Now you’re probably not going to believe me, Pranksters, when I tell you that I occasionally bake. You’ve seen what happens when I try to cook (see also here and here) and we all know that while I’d like to PRETEND that what happened in those blog posts were just for show, they weren’t. Sadly.

But once or twice a year, I forget that I can ruin Jello and decide to bake something. This year, it was my mom’s famous Christmas bread.

Round about September, I got all, “IMMA MAKE HOMEMADE BREAD, BITCHES.”

Stop laughing.

I mean it.

Ass.

I carefully mixed up all of the ingredients. I even followed the recipe rather than throwing a bunch of shit into a pan like they do in those cooking shows.

(I learned the hard way that this is not, in fact, how one cooks)

I threw it into a bowl, after I beat the fuck out of it, and waited. I’d started in the mid-afternoon, my cobwebby-memory banks telling me that it took a couple of hours to actually rise. I waited. And waited. I watched some annoying cat videos. I waited some more. I shook my fist in fury at the three toys that randomly come to life and play music whenever the fuck they want, scaring the bejesus outta me.

Still, I waited.

By 6PM, a full five hours after I’d lovingly placed the dough in the bowl? Fuck nothing. It hadn’t moved a millimeter.

By 8PM, I got frustrated enough that I slapped it into a pan and was all, IMMA EAT THIS, YOU’RE GONNA EAT THIS, WE’RE ALL GONNA EAT THIS.

By 8:30, I admitted defeat. I pulled the bread from the oven, dumped it onto a baking rack and realized it could easily double as a brick (to throw through a window) or a paperweight (if people actually used such things). I tried to eat the thing, because I’m stubborn, but it was…it was not good.

A few weeks later, determined that it was, in fact, the YEAST that had fucked mah bread up, once again, I gathered up my ingredients, threw them together and practically sat there, trying to watch the bread rise.

It was like one of those optical illusions – if I looked at it with THAT eye, I could ALMOST see that the bread had moved. ALMOST.

After 8 hours (bonus points for being both stupid AND patient), I sadly accepted my fate: I would not be able to make this bread rise. Angrily I dumped the rock-solid hunks of dough, where, adding insult to injury, they succeeded in knocking over the garbage can.

Last week (or was it the week before), I picked up some frozen loaves of bread. I’m not certain if I was thinking, “Oooo! Bread!” or “Ooooo! Frozen weapon!” but I guess it doesn’t much matter. Same thing, if you ask the Atkins movement.

Yesterday, I dumbly was all, “IMMA MAKE SOME BREAD” because I’m still not on solid food. Fucking tooth socket.

So I pulled the frozen hunk of bread from the freezer and debated using it to kill someone. Seemed like a good idea at the time. In the end, tho, I merely threw it into a pan to “let it rise.” Which, after all that time making UN-risen bread, sounded like a conspiracy.

And um.

Woah.

I’m now strutting around, feeling all accomplished, until I remember that I didn’t actually participate in the actual assembly of the bread.

Which, as I’ve learned the hard way, is how it should be.

—————–

So, Pranksters, tell me something. Anything. I’m in the mood for some stories.

Aunt Becky: “Oooooh, I should make KEY LIME BARS tonight. It’s only 8:30 and House, MD is delayed and OOOOOO TASTY.”

Aunt Becky (wanders to the pantry): “OH I HAVE RICE TOO.”

Aunt Becky: “Who the fuck eats rice around here?”

Aunt Becky (pours Key Lime crust into pan and throws it into the preheated oven for 8 minutes): “I should take some Vitamin V to properly enjoy The House Experience.”

Aunt Becky: “I’m not sure how I like the new storyline. I think there should be more singing cats.”

Aunt Becky: “OOOO The TWITTER. I SHOULD TWEET SOMETHING PITHY ABOUT CELERY.”

Aunt Becky: “I am the celery pundit!”

Aunt Becky: “That’s PROBABLY the crowning achievement of my life. How pathetic.”

Aunt Becky: “I’m going to doodle ‘Aunt Becky Rules’ on the fridge. Certainly they ALL need a reminder. Perhaps THEN I can get my fake monkey butler Mr. Pinchey!”

Aunt Becky: “Celery is fucking bullshit.”

Aunt Becky (wanders outside to check on roses): “Full moon. Explains a lot. I should give the full moon a FULL MOON.”

(gives full moon a full moon)

Aunt Becky: “I hope my neighbors saw that.”

