So I need some help, o! fellow Internet Guru’s, and the only solution is more cowbell.

Wait, that isn’t right. What I NEED is not cowbell, although Lord knows it wouldn’t hurt. What I need to know is how many readers I have.

My question for you is this: is there anyway to know how many readers I really have out there? It seems a simple request, but in the age of feed reader programs (like my beloved Google Reader, whom I might actually want to make babies with), it’s nearly impossible to quantify (kind of like my Level of Awesome. It’s Super Great, right now).

If you’re reading this in a reader, could you click over so my stat counter can see you? I won’t beg you to comment or anything, but I’m just trying to see if my stats are right.

I have a stat program, of course I do, who doesn’t? Otherwise I’d never hear of such search terms as “cameltoe competition” (Hi, I’m reigning champion to all of you who found me that way) or “my mom just wants to hold the baby but not do any cleaning or anything” (mine too! Mainly because she’s not my maid). I mean, how is that not FUNNY AS HELL and worth the time I take to check this out?

But I have a free stat counter, and I’m told by The Daver that there are such programs that you pay for out there. Since I am the Resident Cheap Ass, I don’t like to pay for things that I don’t have to. Anyone out there who does pay for one and can recommend it?

If you don’t have an answer to either of my pathetic and mewling questions, tell me this: do you have any big Labor Day plans with which you can make me feel like a lame-wad for sitting at home on my butt?

And hey, will you send some good vibes to my Southerly friends who I have just learned are now evacuating for Gustav? Of course, it’s the 3rd anniversary of That Bitch Katrina.

So, I got tagged by two of my good buddies to do a meme I’ve done a billion times before. What’s scariest is that I can STILL come up with weird things about me to go on and on and on about. Color me happily self-indulgent.

CLC and Holli, this one’s for you.

The Rules: Mention six quirky, yet boring, unspectacular details about yourself (wait, aren’t they all?).

1). I am deathly terrified of eyeballs. When I was in nursing school, we did a whole unit on Eye Disorders and The Fucked Up Things That Can Happen To Them, complete with pictures to illustrate the disorder. While I could handle sticking my hand into a gaping, festering surgical hole on a patient’s abdomen, I couldn’t handle looking at the Gross Eye Problems (yes, that’s a technical term).

2) I have a female relative, a great-great-great…ad nauseum grandmother on my mother’s side. Unfascinating to say the least.

Until she was stoned to death during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.

Her name, according to familial sources was also Rebecca.

3) I wanted a baby sister when I was about 3, and since my mother had already been “fixed” (apparently after seeing my ugly newborn face), I resorted to the next best thing.

My retarded cat named Biscuit.

I used to dress the cat and her 4 brain cells in my old baby clothes and stuff her into a doll’s carriage. She is the reason for the cross-hatching of scars on my torso. I was, apparently, also in possession of a mere 4 brain cells.

4) I am currently obsessed with food and despite being asked every 2.5 minutes if I’d had any during my last two pregnancies, this is the first time I’ve had major cravings. I have a major addiction to Flavor Ice, along with anything tomato based (although NEVER raw tomatoes. *shudder, shudder*).

It’s actually more obnoxious than you’d think.

5) I may have to raffle off chances to Name Aunt Becky’s Sausage when the time comes. I broke down and bought a baby names book because we’re so desperate, which boasts having something like 5,000 names. Sadly, they don’t distinguish between names that SUCK and names that don’t.

Any good names you can think of? The stipulations are as follows:

Names cannot be Benjamin, Alexander, Joseph or Maxwell. Also, not David or Rebecca.

Names cannot begin with an H and preferably not an A, B, R or D.

The big anatomy scan is scheduled for September 17, so I’ll have more stipulations (God, I am one demanding BITCH) then. Mainly, “must be boy or girl name.”

6) When I was a kid, I’d buy or be gifted boxes of crayons. For some reason, I loved looking at them best in their neat little rows, lined up perfectly and unsullied by my inexpert coloring. I’d always save them for the Perfect Coloring Sheet, especially my favorite colors (namely: pink.).

