I got an IM from my friend Kat yesterday. That, in and of itself isn’t particularly noteworthy – I get IM’s from such good, clean chaps and lasses as “bigdick764” and “babiecherie73” who are kind enough to direct me to their websites where I can “see more pictures.”

Kat, however, isn’t a spammer. Or, at least I don’t think she is. I mean, I went to Seattle or one of those other states that aren’t Chicago to visit her and her daughter and she didn’t LOOK like a spammer. But I guess she could’ve Sharpied my back while with a website name or something – I didn’t look.

Anyway.

Yesterday, her IM said something to the effect of, “OMG I MISSES OF YOU.” Which sounds like improper English, but compared to the shit I normally IM, it’s practically the Queen’s English. I responded in turn, I too, missed of her.

“Can you believe it?” She screeched through my computer.

“What?” I asked, clearly distracted by dancing kitty videos and the proper spelling of “Sharpie.”

“I’m thirty and I’m working as a photographer!” She announced.

Holy.

Shit.

“Can you believe it? We MADE it!” She continued.

I sat there, stunned.

I hadn’t thought about how far we’d come – I was too busy keeping up with the day-to-day life and dramaz of Your Aunt Becky.

I met Kat when our babies – who look shockingly like sisters – were very small. Out of the blue, she IM’d me to tell me that she’d caught a grammatical error on my recentest blog post. While I’m normally annoyed by that – I mean, you’ve only caught ONE error? – Kat was fairly charming.

We became fast friends during a time in my life that I’d never quite felt so alone; so worthless, so miserable. I’d created this life for myself – 3 kids, 2 dogs, a house, a husband, and I’d never been more alone. I’d always known I would “do something” after I popped out the kids, but the unexpected crush of PTSD following Mimi’s birth made seeing the world as it was almost impossible.

Birthing a sick baby is one of the most isolating experiences I’ve been through – and Kat understood it. Her Avi is mere days apart from my Mimi, and while Avi was not born ill, Kat understood why it was hard for me to even walk outside some days. Days like that, she prayed for me. I’ve never understood people who were offended by that sort of thing – when someone prays for me, I find it an unexpected kindness.

She and I were both miserably trying to eke out a life for ourselves – she as a photog and me as a writer. I was consumed with writing a book – it was the only way I could see lending some legitimacy to my life; something I desperately craved – while she worked tirelessly overnights and on weekends to beef up her portfolio.

The months blew by us, both working desperately to “make it” and prove our worth to the outside world. Life happened around us. The publishing market crashed. Kat got laid off from her day job. We both scuttled around to reform our plans.

While my daughter grew and thrived, kicking her diagnosis in the ass, as she met and surpassed her every milestone, Kat’s husband, the father of her child, who was 27 years old, had a stroke while they slept. As doctors searched high and low to try and understand what had happened and why, Kat spent her days and nights alongside her husband, guiding him through rehab and therapy. She slept at the hospital on one of those uncomfortable chairs with their daughter, Amelia’s clone, Avi.

The diagnosis was a long time coming – Alpha-One Antitrypsin Deficiency – and when it did, it wasn’t good. It’s a rare genetic condition that has no cure – only management of the symptoms.

As she reeled with this news, her husband had an incurable genetic condition, the bad news kept coming – her daughter, my Mimi’s clone, she had Alpha-One Antitrypsin Deficiency as well.

It was my turn to pray. And I haven’t stopped. Kat saw me through some of the worst times of my life, and now, I’ve done the same for her.

And somehow, through all the bullshit, all of the drama, all of the other shit, Kat and I have emerged on the other side. We’re not the same people we once were, but who is?

Kat’s a full-time photog now. And I’m, well, I’m a writer. It seemed only appropriate that I learned yesterday that the book I contributed an essay to is now available on pre-order. It’s not my book, but it’s a book. And my words are in it. More importantly than any vain book ideas, I founded an (almost) non-profit organization for other people to tell their stories. I’ve used my nursing degree to create resources to help people learn about the things they’ve been through.

We’ve both come so far.

I can barely wait to see where we’ll go next.