Aunt Becky (wanders back inside): “Wonder if House, MD is on. We’re not getting back together until he gets a haircut. Prison mullet looks like, well, Prison Mullet. Why can’t he be all Michael Scoffield hot?”

Aunt Becky (spies pan sitting back atop stove, timer blaring): “OOOO. SHIT. DID I ACCIDENTALLY NOT THROW THE PAN IN THE OVEN? I’M SUCH A FUCKING DUMBASS, SWEET BABY JESUS.”

Aunt Becky (reaches to grab pan): “I can totally pretend I MEANT to leave that out….OH BLOODY FUCKING HELL HOT FUCK GODDAMMIT.”

—————

Moral of the story: when in doubt, use a test subject to handle all potentially hot items. Alternately, an oven mitt. But mostly a test subject.

Me: (returning from my 7-11 pilgrimage wherein I purchased a Double Big Gulp of Diet Coke) “This Gigantic Diet Coke shall continue preserving myself from the inside out.

Me: “I like Britney Spears.”

Me: “Oh, I see the garbage has been taken away, I shall bring these recycling bins inside my garage so that I may fill them with more recycling stuffs.”

Me: “I’m Captain Motherfucking Recycling.”

Me: “I can’t carry three bins at once.”

Me: “I like donuts, too.”

Me: “I’m very lazy and do not wish to make a second trip down my twenty-foot driveway to carry in a bin.”

Me: “OOOOH PURPLE CAR.”

Me: “I shall use my foot to move the third recycling bin into the garage where I shall fill it with more stuffs.”

Me: “SHINY THINGS MAKE ME HAPPY.”

Me: “This is a BRILLIANT plan. I shall have to exert no more effort than I have to.”

Me: “HAHAHAHA. CREEPING PHLOX SOUNDS LIKE AN STD.”

Me: “I certainly admire these wooden-soled shoes that I am wearing.”

Me: (kick, kick, kick the recycling bin)

Me: “HAHAHAHA. CREEPING PHLOX.”

Me: (kick, kick, kick, CRACK)

Me: “OUCH MOTHERFUCKING OUCH.”

I was entirely shocked to find not a single Mountain Folk in Assville, NC, where I spent the weekend. I’d been hoping for some banjos, a dog named Blue, or perhaps, a fuckton of toothless yokels.

I saw none. I was mildly distressed by this.

In fact, Assville, NC, is a HIPPIE town. An EXPENSIVE Hippie Town. Who knew? My parents would have felt right at home.

(I did, however, eventually see a guy playing a banjo)

(that pretty much ruled)

Anyhow, I woke up Sunday morning and checked my email because I cannot possibly function if my email remains unchecked. I mean, what if TODAY is the day that House, MD calls me and begs me to write for his show?

My email was, as per usual, full of stupid sites whose email lists I cannot manage to remove myself from, and a curious thing. I had at least fifty new posts for Band Back Together. That’s, um, out of the ordinary. But, I congratulated myself, perhaps it was all the people I’d just MET. Maybe I had, in fact, strong-armed into writing for us and/or working WITH us.

So I clicked to see what the title of one of the posts was:

“The Many Benefits Related To Obtaining Superior Mortgages.”

FANCY. Also: SPAMMY.

I clicked through and saw that all of the fifty new posts were, in fact, spam. Well, that’s not so fancy. Spam users I’m used to. Spam posts? That’s a whole ‘nother ball game.

That put me in a not-so-sparkly mood.

As bloggers, we’re all familiar with spam. I currently have 500 spam comments that are awaiting my glistening eyes to sort through. That’s just from yesterday.

But Band Back Together is different than a personal blog because it’s not just my ass blathering away at you. See, everyone who posts must first create their own account – email, username, password – so really, it’s their blog too. Same goes for Mushroom Printing.

Spam users: joe@teethbrightening.com I expect. Spam posts? Not so much. But these posts just kept rolling in. I deleted over a hundred and thirty of them before installing a simple capcha for anyone registering. (It’s a math problem, not those stupid letters, because those letters are BULLSHIT.)

I was Furious George until I came across this gem in my inbox:

And then I felt my life was, in a word, complete.

Perhaps I should publish it. I’d bet that would help MORE than a few people.

————

I wrote this about Special Needs Parenting, over at Cafe Mom. You should read it.

————

What are you feeling ranty about, Pranksters?