Once they were used, I’d be less enchanted by their imperfect nubs and want to get a fresh new box. Never did I use the nubs to color. Needless to say, I was not an artistic sort of child.

————–

I’m supposed to tag some of you to do this meme, but I never do. Instead, I ask that you tell me one interesting factoid about YOU. Or it can be something UNinteresting. Doesn’t matter to me. And you, YES YOU, you lurker out there, hiding in the shadow of google reader. C’mon out and play!

First off, let me say a big thank you to anyone who thought enough of me to email me or send me some good vibrations. The Internet is a strange and wonderful place, and I am honestly tickled pink that you guys would care enough to think of me. I’d elaborate further and beg for support since I was born lacking a filter (it’s genetic, I’m assured), but it’s not my issue and it’s not for me to discuss.

*air smootches to you all*

————

It may come as a shock to absolutely no one that my parents were hippies. Well, considering how I turned out, it may come as a shock to everyone, but I digress. I was born into a family who grew their own veggies, churned their own butter (yes, seriously), made their own maple syrup and shopped at real health food stores before shopping at Whole Foods became trendy.

We were organic before it was hip and trendy.

I cut my teeth on Free to Be You And Me and Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and could probably sing any number of anti-war songs to you, songs you’ve probably never heard of, even after years of Britney Spears and bubble gum pop have melted my brain.

Of course, I am nothing like this. My favorite food is McDonald’s (I am also apparently trashy), I genuinely like music that has no deeper meaning than the same repetitive beats, and am over-archingly as shallow as pond scum (or is pond scum deep?). The more processed, pasteurized food-like substitutes, the better.

Now, 5 years ago, Ben was embroiled in many times weekly therapy for his autistic issues (hate of the term “problem”) and I was meeting fairly often with the Early Intervention coordinators. During one of those meetings it was brought up that Ben should be immediately enrolled in preschool. For Special Needs kids. It was through the state, and I considered it for awhile.

Daver and I came to the conclusion that we were going to look into preschools, but probably something more private than that. We ended up at a Montessori school in a nearby town built on several acres, and after we were accepted he enrolled at age three.

Turned out to be one of the smartest decisions we’ve ever made (save for the deep fryer we never bought. That was smarter. Can you imagine the mess?) and Ben thrived. Some of the issues we had with him were subdued to the point that it was barely perceptible to those not in the know about his diagnosis, and others were eliminated altogether.

(For anyone who didn’t know, I am now telling you the issues with food and more explicitly his peanut butter sandwich are directly related to his autism. NOT just being an asshole picky kid (that would have been me). So, sucking it up and dealing with it is not the same as taking a binkie away from a 4 year old.)

Ben stayed at that school for years, and until he reached the elementary years, we were thrilled by it. Suddenly, last year however, when we had to begin to pack his own lunch, it became glaringly apparent just how unlike the rest of the school our family was. We were now bubble gum pop versus the folk singers. Turns out my years of being raised as a hippie didn’t do much except for show me how little of my upbringing I’d retained.

Without so much as a note home to parents, it was expected that we were to psychically know what was Forbidden To Pack and what was not. I’d never have packed a Twinkie or a Ding Dong, a Kool Aid or a bag of Fritos, but THAT WASN’T ENOUGH. I mistakenly bought him some Milano cookies for his first day as a big old first grader, and he came home to inform me that he was told that he couldn’t eat them. By his teacher. In front of the class.

Which was MY fault, not Ben’s, yet he was literally cowering from the cookies (he has a high regard for authority, something his mother could stand to learn from). But the other parents were as crunchy granola people as my parent’s had been, so the issues were squarely my own to deal with. We just didn’t fit in there, not anymore.

Over and over, these situations happened, I’d pack something dumb, he’d pay for it. I’d try to contact the school only to be ignored. There is, of course, more to the story than I’m telling you, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll choose to be, well, briefer than normal.