Last night, I dragged The Daver and The Guy on my Couch outside to play with the two smaller kids – the big one, Ben, was off doing his chores. While Daver hid out in the tree-house with Amelia, Alex and The Guy on my Couch began to play a rousing game Alex called “Goomba,” which was, to the best of my knowledge, Dodge Ball with a Mario theme.

I sat nearby, weeding my rose garden, cursing myself for spraying anti-fungal shit on it too soon in the season, listening to them play.

After a half an hour, my eldest, Ben, burst out of the back door of the house like he was being chased by a particularly vicious washcloth.

“Oh. Em. Gee.” he sputtered, punctuation clearly evident in his speech, “THERE you are.”

I laughed at his vehemence, “Where’d you think we were?”

“I. DON’T. KNOW.” He staccato-ed out.

“Did you think we’d been abducted by alien ghosts or something?” I asked playfully.

“Mom,” he looked at me, hand on his hip, dead serious. “I’m SO over ghosts.”

I giggled.

He went over and got on the swing-set as Daver took Amelia up to bed. (Big) Ben and Alex continued to play their bizarre game, giving each other 1-Up’s whenever they’d get hit with the ball. Dave soon joined me on the patio, my roses long weeded.

“I can’t believe you’re going to spoil my kids,” Ben semi-hollered from the swings.

Without missing a beat, I replied, “It’s called payback, my son.”

(He’s referring to a conversation I had with him threeish years ago wherein I told him how excited I was to spoil his kids when he got older. I listed out, in no particular order, all of the various ways I’d planned on spoiling his kids rotten. He finds it hilarious.)

(I’ve learned, for those of you playing along at home, that certain kids on the autistic spectrum will vividly remember conversations and events that occurred many years ago and bring them up in conversations as though they happened yesterday. I only wish he were so dedicated to remembering to wash his hands after cleaning up the cat boxes)

He hollered happily, “Oh MOM! You can’t give my kids candy all the time!”

“We won’t,” Daver teased. “We’ll do pizza too. Lots of pizza.”

“Oh DAD,” Ben giggled before he yelled, “YOU CAN’T DO THAT.”

“Uncle Ben will buy them tons of video games, too,” The Guy on my Couch chimed in. “Especially the kinds you don’t want them to play.”

“BIG BEN,” my son hollered, laughing so hard he nearly toppled off the swing, “NO! YOU CAN’T DO THAT.”

“Before you drop your kids off, I’ll buy them each a five pound bag of sugar and dump a can of Mountain Dew in it,” I contained. “I’ll give ’em that to drink before you pick them up!”

“What if my wife doesn’t like that?” Ben giggled, still swinging.

“I will be the one choosing your wife for you, Ben,” I said, as sternly as I could. Dave and Big Ben burst out laughing, “THAT’S gonna go over well,” Daver said.

“Sorry I can’t date you,” Big Ben chimed in, “My Mom says your name is stupid – and I can’t date girls with stupid names.”

The laughter woke up the birds trying to sleep in the big pine tree in my backyard.

“Okay,” my son said, still laughing, “What if my wife doesn’t want kids?”

“That’s okay,” I reassured him. “You can BUY kids off eBay. Or the gypsies.”

He laughed and laughed and laughed.

“When I grow up, I’m going to work at Band Back Together dot Com with you guys. And then I’ll tell the REAL story,” my son countered.

“We got editors for that sorta thing, Boy,” The Guy On My Couch (Big Ben) bantered.

Back and forth we lobbed it until it grew dark and the wind began howling, indicating that it was, at long last, bedtime for kids.

“Alex,” my son said conspiratorially to his brother as they walked into the house together, “be careful. Mom might make you buy kids.”

“I want a Yoshi – not babies,” Alex replied.

Touche, my (second) son.

Touche.

In an odd twist, I am taking the day off. You’d think, “Aunt Becky, didn’t you just have two days off?” And the answer would be, “Bwahahahahahahahaha! I got three crotch parasites who, unlike OUR parents before us who’s answer to ‘I’m booooored,” was to boot us outside and lock the door, I can’t stand the way they stare at me through the windows until I let them back in. So I played with them instead.”

That meant that I was introduced to those stupid Crayola colored bubbles which are like kid crack and yet, such a bad, bad idea. Just trust me on this one. Colored bubbles = no bueno.

