I met her there, on the transplant floor (liver and kidney) where she sat, her eyes full of a sadness I couldn’t quite place, next to her son. The second of her three children to lay in a bed just like that one, all suffering the same rare genetic liver disease. The guilt was written all over her face – she hadn’t known that she and her husband were carriers for this disease – it hadn’t occurred to her to be tested. Not until later – much later, after her first son required a liver transplant.

I had her during my clinicals that week, so I spent a good deal of time with her. They lived in some BumFuck Southern town, temporarily moving to Chicago where the premiere doctor who treated this particular liver disease practiced. She and her husband and their other kids, moved, where so many do, into the Ronald McDonald house attached to the hospital I’d been volunteered to rotate through.

A student nurse then, the horror of a hospital – a big, beautiful, wonderful, cheerful hospital – that treated only children, her eyes haunted me long after I’d stopped being their nurse.

Their son, he was three at the time, I think, and while he was bloated, sorta like Violet Beauregard from Willy Wonka, he bore enough of a resemblance to my own tiny son that I couldn’t help but see him every time I administered medication or checked his vitals.

We walked past the house a couple of times. Visiting the dialysis center. Other offsite clinical stuffs. It was there. The logo was similar to that of my most favorite fast-food joint – McDonald’s – and I thought, each time, of the families who had to live there, while they waited to see if their children could be cured.

It was an honor to have been placed there – Children’s Memorial Hospital – and I was one of six lucky recipients.

In a twist of fate no one could’ve foreseen, my daughter, not even a glimmer in my eye at that time, had her neurosurgery at a branch of the very same hospital. She wore the same gown that all of my patients back then did, making me feel as though I’d somehow walked into an alternate universe.

I’m close enough now to Children’s Memorial that I didn’t have to stay at the Ronald McDonald house when she was born so sick. Or when she had to be readmitted for her surgery.

But I never forgot.

I never forgot what an amazing place the Ronald McDonald House was. When I think of it even today, I am reminded of the woman with the sick boys, who harkened from BumFuck, USA, living in the Great Big City of Chicago while she awaited her son’s fate.

My friend Paula, another transplant mom, who I happened to meet through this very blog (who also works with me now, on Band Back Together), began something a couple of months ago. She inspired me.

She’s been collecting pop-tops to donate to the Ronald McDonald house (not the same one that I’ve been to). She inspired me to do the same.

And now I ask you, My Pranksters, to consider helping me with this.

McDonald’s Corporate HQ is about thirty minutes from my house and I plan to collect as many pop-tabs as I can to donate to their charity.

If you’d like to join me, (PLEASE?!), you can collect these pop-tabs and drop them off at your OWN Ronald McDonald House, or you can send them directly to me.

Email me: becky.harks@gmail.com for my address.

Time to use The Internet for some good.

P.S. If I get enough pop-tabs, I will totally do something random for you on a dare. Like go out in public in jeggings or something. YOU PICK THE DARE.

Also: if you’re participating, go ahead and link up, yo!

On Band Back Together, as we reach out to try and work toward our non-profit status, we’re working our asses off on putting together a rad auction. I think I’m donating like 20 things to it.

Here are the details if you want to join us. In exchange, you’ll get some awesome promotion and feel like you did something rad for the community.

Button code is here:

<a href=”http://auction.bandbacktogether.com”><img src=”http://i771.photobucket.com/albums/xx353/designsbyprincessjenn/BB2GAuction.jpg” width=”200″ height=”200″ border=”0″>

And shit, I’ll arm wrestle you for some of the already-donated stuffs.

P.S. If you just want to join in on the auction once it goes live, I’ll be adding details as they come.

P.P.S. If you’d like to simply write a post for us, that’d be great too! We always want moar stories. ALWAYS.

I sat there in the lobby of the surgical waiting room, reading the kind words my Pranksters sent me that morning – feeling almost as though they were right there, beside me, as I waited. Would she live? Would she die?

No one knew. And those closest to me knew better than to say, “it’ll be okay.” Because a) it’s a bullshit statement and 2) they didn’t know any more than I did whether or not that would be the case.

