had some sort of theme other than “This Is Disposable Furniture Designed To Be Tossed When The Kids Get Older.”

I want to obsess over paint colors and throw pillows and bamboo knick-knacks while sipping an ice cold mojito while sitting on a brilliantly unstained white couch; the perfect weight for my frame, my nails and hair impeccably styled into the latest cutting edge fashion. In my secret fantasy, I’m able to cook meals other than Mac-n-Cheese and pasta and enjoy them at the temperature and consistency that they were intended to be.

Then, as quickly as I began, I throw the stupid catalogue at my ugly green walls covered with fingerprints and pencil–Alex’s favorite mode of expression–and laugh. I laugh deeply.

Because I know that some day, my dinner will be hot when I eat it, my walls will be The Perfect Color, I’ll be able to fit in a size with a number versus a letter.

Someday I will have time to get my nails, my hair, my tummy tuck done. My clothes will be unstained by vomit and boogers. My television will play marathons of Whatever Deep Shit Is On Public Television rather than Wow-Wow-Wubzy and my dining room table won’t be home to towers of wooden blocks.

My windows won’t be covered with streaky hand-prints and finger-prints and my backyard will be a sanctuary rather than a repository for toys.

(To my neighbors: I’m sorry. Truly)

And I know I’ll look back, sitting alone in my big house, my perfect coiffed hair, my artfully arranged life and I will remember these as the happiest days of my life.

Because they are.

I am the luckiest person I know.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you. Those with kids here on Earth, those with kids in Heaven, those who are trying to have kids. Happy Mother’s Day to each and every one of you.

Enough of that sappy shit, Mom. There’s hands to be nom, nom, nomed.

Further proof that Daver and I may be the Missing Links.

Also, I cannot wait until I can pick up my kids from Junior High looking JUST AS AWESOME. Because, bwahahahaha!

Caption me. No, really, caption me.

First, I *knew* I had the Best Internet People reading my blog and your comments yesterday? HIGH-FREAKING-LARIOUS. I seriously want to wrap my hammy arms around each of you for making me giggle.

Second, I’m not here today, not really. I’m posting for my friend Badass over here with an oldie but a goodie. And wow, I mean this is one from the VAULTS.

Third, I have a friend who, heard it from a friend who, heard it from another that my friend Chris has a book out. He also has a blog. He also would like some people to review his book–it’s hilarious–if they’d be so inclined. Click over to his blog and shoot him–or me–an email if you’re interested in reading his book. He’s hysterical, you won’t be disappointed.

And lastly, in ass-related news other than my own, I need some help with my son’s poor chapped bleeding butt. The Internet always seems to know best, so let me outline the facts for you:

*He’s 2 and in disposable Pampers

*We’ve tried cutting out dairy to see if that helps with the…um.. consistency of his poo. It doesn’t seem to be helping this OR the rashes.

* He gets these vicious diaper rashes that just look terrible and make him scream his poor head off. They’re cleared up with creams after a couple of days, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to getting them (his diet isn’t varied enough for this to be dietary if it’s not milk).

*I want to prevent them in the first place because, damn, ouch.

Any ideas?

Actual comment by Ben:

(rubs my belly): “Wow! You look like you have another baby in there!”

Aunt Becky: *sighs*

The Daver: “Aww, you poor thing.”

Aunt Becky: *sighs*

Actual conversation with Pashmina, my former blogging buddy (who recently reminded me of a very seldom thought about fact about the two of us but has nothing whatsoever to do with this story or post):

Aunt Becky: “I don’t take laxatives but my ass is gonna try Alli when I quit nursing”

Pashmina: “DON’T DO IT”

Aunt Becky: “???”

Pashmina: “Seriously. Do. Not. Do. It”

Aunt Becky: “???”

(you can see I have a way with words)

Pashmina: “First, the point of Alli is that it traps fat and makes you shit like crazy when you eat something with too much fat in it.”

Aunt Becky: “I’ll deal with some anal leakage.”

Pashmina: “second: Alli takes a LONG ASS TIME to get out of your system
you stop taking it and you’ll still be shitting buckets for a month”

Pashmina: “Third: it prevents nutrients from being absorbed by the bowel
so you’ll lose weight. And muscle tone. And valuable nutrients”

Aunt Becky: “Man that shit is tough. But it beats a tapeworm.”

Pashmina: “Now that I’d rather have.”

Aunt Becky: “Why don’t you get one?”

Pashmina: “I don’t know how, but I wouldn’t mind.”

Aunt Becky: “I think you could order one off the internet. Lemmie see.”

Pashmina: “I VERY SERIOUSLY DOUBT THAT.”

Aunt Becky: “Dunno, I’m looking it up.”

Aunt Becky: “Got it. http://wormtherapy.com/”

Pashmina: “OH COME ON.”

(time passes)

Pashmina: “Good, GOD. $1200 for a tapeworm?”

Aunt Becky: “dude. WILD.”

———
Meatloaf wrote “I Will Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” about–I shit you not–donuts.

What wouldn’t YOU do? What’s one thing you’d NEVER do?

Also: I freaking LOVE the Internet. Tapeworms, who knew?