The Nut Ban! was just the icing on the cake for us. It was just over. Time to move on.

Ben started his first day of public school today, complete with hot lunch program and peanut free TABLES at school, and while I’m thrilled that this will be such a good opportunity for him, I’m equally nervous. I hope we made the right decision.

(They totally had Capri-Sun on the hot lunch menu. I’m pumped.)

Some days the only appropriate response to the events of the day can be summed up by only one word. That word?

FUCK.

I’ll be sporadically around, but I just don’t have much good to say right now. Everyone is alive (as far as I know) and things will work out.

How do you get through something that seems insurmountable? Can you send me some good vibes, please?

Wow, now holy crap! I even got The Daver to comment on my last post, which almost certainly means that the sign of Armageddon is nigh. A big thank you to everyone who took the time to comment on the post, because if I hadn’t wanted YOUR opinion, I wouldn’t have asked.

See, Aunt Becky cares what YOU think!

And hearing all of your different viewpoints made me feel the slightest bit better because I’ve been a bit mixed up since I learned of it.

Of course I am not all We Should Kill Kids With Allergies or anything, because even if they’re annoying kids (aren’t they all?) I still like ’em around, but this situation is both more than a minor irritation and absolutely indicative of something far greater wrong with Ben’s private school.

I have the greatest of empathy for children with severe allergies, trust me, I do, because I know just how severe nut allergies CAN be and I know how hard it is to shop healthfully for a child with Food Issues.

The issue has far less to do with this child and far more to do with the manner it has been handled by the school. There is no lunch prepared by the school for my son’s classroom, which means that we as parents are expected to pack it each and every day. No big deal. But if I am expected to pack him a lunch for school WITHOUT any sorts of nuts at all, no nut oils, no nut ingredients, (Nut Ban!) I would really appreciate an itemized list of things that are not allowed.

Because now, it is effectively up to the parents to research, pour over, and create foods that do not have any nuts in them whatsoever.

THAT is what I’m annoyed by.

Dave finally spoke with the school this morning and found out the incident that caused this Nut Ban! was when an infant sibling (not a student) was kissed by his older brother (a student) and went into anaphylaxis. The baby is fine, after a brief stint in the hospital, but this is what triggered the ban.

(apparently, there are also other kids with less severe reactions to peanuts but still allergic also at Ben’s school)

And of COURSE I don’t want dead siblings, but when Daver astutely mentioned that there should be some hand washing protocol (honestly as a nurse, there should be one anyway), the administrator had nothing to say about that. No real ideas about that being important. Also, no list of banned items for us. Again, the onus is on the parents to research and prepare.

So in my opinion, it’s time for Vodka (for me) and Public Schools (for him), where I can be ignored for free.

Now look! A blue car!

Say that you just got word that your son’s school is going Nut Free (snicker, snicker) for the year because a new enrollee has nut allergies.

And your own son, with many of his sensory issues still looming large, will only eat peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, perhaps the most nutritious part of lunch for him.

And you’ve tried all sorts of other alternatives to peanut butter sandwiches last year just to try and get the kid to open up his freaking mind a little–all to no avail. He won’t eat ’em.

And this school has strict limitations for what OTHER kinds of food can be brought in (no chocolate, no chips, no colored juices, etc), but you don’t know what they are until your child comes home and tells you. AFTER you’ve packed this *forbidden* item in his lunch.

(and no, I never packed him a Mountain Dew or bag of Cheetos or anything. It was a granola bar with teeny chocolate chips in it. Like squint and you’ll miss ’em sized)

And you’ve put in 2 calls to the school to make damn certain you get a list of SPECIFICALLY which foods are *forbidden* but no one has called you back.

*OH* And the kid with the allergy is likely not even on the side of campus where your child is, let alone in the same classroom.

How would you feel about this? I want your honest opinions. Go anonymous if you have to.