A little stoned, perhaps, on Ativan, I began to rummage through the bag I’d packed. I didn’t know what one was supposed to pack in times like these – a word search, my phone charger, my breast pump, my own tissues (my face was already torn up from the hospital-grade tissues).

That’s what I brought.

It was there, as I pecked out a quick tweet on my i(can’tfucking)Phone, “She’s back in surgery now.” As I went to put my phone away, she showed up.

It was the surgical assistant, completely suited up in surgical gear. If I’d had more than half a second to panic, I’d have begun – I’d just given up my precious daughter, signing documents allowing the neurosurgeon to cut open her brain, take out some spare bits, then put her back together with a skull implant. The surgery was supposed to be 6-9 hours long – seeing her like that so soon after we’d kissed our girl goodbye, that should have been scary.

She carried a bag with her – a bio-hazard, which she held in front of her, obviously trying to give it to me.

The confusion set in as the tears (again) poured from my eyes: was this a bit of my daughter?

She spoke, “We gave her a haircut. I wanted you to have this for her baby book.”

I took it, turning it over in my hand, as I wondered if it was the last bit of my daughter I’d hold, as she strode back into the OR where my daughter was unconsciously waiting.

Not knowing what else to do, I shoved it into my hospital bag.

I’ve never taken it out. In fact, I’ve never touched that bag. It sits in my closet, still full of whatever I’d packed, while horrified, panicked that I’d been offering my daughter up for slaughter.

A lifetime later, my daughter wiggles and bounces her way into the room, chock full of giggles and smiles, playing a game with her Lego guys, then “cooking” me a breakfast out of her play food.

Why yes I want green beans with my eggs, Mimi, how kind of you to offer.

I see it.

Her hair.

The wispy locks of baby hair are finally growing out, her big girl hair filling in underneath. The new curls are thick underneath it all, giving her a properly impish look.

But the baby hair, it looks…well…weird. It’s clearly time to cut it off.

So I grab a pair of scissors, beg The Guy On My Couch, Who Happens To Be Sitting ON The Couch, to help me out with her – just keep her occupied, I ask. This isn’t the sort of haircut I give the boys – I’m just lopping off the long bits as she chats with The Guy On My Couch.

He too, I learn as I listen to them talk, would love some fake green beans with his pretend eggs.

Soon, I have a pile of longer blondish hairs. Not willing to part with those memories just yet, I find a baggie and carefully place those long strands inside, where they will, one day, be put into her baby book along with her first haircut.

And as she bops and whirls away, haircut over, she looks over her shoulder and positively beams at me, her old eyes somehow comprehending that this five minute stretch on the couch was, for some reason unbeknownst to her, very big deal.

Her curls shimmering, catching the light just-so, giving her the appearance of having an actual halo, I am reminded; humbled, by how far we have come.

Both of us.

He’d been moping about the house all morning. A fever so high I worried you could fry eggs on his scalp, I tried to remind myself that kids DO run fevers, and we’d been to Mouse Hell the weekend before, so if he hadn’t just come down with what had made me so bloody sick for the past two weeks (and counting!), it was probably an Oregon Trail Disease picked up from random peeing kids in the ball pits.

(aside: why do kids piss in ball pits? It’s never dawned upon me that I should, perhaps, use a pile of balls to squat over and whiz on)

I assumed it would pass.

I’m a nurse and I’m no alarmist when it comes to my kids. Kids get sick. They bounce back. Especially my middle son, Alex.

By 12:00, as he dazedly tried to play some sort of Lego game with his sister, as he shivered in the 75 degree house, I realized he needed to go to the doctor.

“Take him to the Minute Clinic*,” I asked Dave, without really giving the option of a “no.” “I’ll be done with my board meeting by 2PM, and you should be back by then – I can keep an eye on him afterward.”

At 1:45, Dave and the kid both gone, the phone rang. I assumed it was my eldest, telling me that he was on his way home.

“We’re on our way to the ER,” The Daver announced grimly. “Alex has a 104 degree fever.”

Well, fuckity, fuckity, fuck me.

I had to find someone to watch the smallest child, Amelia, who was bouncing about the house, playing with her Legos and occasionally throwing herself on the ground – just to make herself laugh.