(you can publish any snarky rants over at Mushroom Printing, too)

Last year – or perhaps it was two years ago – I decided that my house looked like a serial killer lived here. Not just a serial killer’s GIRLFRIEND (I heart you, Dexter), but a reclusive serial killer who probably chopped up hookers to make light fixtures out of their boobs.

The overgrown shrubbery had practically obscured all the windows in the front and I intended to remove them. All 958 of them.

I’d bought myself a pickax and a number of loppers capable of removing my fingers with a quick motion and set to work. I did manage to remove a few of the bushes myself before I paid the neighbor kid to remove the rest. When I’d started the process, see, I hadn’t expected that the early landscapers would plant so many fucking bushes atop each other.

But they did. Thanks, old landscapers.

After my neighbor was off spending the check I wrote him on a new iPod, I surveyed my lawn. Clearly something had to go in the gigantic trench the bushes had left behind. But…what? I’m no arborist or botanist and frankly, by that point, I’d rather have gouged out my eyeball with my pickax than replant some.

I made mention of this requirement to The Daver.

Me: “It looks like we’ve dug a foxhole in our front yard.”

The Daver: “Yep.”

Me: “Like any moment, World War II vets are going to pour into the holes and start shooting at the neighbor’s dogs.”

The Daver: “Yep.”

Me: “Or maybe a moat.”

The Daver: “Yep.”

Me: “But it can’t be a moat without a fire-breathing dragon and some cannons. Can we get a fire-breathing dragon?”

The Daver (not even looking up from his work): “Nope.”

Me: “Well, I need to replant some shit in there.”

The Daver: “Yep.”

Me: “Maybe some of those plants that eat people.”

The Daver: “Nope.”

Me: “Okay, then what?”

The Daver: “That’s your job to figure out.”

Me: “I hate planning.”

The Daver (now looking up, exasperated): “You need to sit down, figure out what will grow in there, the supplies you’ll need to install them, the places you can purchase these plants, and how long it will take you to put them in. I want an itemized list.”

Me: “Hrms. Maybe I can put the old, dead bushes back.”

The Daver: “Nope.”

Me (flicking off the back of his head): “Bite me.”

Asking me for an itemized list, cross-indexed and color-coded is a lot like asking me to turn into a bullfrog. Much as you might like it, it just ain’t gonna happen.

So my foxhole sat through the winter, sadly unoccupied by any roving WWII vets or fire-breathing dragons.

This spring, rather than broach the subject again, I simply went to Lowe’s and bought a bunch of flowering shrubs, giggling because the term “flowering shrub” sounds like a wicked STD.

Feeling particularly eye of the motherfucking tiger, I planted them a couple of weeks ago. And when I did, I realized there was a conspiracy afoot.

I needed to buy dirt.

Let me say that again: I needed to buy DIRT. Somehow the shit manages to find it’s way into my carpets and all over my children, and yet, I had to go spend real dollar bills on DIRT. In fact, I needed to purchase a substantial amount of dirt. Clearly, this was The Man keeping us (me) down.

It was also bullshit.

I haven’t exactly BOUGHT the dirt yet, which means I now have what appears to be a foxhole with shrubs growing out of it. I suppose the roving WWII vets will be pleased that their foxhole has been decorated with some fancy new shrubs.

Even with the occasional rain of bullets from down below, I’m certain my neighbors are thrilled that it no longer looks like a serial killer resides here.

Probably.

—————

Who wants to come over and fill in my foxhole for with me?

I was shocked by how much space my new house had. We’d gone from cramming ourselves into a wee three-bedroom condo without storage space to a house that had three floors and so much storage space that it seemed obscene.

It was beyond startling when, the weekend that we moved in, my new neighbors began showing up at my doorstep with plates brownies and cookies and treats to introduce themselves and to meet us. Our condo building was filled with incredibly unpleasant older, single cat ladies who didn’t like us. They’d have been more apt to leave a bag of poo on our doorstep than a plate of cookies.

With the exception of the people we shared a porch with, there was no one in the building who didn’t hate us. I still don’t know why.

We’d just happened to move into Pleasantville, which is what I STILL call my neighborhood. House after prefab house filled with pleasant, kind people. On Halloween, there’s a house that hands out hot chocolate and hot toddy’s. Another grills hotdogs and passes out beer and soda. If I had a binder, I’d write, “Aunt Becky + Her Neighborhood = Tru Luv” in loopy letters, surrounded by a bunch of pink, puffy hearts.