A couple of weeks ago, Daver and I ran into my neighbor across the street, one who had recently had her first baby. Being the lovable sap that I am, I immediately made a beeline for her in a desperate attempt to hold the squishy! baby! (I had to fight Dave off of him, first. Daver loves babies) When I asked her how she was, she began to weep.

She told me precisely how I felt after Ben was born: she was actually quite terrible. Her baby wouldn’t stop crying, well, ever, and she just didn’t know what she was doing wrong. Where were these maternal feelings she’d heard about? Why did she feel like she was doing it all wrong?

I told her that I was not in the habit of telling people horror stories before they had children/bought a house/ate at Jack in the Box, because I always thought it sounded kind of mean. She then told me that she’d WISHED that someone had told her how hard babies are.

In this vein, I am going to start making my own lists of things I wish someone had told me. Before I’d had kids or been knocked up.

Things Aunt Becky Wishes She’d Known Before Getting Pregnant:

1) After your first pregnancy, you will look about 6 months pregnant as the positive pee stick is drying.

2) Your nipples will now reach epic proportions of pancakes. And not the whimsical silver dollar ones.

3) Oh, and they’ll turn from a delicate pinkish hue to a much darker brownish/black.

4) Okay, and then they’ll turn into what Ashley calls “Ground Beef Nipples” if/when you start nursing.

5) You’re certifiable, but you have no idea of this. Instead you think you’re the only sane one left on the planet. If this isn’t your first pregnancy, you will be forced to watch yourself go off the wheels on the crazy train and be powerless to stop it.

6) If this is your first pregnancy, you will assume that this pregnancy is the most important pregnancy since Mary birthed Jesus.

7) You will eat a whole lot of food to try and make yourself less queasy. While it doesn’t work, not really, it will cause a couple of extra pounds to be added inexplicably to your frame. Which will annoy you because YOU DIDN’T EVEN ENJOY PUTTING THEM ON.

8) Worrying will become part of your daily routine. And will annoy the hell out of the rest of the world.

9) What To Expect While You’re Expecting was written by The Devil. Ignore this book as it will just make you feel badly about yourself.

10) Taking a decent dump may feel like cause for a press release. Don’t do it, for God’s sake, spare people the thought of you hunched over the crapper trying to push the world’s saddest poo out.

Oops. Sorry*.

(*I’m not sorry at all)

11) Suddenly anyone and everyone will waltz through your dreams and have wild passionate sex with you. Even people you find disgusting and/or hate. (Randy Jackson, anyone?)

12) While I’ve heard of some people having wild sex FOR REAL while pregnant, I can’t say I’ve been part of it. Especially once I’ve reached whale-like proportions and it feels like what it is: A Mercy Fuck.

13) Someone, somewhere will buy you the ugliest clothes you’ve ever seen for your unborn child. And you will have to sit there while grinning like an asshole and tell them that you looooovvvveee the little outfit with the stupid looking bows on it.
For your 7 year old son.

14) Honest to God strangers will not only feel the need to rub your belly without so much as a handshake hello, but will then ask you if you plan on breast feeding or not. This be dangerous waters, matey.

15) IF AT ALL POSSIBLE, tell no one what you plan on feeding your child. Or make a really tasteless for joke like, “We were thinking Jack Daniels, but do you think that Crown Royal is better?” Otherwise, you’re going to get a lecture. If you’re tasteless, people will just run away from you.

16) Most of the baby crap out there that they try to sell you is just that: crap. And newborns look stupid dressed in anything other than onsies. Trust me when I say that I speak from experience here.

17) You will hardly ever spend time in your perfectly coordinated nursery. Kids don’t play in their bedroom until they’re about 4 or 5, so while I would never suggest NOT doing up a nursery, I wouldn’t go ass-wild on it either.

18) YOU WILL KNOW WHEN YOU ARE IN LABOR. NOTHING ELSE FEELS LIKE LABOR, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU WANT IT TO.