Today, I’m going to go and venture out into the real world, where people don’t speak in hashtags and LOL Speak. Which, also = no bueno.

So I leave you with this, a copy of my newest edition of MS word:

It writes letterz n shit, yo.

Also? The Band Back Together Auction is live. And here is a link to read the site. It’s pretty rad.

Many, many moons ago, before I was Your Aunt Becky, I was Nurse Becky. However, Nurse Becky had a problem – namely, she didn’t want to be Nurse Becky.

(okay, that’s me being done talking about myself in the third person)

No, I’d given up my medical school dreams for a young lad I’d indelicately booted out of my crotchal regions at the tender age of 21. Me, not him. That would be pretty weird – pushing a 21-year old outta my vagina. Mental picture of a full-grown frat boy (including crappy shamrock tattoo from one drunken night in Cancun) climbing out of my vagina is full of the awesome, though.

The biggest problem I had was that I had no desire whatsoever to actually BE a nurse. Which came to light day one of nursing school. I held on, worked my ass off, and graduated at the top of my class, hoping something – anything – would change my mind.

Of course, it didn’t. The same way I’d make a terrible teacher because, hello, it’s not as though I should personally be ministering to small, impressionable minds. Parents would take one look at me and run for the hills quicker than you can say, “bong water.”

So there I was – freshly graduated, diploma in hand, mind not magically changed to, “Imma let you finish – then Imma administering you some morphine – can I have a drag?”

Not the image of someone who should be giving you drugs. Legally, I mean.

Blithely, I applied – and got – a job working on a cardiac floor at a hospital in Elmhurst. That lasted six weeks before I quit. I’d been told that the floor I was on was one that “made a lot of people ditch nursing a career.” Apparently, I chose even more poorly than I’d thought.

When we moved to our current house, faced with the prospect of dueling mortgages (this was almost immediately before the housing market bubble burst), it was decided that I’d go back to work. After spending a few months sitting alone in our condo with a small autistic boy all day, I was more than happy to get back on the (work) horse and ride that fucker all the fuck over the place.

This time, I knew better – I wasn’t going back to a hospital – oh no. That shit was for the GOOD nurses out there. Instead, I chose a desk job working for a major insurance company. I’d be approving certain claims as well as finding ways to extend the benefits for people who were using in-home hospice.

Now hospice, if you don’t know, is for people who are no longer pursing active treatment of their terminal illness. Hospice is designed to let you die with some dignity at home (or in the hospital) as comfortably – and pain free – as possible. Hospice is also one of the last options for people who are terminally ill, which means that most people don’t stay in hospice for very long before they pass.

However, some people had certain hospice benefits provided through my company – but the terms and conditions were, as many people forget, set by the employer – and some of their hospice benefits were way weird. So it was my job to look for loopholes, draft care plans, and show the insurance company as well as the employer that being in at-home hospice was far cheaper than being hospitalized.

It wasn’t as glamorous a job as, say, BLOGGING, but I liked it – I was actually helping people in a way I knew how – by finding and exploiting the system.

But elevator conversations always turned sour:

Someone Else: “What do you do for a living?”

Nurse Becky (prays they’ll stop questioning there): “I’m a nurse.”

Someone Else (warmly): “My [insert relation here] is a nurse! That’s so wonderful! You’re a very special person for doing all that you do. Where do you work?”

Nurse Becky (mumbles): “[Company that shares a name with an airline]”

Someone Else: “Oh, FUCK YOU! That’s a fucking BULLSHIT company. I fucking HATE them – you know they denied my claim for a routine appendectomy? HOW THE HELL COULD YOU WORK FOR SUCH EVIL CORPORATE BASTARDS? You’re one sick puppy, you know that?”

Nurse Becky (mumbles): “Well, I’m one of the good guys – I look for ways to….”

Someone Else: “Fuck you and fuck your mother for birthing you, you soulless bitch.”

(storms off)

Nurse Becky (crestfallen, to herself): “I gotta remember to say I’m an astronaut or something.”