(sorta like I do with my Pranksters. You all have pink puffy hearts around you)

So when my neighbor, my son’s friend’s mother, invited me over for a “Pampered Chef” party, I was thrilled. Well, thrilled might not be the proper word. I was thrilled to be invited, but I liked cooking about as much as I liked grinding a lightbulb into my eye socket.

But I marched on over there for the party and sat down with a number of older women I didn’t know. Everyone was, of course, way friendly, but the person who was demonstrating the products began to blab. And she kept blabbing.

OMFG she kept on blabbing. I’d never SEEN someone talk so much. (as someone who routinely “talks paint off walls, THAT’S saying a LOT).

It was like one of those cooking shows I never watch because I cannot stand the blabbing. I mean, I love a good meal, but I’d rather cut my leg off than prepare it, or worse, watch someone who isn’t going to GIVE me the meal prepare it.

In the middle of her blabbing, I decided that I, too, could cook. And that I, too, needed THOSE SPECIFIC TOOLS to cook with. Certainly it wasn’t MY problem I couldn’t cook. It was because I didn’t have the Pampered Chef chopper-thingy! Or the cutting board! Or the grill thingy!

I blew a hundred bucks that night on crap so I, too, could be a COOKER-PERSON.

It took a week or so before my order came in. Immediately, I opened my miracle chopper thingy and put it together. I had fajitas I was gonna make! This was a WIN! Plus, my stuff looked so FANCY in the empty cabinets!

Only…the chopper thing didn’t really, well, WORK. The blades were always falling off, which meant that someone as dumb as me was tasked with slipping the blades BACK IN TO their rightful place. Without losing part of my thumb. It took me half an hour to cut up a green pepper, not including the time spent washing the stupid thing out. Had I used a knife, it would have taken less than five minutes.

That Chopper-Thing Was BULLSHIT.

The tiny spatula I’d bought, well, the handle fell off after a couple of months. The cutting board was fine, but nothing I couldn’t have bought anywhere else more cheaply.

I was a little discouraged, knowing I’d never become a Cooker-Person, but I cheered up when I realized that this meant I could eat more McDonald’s.

Those golden arches, they NEVER disappoint me.

——————

Tell me, Pranksters, what do you think of those in-home parties like Pampered Chef or Tupperware? Love ‘em? Hate ‘em? I need a good laugh today.

Land’s End sent me a bathing suit. I know, I know, you’re thinking, “WHY would anyone send Aunt Becky ANYTHING besides a yacht?” and I’m wondering the same thing. In fact, I’m still WAITING for my yacht.

*taps foot impatiently*

Land’s End sent me a bathing suit so that I would post a picture of myself wearing it on my blog. You can see the error in their thinking, right?

I can.

This was probably NOT what they wanted:

Better yet, this:

Sorry, Land’s End.

I couldn’t resist.

Through the grandparental grapevine, I heard that my son had a girlfriend.

Ben, not Alex. Because if Alex had a girlfriend, he’d try and fart on her to woo her. Which, let’s face it, is how Daver wooed me.

When I asked Ben about his “girlfriend,” rather than chattering on for an hour and a half like he normally does, instead he turned red and ran out of the room laughing, yelling, “I DON’T HAVE A GIRLFRIEND.” Which is precisely how Daver wooed me.

Must run in the family.

Yesterday, he brought up his “girlfriend,” again. By again, I mean that he yelled I DON’T HAVE A GIRLFRIEND, then running around the house for a couple of minutes, before coming back to challenge me, “you can’t guess what my girlfriend’s name is.”

Daver warned him, “don’t challenge your mother unless you want her to know, Ben. If she wants to do something, she WILL.” My heart burst with pride.

Curious now, I asked Ben what “girlfriend” meant to him.

“Well,” he informed me, “it’s someone I like.”

“Does…” I asked hesitantly, worried that I hadn’t properly explained dating to him, “does she know you like her?”

“Well,” he looked at his hands. “No.”

I smiled and informed him that this was someone he had a crush on, not a “girlfriend.” He seemed taken aback.

I asked him if he was going to have her come over to play this summer, and again, he blushed furiously and ran around the house like a maniac. Running around like maniacs is what my children do best and why my single friends use visiting Aunt Becky as “free birth control.”

When he finally came back, he said he was too nervous to ask her to hang out this summer.