After a lot of back and forth, my mother, bless her heart, came to pick up the smallest of the littles and The Guy On My Couch, Ben, who was just as frantic about the ER trip as I, and I hauled balls to the hospital.

On the way, I bemoaned my decided lack of Punch Card for ER Frequent Flyers. I’d just BEEN there, I whined. We’d just been there. I now knew all of the short cuts to the cafeteria where they stocked all of that luscious sweet nectar of the Gods, Diet Coke.

By the time we got there, Alex was already in the room. Ben and I stormed the room in time to see the doctor pinning my son down to do a strep culture on his throat. Poor guy, I thought – those things are like giving a blow job to a q-tip.

As she left, she said, “if this is negative, we’ll do a chest x-ray.” She left, my jaw flopping on the germ-laden floor.

Chest x-ray? Why on EARTH would they need to be ruling out pneumonia (or TB)(okay, I knew it wasn’t TB)(probably)?

I schlepped myself onto the hospital bed, where I cuddled up my kid as I handed Alex my coveted i(can’t fucking)Phone, so he could play Angry Birds, handily beating each of my scores. He was burning up, despite the Motrin that triage gave him. Ugh.

Ten minutes later, a pert and perky lady came in and asked if he could walk. “Well yes, I said, but not without socks in the middle of the ER – I’ll carry him, thankyouverymuch.”

I lugged my now-fifty pound boy after her, not quite sure where we were going. Along the way, I told him about how he’d nearly been born at this very same hospital – the hospital where I’d given birth to his brother. He asked me a couple questions about how babies come from your tummy, and I skimmed over the bit about how they got out (although I did inform him it was through “the vagina” and not “my belly button,” as he’d suspected).

Soon we were in a darkened room – radiology.

I stood next to him, dressed in a heavy lead cloak, as he got pictures of his chest taken.

And then we were done. Back to the room we went, as he peppered me with questions about where HE’D been born, occasionally laughing when he mentioned that he knew he’d, “pooped on me as a baby.”

Back into the bed we went, where we waited. And waited. And waited.

The Guy on My Couch, Ben, and The Daver both sat on their respective iPhones, the room darkened, as Alex and I lay in bed together. Sometimes, we played on my phone, other times, we just lay there.

After an hour or so, he began to whine, begging to go home, and I realized it was time to get creative. I went through the drawers of the room, stealing an Ace Bandage (never know when you’ll need one) and an ice pack (you always know you’ll need one), as I handed Alex a stack of tongue depressors to play with. Eagerly, he yanked them open and began to beat them on the gigantic barf basin I’d given him.

We soon grew tired of that, too, having now been at the ER for three and a half hours.

The guys in the room very deeply involved in their games, I suggested we People Watch. I pulled back the blinds in the glass enclosed room and we began to watch, talking about what we saw.

Placed close enough to all three of the trauma rooms, we were afforded a perfect view of someone’s very worst day. The room swarmed with nurses, doctors, EMT’s, surgeons, all angrily buzzing in and out, clearly doing Important Things.

While I don’t practice, I’m a nurse. And I knew someone was fighting for their life in that room. I said a prayer. Then another. Then another.

What was a blip on an otherwise okay day for me (who wants to spend their day at the hospital?) was the end of someone else’s life. I wonder, as I often do in emergency situations, if there was any indication that the person behind the curtain knew that this day would be The Day. The universe should tell the person whose world is about to be turned upside down – or worse – off entirely, that hey, this is the last time you’ll breathe the outside air. This is the last sunset you’ll see. Hey, take note, this is the last time you’ll eat a donut or hug your kid or say, “I love you.”

But we don’t get that kind of warning.

And so we die.

Sometimes while we sleep. Sometimes while we drive. Sometimes out of the clear blue sky in Trauma Two on a beautiful almost-spring day.

And sometimes, while someone, a stranger, holding her heart – the one who walks around outside her chest – praying for someone she didn’t know, as she tells her middle son about the time when he “got born,” we die.

Dona nobis pacem.

Give us peace.