Eventually, the soulless heart-slurping company switched my job to that would primarily involve cold-calling people and giving them health examinations over the phone – not my cup of tea. This, at the same time I’d found out I was pregnant with Alex and couldn’t stop yarfing everywhere meant that it was time for me to mosey on down to greener – nicer – pastures. Like blogging. And wearing ass grooves into my couch.

At least then, only my couch could really bitch at me.

I was born jaundice – some kind of issue with blood incompatibility and got to hang out under those wicked baby sun-tan lights for awhile (I hope my mother was sensible enough to give me some wee baby Ray Bans) before I got to go home and annoy the shit out of my family with my lilting wails.

At my six-week well-baby checkup, I had an ear infection.

It’s been like that ever since. Excepting the Ray Bans – never owned a pair. And I stopped crying and started yelling – it’s more effective.

Wailing non-withstanding, I’m the Sick One around these here parts. I don’t remember a time when there wasn’t something wrong with me*. I was plagued by ear infections as a tot. When I grew out of those, it became strep throat – which I had at least once every three weeks until I turned 14 and got my tonsils out (this was back in the day when they didn’t put in ear tubes or lop out tonsils very often). By the time those puppies came out, they were necrotic – er….dead. Like for reals.

You’d think that by lopping off my dead tonsils, I’d somehow get an immune system – I mean, why else would you go through that particular type of agony?

(answer: Vicodin)

I try not to talk about my shitballs immune system very often, because the conversation invariably goes like this:

Anyone Else: “How are you?”

Aunt Becky: “UGH. I’m sick.”

Anyone Else: “AGAIN?”

Aunt Becky: “No, I mean I’m STILL sick from the last time I told you I was sick.”

Anyone Else: “Wait – that was like 6 months ago.”

Aunt Becky: “Yup.”

OR THIS:

Anyone Else: “How are you?”

Aunt Becky: “Sick.”

Anyone Else: “You should try standing on your head 18 hours a day – my friend’s friend’s barber’s wife did that and she’s feeling better than ever.”

————

I get a couple of days a month that I’m in decent shape, but most of the time, my walking, talking, breathing, pissing, moaning petri dishes of children bring me home whatever lovely virus is currently circulating around. I invariably catch it and am laid up for longer than anyone should be.

And you know what, Pranksters? It’s damn depressing. I *loathe* being sick. I’d gnaw off my ear if it meant that I’d grow an immune system.

Rather than sitting around moaning about it – it sucks, we all know it – I’m trying something new.

I took my happy crappy ass to the local health food store and picked up some motherfucking herbs and homeopathic shit. I figure, modern medicine isn’t doing a whole lot for me, I may as well try something else.

I’ve been drinking gallons of tea that tastes remarkably like garden clippings, downing all sorts of vitamins and supplements that make my pee electric yelor low, and trying to spend some time away from the computer. I’m one small toke away from bathing in Patchouli Oil while listening to my Grateful Dead LP’s.

So far? I’ve gotten a chest cold. And my pee is hilariously colored.

But I’m willing to try anything**.

So, Pranksters, give me your tips and tricks. Tell me all about the weird shit you do to keep healthy.

Should I bathe in the blood of vestal virgins (assuming I know what “vestal” means, because I don’t)? Should I sacrifice some goats? Find a voodoo priestess to take this curse from me? Sleep with a raw egg under my bed? Perform some weird black magic to get this evil eye off my fucking back?

*BESIDES my sanity, naturally. That’s been gone for years.

**I will not renege on my New Years Resolution to “not become Lil Wayne” even if it means I’ll be healthier. Probably.

I remember when I got a pager. The thing was gold, tiny, and worn by a nice white suburban girl who was all Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangster. I think it increased my street cred by at least -37 points. (those are NEGATIVE points, yo). If the thing played music, it’d have chosen with, “Up Town Girl.” It was THAT cliche.

Apparently, I’ll never be, “Becky From Tha Block.” Which is prolly good – I don’t want J Lo or Jennifer Lopez or whatever her name is now to be all, “bitch you be stealing mah shit,” as she smacked me in the face with stacks of fat cash. This is how I envision it – I’d probably just get a cease/desist letter from her lawyers, which, SO not fun.

Anyway, back when I got the pager, my friends would page me and I’d have to scramble to find 35 cents to call them back (like I was ever HOME or anything) Usually this was our conversation:

Aunt Becky: “Hey, what up fool?”