I knew I had to act. And now.

“Okay, Ben, when you’re all nervous, you think to yourself, EYE OF THE TIGER,” I pulled out the BIG guns.

He looked confused, so I hollered, “EYE OF THE TIGER.”

He looked even MORE confused. Daver queued up Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” as an A/V tool and I began my wicked Air Guitar Routine. Let me tell you, Pranksters, I would TOTALLY win at any air guitar contest EVER.

Well, the music helped. Soon all three of my children were running around the house, air-playing different instruments (we could form an amazing air rock band) yelling, “EYE OF THE TIGER.”

When the song was over, Ben came back and said, “It worked Mom. I feel like I can do ANYTHING now. I’m all EYE OF THE TIGER.”

Exactly, my child.

Exactly.

————-

Am over at Cafe Mom today. Got two columns for you.

(barely) Surviving Sleep Training

(barely) Surviving Extreme Parenting

Back when everyone I knew owned Nintendo (NES), my brother convinced my parents to buy me the OTHER system: the Sega Genesis. I only had two games for the thing: Sonic The Hedgehog and Echo (the asshole) Dolphin before I realized that video games were bullshit.

But hedgehogs weren’t. In fact, life might be damn near perfect if I could have a lovable scamp like Sonic for a kicky sidekick! One day, I shook my fist at the dusty, unused Sega Genesis, that someday I too, would have a hedgehog-sidekick of my very own.

My twenty-fifth birthday found me in a brand-new house, desperately failing to getting pregnant with a second baby, working forty hours a week, with a menagerie of animals already in my care.

The Daver: “What do you want for your birthday?”

Me: “A pony.”

The Daver: “Our yard is too small for a pony. What ELSE do you want for your birthday?”

Me: “A turbo jet.”

The Daver: “Okay, someday, I’ll buy you a jet.”

Me: “You have to name my jet, “Fluffy.”

The Daver: “Okay. So what do you want for your birthday THIS YEAR?”

Me: “A hedgehog.”

Daver: “You’re not serious, are you?”

Me: (glares)

The Daver: “You don’t want a hedgehog, Becky.”

Me: (glares)

The Daver: “So you DO want a hedgehog. Why?”

Me: “I need a hedgehog sidekick like Sonic.”

The Daver: “….”

Me: “He can ride everywhere on my shoulders and we can solve crimes together while collecting those golden rings.”

The Daver: “What do you know about hedgehogs?”

(he was always asking questions like this)

Me: “Uh. Well, they like gold rings and they’re blue and they fight crimes.”

The Daver: “…”

Me (pulling something out of my ass): “Also, they’re indigenous to hot, aired climates and enjoy carrots.”

The Daver: “This seems like a bad idea, Becky.”

Me: “Nah, it’ll be great! Me and my crime-fighting hedgehog will have many adventures.”

Once he was safely out of sight, I googled “hedgehogs,” and found a breeder within ten miles of my house. I called to see if she had any crime-fighting hedgehogs for sale, and when she didn’t, I was crestfallen. She put me on a crime-fighting hedgehog waiting list.

A couple of weeks later, she called and informed Daver that she had a hedgehog for me. Thrilled, we drove to the breeder and I picked up my new crime-fighting sidekick, a cage, and some hedgehog food.

My albino hedgehog looked remarkably like a baked potato and absolutely nothing like Sonic.

I named him Tate, short for “potato.”

“Oh well,” I sighed, “maybe hedgehogs aren’t blue.”

Daver grimly glared, his eyes on the road.

After we got Tate’s cage set up, I read the handouts the breeder had given me.

“It says here that I need to ‘socialize’ him so he gets used to people,” I read aloud. Okay, I could do that. Animals loved me.

When I grabbed Tate out of his cage, he became a hissing ball of pokiness. Well, sure, he wasn’t USED to me yet. No wonder he was scared. After a couple of minutes in my hand, he relaxed a bit and I was able to see how freaking cute he was.

He started licking my hand.

“Awwwww,” I said, “Lookit how much he loves me! He’s giving me hedgie-kisses!” As he continued to lick my hand, I imagined the bank-robbers we’d apprehend, the jewel thieves we’d bring to justice, and all of those gold rings we’d collect along the way.

