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, before you want to learn ABOUT Aunt Becky, you want to know WHY she’s called that – we can ALL agree that assumed familiarity is awkward and uncomfortable. My real name is Becky Sherrick Harks. My nickname, “Aunt Becky” started out as a joke:

The Evolution of Aunt Becky is right here.

The Evolution of Aunt Becky’s blog, Mommy Wants Vodka, is below.

In 2004, one of the first things that my then-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 the stories from my stalker 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 and a number of bottles of booze; my buddy Pashmina and I, drunk off our asses one night, decided to start a blog, Mushroom Printing; an anti-blog kind of blog. It’d be meta if I had any idea what that meant. 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 Big Girl Job.

At aforementioned Big Girl Job, I got the old bait-n-switch, and, not liking to be duped, I soon quit.

But I didn’t quit blogging. Not entirely. But 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’m overly-critical and shy about 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?

It took me months to come up with a name for this blog. “Mommy Wants Vicodin” sounded too suburban, “Mommy Wants Bourbon” doesn’t roll off the tongue and while I am not an avid vodka connoisseur, “Mommy Wants Vodka,” made it to the top of my list.

Despite my fears and inability to work on a blog with someone who has a Master’s in English Lit correcting my spelling, I learned something totally awesome – the Internet is RIFE with people who like to correct my grammatical errors and WordPress has a handy spell-check program (well, it does now). 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.

I chucked my dreams of becoming a doctor – along with half a degree towards that – and became 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 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 to get me to shut my hole. I mean, I talk, A LOT. Who could blame him? We married in September of 2005.

Once I got pregnant with my second son, Alex, I thought I was going to die. Between puking, insomnia, rib-spreading (DID YOU KNOW RIBS SPREAD? That was NOT covered in “What To Expect” unless it was to tout their stupid pregnancy diet.) and antepartum (prepartum) depression, I spent my days creating an ass-groove on the couch, wondering if I had died and THIS WAS MY OWN PERSONAL HELL.

After grimly informing my doctor that I would, “give birth in the back of a Pinto RIGHT. NOW. So. Get. this. baby. OUT. OF. HERE,” Alex entered the world in March of 2007, drenching the entire room with his urine as his way of saying, “Howdy.” Not much has changed. He’s a mini-Carl Sagan, obsessed with the cosmos, adores numbers, and redefines the word “intense.”

On January 28, 2009 I was officially dethroned as the 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 very rare, normally fatal birth defect called an encephalocele, 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. The whole story of Amelia’s Encephalocele is here.

She’s her mother’s daughter, all right. I couldn’t be more proud of her or any of my children. Currently I work as a freelance writer with my now-three children, which, when I envisioned my life as an adult, never included anything quite so *ahem* glamorous.

In July 2010, I founded Mushroom Printing, a group blog for anonymous snarky, funny non-hateful rants (also: my first blog URL).

In September 2010, I founded Band Back Together, a user-submitted group blog brimming with support, educational resource pages, and a place to pull all of those demons out from the closet and make them dance. Band Back Together won a coveted Bloggie Award in 2011 for Best Kept Secret Weblog. It is my pride; my joy. All are welcome.

In July 2012, after nearly 10 years together, The Daver and I decided that it was time to call off the marriage and head out to divorce-land. Thus ends one chapter in my life. While I will always mourn our divorce, I can hardly wait to see what comes next.

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, or Your Aunt Becky.

Come on it, pull up the floor and pour yourself a cocktail – we’re ALL family here!

© Copyright 2004-2012

Stealing gives you herpes.