My Friend: “What up, stinky-butt?”

Aunt Becky: “Whatcha doing?”

My Friend: “Nothing. Wanna hang out?”

Aunt Becky: “Sure! I’m doing XYZ – come join us.”

My Friend: “Only if we can go whip donuts at old people.*”

Aunt Becky: “Whaaa? Okay.”

Then we’d scamper off into the night, merrily pranking our way through life.

I proudly showed it to my mom one day. And by “proudly” I mean that I said, “hey, can you pull over? I gotta make a call.”

She shook her head as she pulled over and allowed me to make my very unimportant call. When I popped back into the car, she sighed deeply and said, “I don’t know why you do that.”

My mother, always oblique, confused me, so I waited for her to go on. I knew a rant was a-brewing.

“You’ve gotten this thing that connects you to the world – why the hell would you want that? Don’t you want times of your life where you’re unreachable?”

No, no I didn’t. And I told her as much.

She shook her head, “Someday, you may feel differently.”

I was pretty sure she was full of shit. Until recently. Recently, I’ve been kinda digging on the time I’m able to unplug. I’ve got just about every sort of social media outlet, just about every type of communication device you can think of – usually multiple accounts. Therein likes the beauty (read: rub) of being the founder of a site that staffs upwards of 100 volunteers (that would be The Band Back Together Project) – someone always needs me for something.

Generally it doesn’t bother me. I love what I do, I’m thrilled to do it, and I’m over-the-moon that I’ve found such an amazing group of people to work with. I know how blessed I am.

But damns, it hurts to say this.

(small voice) My mother was right.

(somewhere she’s rolling her eyes at me, feeling a smug sense of satisfaction)

There are times that I simply don’t want to be dealing with anything but whatever is directly in front of me.

The worst part? My mother was right BEFORE her time – BEFORE email became the standard method of communication. Before The Twitter expected that you reply to each! and! every! response!

Before the world became so fucking urgent.

Sometimes, it’s nice to stop and remember that life? It’s not always such Serious Business.

Sometimes – it’s worth it to stop and smell the tulips**.

*still don’t know what that means.

**I don’t think tulips smell. But DAMNS they’re pretty.

I’m not very good at relaxing. Those who know me best are sitting at their computers, nodding vehemently while (perhaps) shouting, “No shit, dumbass.” Even if I win at life*, I suck at relaxing.

When my life gets stressful, like it has been for the past few months, instead of doing the smart thing and taking a nice bath** or zoning out and watching some reruns of The Girls Next Door, I work. More. I take on more projects. I buy diseased plants from the nursery just to prove to myself that I can rehabilitate them. I add more pressure. When I feel that pressure? I add even more.

I actually DO own this orchid – and dozens more like it. They’re blooming right now. It’s gorgeous.

It’s a vicious cycle. It’s also how I get so much done.

Until I hit That Point. The point at which I realize I have so much on my plate that it’s going to smother me while I sleep like that pink goo from Ghostbusters II if I don’t watch out.

(I don’t imagine my pressure goo actually dances to that (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher song – I imagine my goo is into either thrash metal or Burt Bacharach or both)

It’s now the time of year in Chicago in which dead people vote, roads begin to get worked on, and everyone slithers out from their houses, all pasty, sluglike and squinting into the sun. We’ve not been outside unless it’s on the way to or from the car for the better part of four months, even after a winter as mild as the one we just had. We’re all a deathly shade of what I like to call, “Midwestern Pallor,” and we’ve, of course, forgotten how to be neighborly. After all, we’ve been hiding in our houses for months now – we’re just as likely to try to gnaw on our neighbors as we are to invite them for a BBQ. Our social skills have gone down the shitter.

But this weekend was one of the first genuinely nice weekends we’ve had in months that I didn’t feel like I was going to die from the flu or whatever. It was 80 degrees and sunny, though the chance for thunderstorms loomed large, they didn’t happen until nightfall.

I strapped on my ugly gauchos and an ill-fitting tank-top, noting my particular pallor was even more pronounced than normal, as I prepared to Tackle The Garden. If you’re read my blog before you will know two, maybe three things:

1) I love to garden. I also love hotdogs, the color blue, and Tom Jones.