Tate interrupted my vision of the two of us riding a horse, hotly in pursuit of Bad Guys when he chomped down onto my finger. It felt like a thousand tiny nettles of pain so I yelped. I tried to remove his tiny mouth from my finger, which was now oozing blood, but he held on, determined. I swung my hand back and forth trying to get him to let go of my damn finger. He dug in harder.

Finally, I pried his horrible mouth off my finger and ran to the bathroom to wash the wound, tears flowing. That motherfucker! How DARE he?

For months, I carried him around in his specially-designed “hedgehog pouch,” as the handouts suggested, so he could “get used to me.”

He never did.

My zombie hedgehog was bullshit.

Luckily, I found a new hedgehog.

This hedgie kinda liked me.

(Mostly because I gave him candy.)

Tate was NOTHING like Sonic. When he died a couple of weeks before Amelia was born, no one was too sad. Our scarred fingers were a painful reminder that sometimes things just don’t work out.

I learned a valuable lesson from Tate: not all hedgehogs are crime-fighting sidekicks.

Which is why I’ve decided that I need a feisty camel sidekick named Mr. Spits instead.

In the 7 years since I began Mushroom Printing, I’ve watched blogging evolve.

As blogging became well-known, there have been plenty of good changes; online friendships and online communities were formed among people who’d had little experience with The Internet, the unique opportunity for self-publishing has launched careers and the popularity of microblogs like The Twitter and The Tumblr soared.

There are, of course, plenty of downsides, too. Companies began to take note of these “blogs” and started their “The Word Of Mom” advertising campaigns, sending out freebies (rather than the actual dollars they’d pay a marketing firm) to bloggers in exchange for a review. Personal blogs began to feel a bit less, well, personal. The blogging community became a saturated market and it was hard for new bloggers to get their names out there.

What hasn’t changed is that I still love blogging. If I had an “I (HEART) BLOGGING*” shirt, I’d wear it, because that’s how much I love being a blogger. I also (HEART) all the “I (HEART) XXX” shirts. Writing here on Mommy Wants Vodka, being Your Aunt Becky, has been a constant in my life. I’ve pecked out over a thousand posts since I began my illustrious blogging “career.” Some good, some great, and a hell of a lot more mediocre.

In that time, I’ve pulled down exactly two posts. The first post was a Go Ask Aunt Becky question about a child recently diagnosed with autism. The post I’d written; the way I’d written it; it fueled a comment war that was more scary and hurtful than helpful to the person who had reached out for help. That was unfair to her.

Astute Pranksters may note that I pulled down the post I’d written yesterday. Not because it was bullshit, or because I hated it, or because I didn’t feel as though I could share it. I’d written my experiences as they happened to me while I paid tribute my cousin. I wanted to explain that those small acts of kindness can stick with you forever.

In the process of giving the back story; the reasons those kindnesses resonated so much, I upset a family member. The damage is probably irrevocable.

When I write, I write with an audience in mind, knowing anyone can read my words. For every post I do write, there are ten others that remain unwritten. I keep my written words and experiences as honest and true as I am able without hurting others. Sometimes, I gloss over bits especially when they make someone else look bad, sometimes I don’t.

Well before I pulled this post, I’d started writing for my friend’s site, which led me to think of all of the words I’ve never written. All of the words I’d wanted to string together but for one reason or another, didn’t. Sometimes, those words remained unwritten because they cut too close to home; because sometimes words, feelings, pain, reactions cannot be explained away by logic. The kind of criticism it would open up would pour salt into an already-festering wound. Others remained unwritten because I didn’t want to cause drama or pain.

Being told that my about my feelings; my experiences, written as I’d felt them as a child, were mostly fiction, I pulled the post; ashamed. I felt cowardly. I feel cowardly. Admitting all of those words; those feelings, to you took a lot for me. Living in denial as I did for many years, well, that is much harder.

I can’t give you a *fistpump* and tell you “I did the right thing” by pulling the post, nor can I say that “I did the wrong thing” by writing it.

There are so many nebulous areas in life, the kind that don’t have clear answers, no villain or victim; and all of my unwritten words, I realized, fall into that realm. Sometimes things just are.

I’m so sorry that my relationship, one I’ve desperately wanted for as long as I can remember, will (likely) forever be altered by those 700 carefully chosen words. They weren’t written in anger, never intended to hurt or accuse. I string words together as I remember them. As I experienced them.

And if that’s going too far, well, so fucking be it.

*Hm, I’d prefer an “I (HEART) PRANKSTERS” shirt, now that I think of it.