*what my mother likes to call a “doc in the box,” the small clinics we have at some local pharmacies

P.S. Diagnosis: “atypical” pneumonia. Leave it to my kid to be all A-typical.

Dear Pranksters,

We’re having a hearts! and love carnival on Band Back Together tomorrow, showcasing broken hearts, heart issues, and, my personal favorite, love. I’ll have a post going up tomorrow over there – I’ll link you.

If you’d like to read, write, contribute, or do a Snoopy dance, go ahead on over. We’re totally getting the Band Back Together.

xoxo,

AB

P.S. Last day to vote for Bloggies. Somehow, I’m up for a couple. So is Band Back Together.

Dear Aunt Becky,

our son is nearly 6-1/2. he was dx’d with autism back when he turned 2. he has a large, flat head, is close to non-verbal, is sensory and cognitively affected, has apraxia, and lots of gut issues… we finally did the mri, looking for craniosynotosis and/or chiari. we got back a 3/8″ encephalocele on the base of his skull. we sent mri disc to ch-boston, they said it was insignificant. we want a second opinion.

who do we go to?

Well, FUCK, Prankster. I’m so sorry. Every time I hear about someone new with an enecphalocele, like my girl, Amelia, my heart drops.

I know we’ve spoken privately, but I’m throwing it out here on my blog so that any of my Pranksters can chime in.

So, Pranksters, do you know anyone in his area that can help his son with his encephalocele?

Dear Aunt Becky,

I feel like a jerk, but there’s this girl that does everything I do online. She signs up for the same sites I sign up for. She becomes active in my communities. She’s nice, but it’s irritating. I feel like a jerk for being irritated. However, she even sometimes takes credit for my work, and even recently landed a pretty big opportunity, mainly just copying everything I do. Again, she’s always sweet. I know I should be flattered and all, but is there anything I can do besides vent? Am I a total jerk?

–Copied from North Dakota 

Sighs.

Prankster, I wish I had any good advice for you. I’d like to offer you some bullshit platitude, but it’s never helped me to hear, “imitation is the highest form of flattery.” In fact, I’d like to counter it by saying that anyone who as offered that as a consolation has never truly been copied when it matters.

Because sometimes it DOES matter.

I don’t give a shit if people take terms I use as their own. I don’t care if people riff off my blog posts. It’s only when it’s something I’ve poured my heart and soul into that I get upset.

And that’s about all I do. Sure, I could run around, doing some sort of weird smear campaign, but in the end, it would only make me look like an asshole. And while I can be a huge asshole, I’d prefer it to be for something else, like kicking kittens or mooning a full moon.

So I’m going to offer you my apologies. And my empathy. Because it really, really does suck.

Any advice for her, Pranksters?

Hi Aunt Becky!

I’ve been a follower for a while now and I have to preface this with the “omgwtfbbq,yer so awesomez!” I know that you are the ringleader here and at Band Back Together, so I have no doubt you’ll be able to answer my question. I have a cousin-in-law who recently tried to commit suicide.

This evening I stumbled upon my uncle-in-law’s wife talking to the cousin and being very awkward because he was talking about actually finishing himself off. I jumped in and tried to help and while I have extracted a promise from him to try the therapist in the morning and call me and let me know what happens,

I am not too sure that is enough.

I, of course, directed him to the suicide prevention hotline and its crazy website, but what else can I do? I told him if he felt that bad he could call 911 and they would bring him into the hospital and said that he should be able to commit himself.

I wonder if you know what the general laws are regarding being committed versus committing yourself.

I don’t have his address so I’m not too sure I can call the police and have them do anything. I’ve let other members of his family know what happened so they can help too and texted back and forth with him so he knows that I really am willing to talk. So, to recap, what’s the deal with commitment? Is there anything else I can do and if he does do something and tells me, is it possible to call the cops and have them intervene?

Thanks Aunt Becky!

Oh Prankster, you have a heart of gold – you know that, right? Because you do.

Anyway – you’ve done all the right things.

I’m sending you these links, not to pimp my (almost) non-profit, but because there’s more information that may be more valuable than the piddly words I can offer you here.