19) Your ass will inexplicably become hugemongeous and now you will finally have Junk-in-da-trunk. Which is either awesome or horrifying.

20) No one but you* can figure out what is actually on the ultrasound pictures. Cute, perhaps. Frightening, also perhaps.

(*this is debatable. I cannot for the life of me figure out where the head is on Baby Link’s most current US from 8 weeks ago. And I’ve been trained to read these things.)

21) Feeling the baby kick for the first time is perhaps the finest part of pregnancy. It only becomes painful when their ickle feeties get to be the size of golf balls. Mean, busy golf balls. And then they sometimes bruise your liver. For serious.

22) Maternity clothes will fit you differently during different parts of your pregnancy. What might look cute with your wee beer-belly during the first trimester will look downright dumb and ill fitting hours before you give birth.

23) Steer clear of anyone who claims any of the following:

* I was back in my size 4’s when I left the hospital!
* I’ve never felt better than when I was pregnant!
* Breastfeeding really helped me take those 5 pesky pounds off!
* Having a baby is soooooo easy!

I mean, even if they’re not lying through their grubby teeth to you, they’re going to make you feel bad. And TRUST ME when I tell you that you will have plenty of things to feel bad/inadequate about.

24) Pregnancy is an excellent cure for modesty. I cannot recall a time when I didn’t just whip down my pants in front of the doctor whether it was my OB or not. Perhaps I am also a nudist.

25) Enjoy it as best you can. Sure, you feel ugly as shit, you’re gangly and have reached hippo proportions, you can hardly make it an hour without going to the bathroom and peeing out a tablespoon of liquid, you have heartburn so badly you could sear paint from the walls, and you’re starving but queasy. It’s all true. BUT, unless you’re a Dugger or someone equally creepy, it only happens a handful of times.

Besides, it’s one of the few times you can actually evoke, the “But I’m pregggnnnnant! excuse on your partner.”

And that, my friends, NEVER gets old.

Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky.

‘Fran Lebowitz

Happy Birthday to the child who made me a mother for the first time, the child who reminds me simultaneously who was in charge and what REALLY matters, the child who constantly leaves me trying to be a better person for him.

My first son, Benjamin Maxwell.

He may not always like me, hell, I may not always like him, but in the end, he knows which side his bread is buttered on.

Happy Birthday, Small Fry.

Now, I’m constantly doing boneheaded stuff. If you need further proof, go back into the archives and just read. I’m a complete idiot.

But, I could always count on being a complete idiot that REMEMBERED things. Lately, it appears, even that ability is being slowly taken away from me.

You see, sweet Internet, tomorrow my eldest son, my darling firstborn turns 7.

7 years old. For those of you who have known him since he was a bun in my chubby oven, I’ll give you a moment to digest that ickle bit of information.

…

…

…

Done?

Yeah, so 7. Anyway, the date didn’t elude me in the slightest. It’s marked on my calendar in large ink, complete with exclamation mark and “Dave off work” underneath it. August 20th is a date that my brain and my poor beaten up lady bits will never forget.

Except for when it comes to ACTION.

We’d planned to take him out to lunch at a restaurant of his choosing (always a hugemongeous bonus for a kid saddled with a mother who on her non-pregnant days, still has cravings) and do something else with him. Kids Museum, bowling, something. Doesn’t matter.

Yet this morning, when I waddled to the bathroom for the eleventhy-fifth time, it dawned on me that I had no cake mix with which to make him a cake. And in Ben’s eyes, it’s no party until there’s a cake involved.

I promptly forgot about this when I woke up for real and made plans to go to the pet store located conveniently next to Target (read: Heaven on Earth) and was left with only a nagging “I am forgetting something I needed to go to Target for” feeling in my guts.

Butter, I decided. I needed butter.

(as an aside, I’ve gone through more butter during the past 15 weeks than I have in potentially the last 10 years).