B) The people who first owned the house went all bush-wild and added a fuckton of professionally landscaped – yet hideously fug 70’s style bushes. No, not vaginas. Although everything WAS a bush back then. The people who I bought the house from had let it all go to shit, so I’ve spent the better part of two kids and four years trying to hack the garden into submission.

3) I consider proper punctuation bullshit.

For the better part of two days, The Guy on my Couch and I tackled the garden. Mulching, seeding the lawn, bagging up refuse, watering, pulling weeds, training roses (sadly, not to shake or speak).

It was the best, most stress-relieving thing I’ve done in months. I’m reminded again of how much I need balance in my life. How much I need to stop, smell (or spray) the roses. How much better I feel after a good solid day’s worth of solid hard labor. How I need to remember that not everything is such! serious! business!

How I need to stop pushing and learn to breathe.

Just breathe.

*I don’t.

**No, I’m not 800 years old, I just know the value of a good bath. Oh shut your whore mouth 🙂

I’ve been waiting nearly eleven years for this moment. Eleven long, painful, humiliating years.

Ever since the doctor said, “you have a fourth degree tear,” in the delivery room as my firstborn son screamed and howled indignantly in the bassinet while I screamed and howled in the bed as the doctor began the slow and painful process of patching up my poor battered vagina.

(hear that? It’s the sound of my male readership quickly clicking away)

(it’s safe to come back now, guys, no more vagina talk)

My vagina healed* and my child, well, he continued to howl indignantly. Days and nights I spent bouncing, rocking, driving, singing, crying, all to no avail. Born with his days and nights mixed up, I spent a good 2 months up all night AND all day, so bleary and sleep-deprived that I walked into MORE walls than normal. I began to believe that my bed was a shimmering mirage, a figment of my addled imagination.

During those long days and nights, I fantasized about the ways I’d pay the kid back. Naked baby pictures festively on display in our hallway so I could show his one-day girlfriends (or boyfriends). Wedding speeches about how he used to poo in the tub and throw it out. Ways I could torture him when he decided – as all kids do – that I was the most annoying person in the world because OMG MOM, DO YOU HAVE TO BREATHE LIKE THAT?

We’ve finally hit the point in which everything from the way I chew to the way I walk is cause for embarrassment. HOW DARE YOU WALK LIKE THAT, MOM? YOU BRING SHAME UPON OUR HOUSE.

It’s pretty awesome – the kid has NO idea who he’s messing with. I’m not hurt or angry, no, I’m just ready to enact my revenge upon him. I mean, who takes issue with the way someone swallows?*

Yesterday, as I was scouring the Internet for the best (worst) picture of Lil Wayne, I got a phone call from his school. My heart sunk. We’ve got Plague House going on right now and the very last thing I feel like doing is managing ANOTHER sick person.

It was the secretary:

“Hi Miss Harks, I just spoke to the lunch lady.”

My heart thudded in my chest – what had the kid done? I LOVE the lunch ladies more than I love Equal, Orange Hostess Cuppy Cakes and my roses put together.

“And he’s got a balance on his school meals card that needs to be paid before we can feed him.”

Oh really? Way to tell me, kiddo.

“So if you want to drop off a check in the next 45 minutes, that would be great.”

I agreed to swing by, knowing that my kid would have a meltdown of the nuclear variety if he had to eat a cheese sandwich rather than whatever delicious hot-lunch items were offered. (I’ve tried to inform him that there are starving people in Africa who’d LOVE his cheese sandwich, but he just rolls his eyes at me. I think I may use the Sarah McLauchlan commercial to really drive the point home that his life? Not really so bad.)

I’m weeping just THINKING about it.

After I agreed to drop some cash off for the kid, I got ready to go. Before I walked out the door, I looked down at what I was wearing – black stretchy gauchos, ugly sweater slippers, and my pink Shut Your Whore Mouth (that’s a link to the shirts if you want one because obviously you do) shirt.

Did I dare?

Was it time?

Was THIS the moment I’d been waiting for?

Was I ready to enact my revenge upon the kid by showing up at school dressed like a schizophrenic off her meds?

