First things first, let’s get the uncomfortable question of “why do you call yourself Aunt Becky?” out of the way right now. Because I know, I KNOW, the assumed familiarity is awkward and uncomfortable.

The Evolution of Aunt Becky is right here.

The Evolution of Mommy Wants Vodka is below.

In 2004, one of the first things that my boyfriend, The Daver, told me when we first met, was that I should think about getting a “blog.” I was being stalked, you see, and he thought that would make for some great material. Never having heard of a blog before, I thought that he was insulting me.

I asked him what the hell a blog was and when he explained, I shuddered violently. “Dude,” I said, “No one would care about the stupid crap that I would write about. I mean, REALLY, what I ate for breakfast is not national news!”

To me, blogging seemed like the epitome of everything wrong with the world: the most self-indulgent narcissistic tripe spewed out for anyone with a modem and a Google Search Engine to see. All the blogs I’d seen were just that: worthless garbage. I hadn’t, of course, seen the almighty Dooce, or I wouldn’t have said such a thing.

Fast forward a couple of months, my buddy Pashmina and I decided to start a blog of our own, sort of an anti-blog, kind of blog. Rather than ponder such pontiferous points as “why pomegranates are sorely underrepresented in today’s mainstream media” we chose instead to focus on “Why My Left Armpit Smells Worse Than My Right: A Hypocritical Essay.”

Then I got a job. Then I got a job where I got the old bait-n-switch. Then I got pregnant with my second son and was very, very sick.

I didn’t want to turn our raunchy blog into a rant about my gigantic nipples, boob juice, vaginal births, or newborns who look like garden gnomes, so I decided to branch out on my own. For me, this was no small feat, as I tended to be overly critical and shy about any creative endeavors.

I’m not much of an artistic person to begin with, so the thought of not being able to hide behind my blog co-host was daunting. Plus (and FAR more importantly) who would check for my various and sundry spelling and grammatical errors?

As it turns out, The Internet is RIFE with people who like to correct my grammatical errors and Wordpress has a handy spell check program. It’s a win-win, people!

Here, in it’s most bare form, is the briefest of brief rundown of my life so far:

My first son, Benjamin was born in 2001, while I was a (mainly) single parent. I broke up with his father when I realized that I had no desire to allow my son to watch someone treat me like garbage.

Then I chucked my dreams of becoming a doctor–along with half a degree towards that–and decided to become a bachelor’s prepared nurse. Despite my best intentions, I realized on the first day of school that nursing wasn’t the field for me, but my stubbornness won out, and I completed the degree anyway.

In early 2004, I met The Daver, who, as I previously stated, plugged me into a blank Wordpress box, probably to get me to shut my hole. I mean, I talk, A LOT. So who could blame him?

Once I got pregnant with my second son, Alex, I thought that I was going to die. Between the puking, the insomnia, the rib-spreading (DID YOU KNOW RIBS SPREAD? I’m pretty sure that wasn’t covered in “What To Expect” unless it was to tout their stupid pregnancy diet.), and the general discomfort, I spent most days making an ass-groove on the couch and wondering if I had actually died and THIS WAS MY OWN PERSONAL HELL.

Alex joyfully entered the world in March of 2007, after I complained to my doctor that I would be “willing to give birth in the back of a Pinto at this point.” I’m pretty sure that he realized that I WASN’T KIDDING and was generous enough to induce my labor.

On January 28, 2009 I was officially dethroned of my title of Reigning Queen of The Sausages when my daughter Amelia Grace was born. You could say we were pretty thrilled, especially since I’d been stimulating the economy one pink thing at a time. Which would have made for a cross-dressing boy, had he been a she.

She was born, I should mention, with a birth defect called an encephalocele which is a neural tube defect. Somewhere in the very, very early weeks of pregnancy, her spinal column didn’t fuse together properly and her skull was malformed. Part of her brain developed outside of her body.

There’s nothing funny about that and I’m not going to pretend that there is.

It’s nearly always fatal but my daughter not only survived, but went on to kick neurosurgery in the balls at three weeks of age. She’s her mother’s daughter, all right. I couldn’t be more proud of her or any of my children. Currently I stay home with my now three children, which, when I envisioned my life as an adult, never included anything quite so un-glamorous.

When I’m not handling poopy diapers or unsnarling my children from the light fixtures, I peck out words onto my big Mac computer as a freelance writer, a process about as easy as trying to learn to speak Japanese by asking my cat, and I write here every Tuesday. I’ve posted here at Violence Unsilenced, and here at Drinking Diaries.

Because I must have done something amazing in a past life, I was featured here, on Slate.com with the same article running here on the awesome blog The Happiness Project. I’m still in disbelief myself.

You’ll probably see me writing your grocery store fliers one day (if I’m lucky).

I love my life fiercely, but some days I wonder what the hell I was thinking.

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Doesn’t everyone?

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So that’s me, Becky Sherrick Harks, also known as Your Aunt Becky.

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Display the button with pride, yo.

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Stealing gives you herpes.