I pulled into the parking lot and looked at the huge toy store also conveniently located right there and something kept tapping me on the shoulder. Did I need to buy a gift for a birthday party? Was Alex in dire need of….more balls? Did I finally have to break down and buy something for the new baby?

SHIT! I thought to myself. No, what I needed more than anything else was a gift for my eldest son. For him to open on his birthday. Which is tomorrow. And I also need a card and cake. For tomorrow. On his birthday.

(Before you think too ill of me here, let me tell you something. When it’s all said and done here, we will have celebrated the birth of my son something like 6 times. You think I’m kidding? Here:

1) Last Week When Out Of Town Family Happened To Be IN Town
2) Tomorrow, August 20, His Real Birthday
3) Sometime After My (asshole) Brother Who Didn’t Take Me To Hawaii Where He Is Right Now, The Jerk, Gets Home
4) His Friends Party Sometime In September

and probably

5) With His Father
6) With My In-Laws

So, while this is an obvious OOPS! on my own part, it’s certainly not the end of the world.)

I trundled off to the toy shop where I agonized about what to purchase him. I shit you not when I tell you that his closet is stocked full of toys and games that he never plays with. (I need to donate these toys to charity)

I finally settled on something that requires being built and then uses a remote control to do…something. This is typically Daver’s realm, so I hope I chose well.

*sighs*

Where the hell have both the time and my brain cells gone?

————

In order to make my ego feel slightly less stupid, oblige me please, Internet. What’s the dumbest thing you’ve done lately?

Last summer, after many a sleepless night had left me more brain dead than I’d been before (presumably perhaps), it came to my attention that my eldest son would be entering into first grade. After my initial reaction of “Holy SHIT I’m OLD,” I was thrilled to remember that actual number grades = actual school supplies and rightness was once again restored to my galaxy.

There’s something in me, my inner nerd perhaps, that adores that feeling in the fall, the feeling of Starting Over again in school. A whole new year of teachers, mischief, and brand new pens to look forward to. Yes, I did, in fact earn my title of Super Becky Overachiever, thank you for asking.

Armed with a crabby screaming baby and a school supply list, I first hit up Mecca (read: Target). And it was only there, in the fluorescently lit aisles, that I began to actually read what was on The List.

The words read properly, but the combinations didn’t make sense to me. And upon scouring the notebooks for “Plastic covered, yellow, three subject, wide ruled, without perforations, that ALSO makes coffee for poor, poor teacher” I was befuddled.

I could get MOST of the combination, but not all.

The erasers, Pink Pearl, no less, I found immediately, but the oil pastels? I had no idea what oil pastels even were. Pencils I found, art smock I did not.

After assuming I’d try one of the bigger office supply stores, I paid for about a quarter of the needed supplies and shuffled off to Office Depot. Up and down those aisles, I paced frantically, the baby nursing awkwardly as I searched in vain for “plastic colored folder, red, yellow and blue, no three punch holes, three pockets inside.”

The words, they made sense, but the combination was all shades of wrong. Kind of like trying to read A Clockwork Orange.

I was able to procure another portion of The List before I had to make my exit and hit up yet another store.

In the end, I searched The Internet, another Target store, The Rolls Royce of Office Supply Stores, and sent both The Daver and my mother to see if I had missed something. I hadn’t. I even asked my mother-in-law who is ALSO a first grade teacher, and she was at a loss.

I was able to get most of The List in about a month’s time, but an interesting shift occurred: no longer was I enchanted by the stacks of blank notebooks and packs of pens lined up perfectly in a row like sardines. Mention “School Supplies” and I’d become irate and angry, convinced I’d failed at my first task at parenting a school aged child.

Last week sometime, I got in the mail the very same list of school supplies, and this time I just laughed. Then I promptly lost it.

Thanks to a semi-photographic memory and the fact that Ben was able to recall what he’d used and needed last year, we shabbily reconstructed The List. I’m sure it’s only half right and you know what? That’s half more right than I was planning to send.

I was planning to send a package of dry soba noodles and a box of Hello Kitty flan.