Oh, it was tempting all right. I very nearly did.

But I remembered what it was like to be a kid and how annoying your parents are and how much worse I could make things if I showed up like that and made a grand show of kissing my kid on the cheek. So I changed into a boring blue shirt and jeans – the sweater boots stayed.

Besides, I’m waiting for the day that I actually own bunny slippers and can manage to put rollers in my hair. These teen years are going to be AWESOME.

*except that. Oops.

*my kid

————

Also: you should go comment here on my Savings.com post. Why? Because obviously.

Also also: you can read me here. The comments are breathtakingly horrible. Just – FYI.

I was standing there in line at The Target (also known as: my social life), daydreaming about rolling around in a pile of Equal when the cashier asked, “Ma’am, can I see your ID?”

I preened, flattered by this request.

“SURE, you can,” I smiled coyly at the kid behind the counter, not stopping to think for a second about it. Still in my fantasy world where Equal rained from the heavens, I hadn’t even begun to process WHY he’d be asking me for identification – I wasn’t writing a check. I didn’t have any booze. I didn’t even have a carton of smokes or anything. Still I smiled as I handed him my driver’s license.

He looked at me, a little aghast as he scanned my driver’s license, “It’s for the Nyquil,” he informed me.

My jaw dropped open as I did my best trout impression.

Robotripping (drinking the shit out of Dextromethorphan) had become popular just as I delivered my first son. I felt psychedelically wasted from lack of sleep – the last thing I wanted to try was to drink a couple bottles of cough syrup. I’d be more likely to vomit before I got high – that shit tastes like Satan’s Bunghole (unlike Equal, which tastes like the nectar of the Gods).

But I had friends who did it. And I was old enough to be all, *eye roll* “that’s lame.” Because it is. If you want to get wasted, you don’t drink 6 bottles of cough syrup – you drink a Bourbon + Vicodin Tonic. EVERYONE knows that.

A few kids later, I heard about sizzurp, thanks to my favorite rapper*, Lil Wayne.

I petitioned the Stop Medication Abuse board to use Lil Wayne’s picture in place of a warning: “possible side effects may include becoming Lil Wayne.” But so far, no luck.

And I will neatly sidebar into this: I have been doing amazingly well on my New Year’s resolution: do not become Lil Wayne. I wake up each morning and am STILL not Lil Wayne. I make the best resolutions ever.

But last night, as I was making out with my bottle of Nyquil because I couldn’t stand being up another night of having “Afternoon Delight” playing on repeat in my head and I saw it: another warning about medication abuse.

So rather than spend the night trying to gouge out my eyeballs with my fingernails to the soothing sounds of Starland Vocal Band, I instead laid awake for three and a half minutes (until the Nyqyil kicked in), trying to figure out how the shit kids could drink Nyquil and not go the fuck to sleep.

Like “HEY GUYS, LET’S GET WASTED ON SOME GREEN DEATH FLAVORED NYQUIL – THIS SHIT IS INTENSE.”

*ten minutes later*

“Zzzzzzzzzzzz.”

*eight hours later*

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

*twelve hours later*

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

*sixteen hours later*

“Fuck, my mouth tastes like a squirrel shit in it. That was one hell of a party. What the fuck day is it?”

Although, now that I think on it, throw in some adult diapers and that DOES sound like my kinda party.

*total lie

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in the past few days sending out information about the Band Back Together Project to various media outlets. Sounds fancy, right? Not so much. Basically I have to talk about myself in the third person, which never makes anyone happy:

“Today, Aunt Becky, of Mommy Wants Vodka, poured vanilla extract into both her coffee AND her diet Coke, just to be on the safe side of drunk.”

Wicked, right?

Not so much.

But when I click the “email” button, it goes back to the mail program I once used on my very first computer, back in 2004. It’s a blast from the motherfucking past, Pranksters. I see love letters Daver once sent me. I have emails from people I haven’t spoken to in years. I have emails from my first blog. I can see where I spoke to people who no longer blog.

It’s like stepping back in time.

Especially when I see this:

And then this:

It’s not this child:

No.

It’s this one:

Time, it seems, waits for no one.

Not even little boys.