Suicide Resource Page

Common Motivations behind Suicide

Suicide Survivor

How To Cope With A Suicide

(see, I don’t watch cat videos all day long!)

First things first:

If you are feeling desperate, alone or helpless, or know someone who is, please call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to talk to a counselor at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Listen, really listen to them rather than offer solutions and help. People who are suicidal do not want help, they want a safe place to talk about their feelings. Really shutting your mouth and listening is very hard, but it is important.

Let them know they can trust you.

Let them know that you do care about them very much.

When someone is feeling suicidal, they must talk about their feelings immediately. Sometimes, just letting those feelings out can help.

If someone is actively talking about suicide, offering plans up about suicide, call 911.  STAY with the suicidal person while you wait for help to arrive. This is an emergency. Period.

THIS is what I know about involuntary commitment:

Involuntary Commitment is the act of admitting someone who is a danger to him or herself (or others) to a psychiatric hospital for 3-5 days. Laws for involuntary commitment vary from country to country to state to state.

If, after 3-5 days, the person is still determined to be a threat to him or herself, a court order may be obtained to detain the person.

Let me know if this helps, Prankster. I love you and your big gorgeous heart.

——————–

Pranksters, please fill in where I left off in the comments. And, as always (now that I’m off my ridiculously large ass and back to posting), send me your most important questions. I will answer them as uselessly as possible.

I think I’m turning into that crusty old guy down the block. The one who uses his cane to hit the ankles of nearby small children and threatens to take a shotgun to anyone who dares step on my pathetic patch of brown grass. Except without the shotguns, because obviously. I can’t properly use a pickaxe, who in their right mind would give me a gun?

Answer: Las Vegas.

No seriously, on an entirely unrelated tangent, I’m on a kick to go to Vegas, eat waffles, and shoot guns. Do not ask me how I have decided that this is the pinnacle of awesome – it just is.

See, my crustiness starts here: I’ve started to hate the doorbell ringing. It’s like junk mail, in human form. Either I get some assjacket who wants to sell me some crap I’ll never need, some kid wants to play with MY kid (negating the fact that it’s 10AM and KIDS SHOULD BE IN SCHOOL, DAMMIT!) and argues with me about my kid being home while I chew my tongue, trying not to yell, WHY AREN’T YOU IN SCHOOL? Or it’s another small person who wants to sell me outrageously overpriced cookies that I don’t even want to eat.

Yep.

At 31, I’ve become that crusty wench.

I just hate those awkward social interactions, where two people stand there, staring at each other, not sure exactly how to proceed. Which is what happens every time someone rings my bell.

Perhaps I should get a doormat that says “Go The Fuck Away” or an electrified moat and change my name to Mr. Wilson.

Shrugs.

Either way, I got a cane, and I’m not afraid to wallop you youngins with it.

————–

I wrote this. It’s about recycling. Also? It needs some comments, if’n you have the time.

—————

And I wrote this. I suggest you stay AWAY from the comments, unless you feel like having your head chewed off.

—————-

ONE LAST THING I SWEAR OMGBBQWTF. We’re doing a Hearts! Carnival on BB2G on Sunday – stories about love, hearts, problems with hearts, and all that good stuffs. I’m going to share a couple stories about my dad.

One of my goals for the new year was to “spend some time living outside the computer, even though the real world is fast and scary and full of people who wear jeggings.” It seemed a bit loftier than “Not become Lil Wayne” (which I should add, is a resolution I’ve managed to keep for an entire month and a half now) and loads better for my self-esteem.

See, people are all, “bloggers are introverts who have no social skills and hate crowds of people,” which makes me all, “um, not so much.” Because while I may greet you for the first time by humping your leg while eating a hot dog, THAT DOESN’T MEAN I DON’T HAVE SOCIAL SKILLS. In fact, I’d venture to say that it means I EXCEL at social skills. Just ask all the people who have restraining orders against me.

What can I say? I’m a friendly sorta person.

But when I dared to tell myself that I had to be more social, the Universe was all, “bwahahaha, sucker,” and threw me a wicked case of the flu. Two weeks and counting.

(and yes, Pranksters, I’d go to the doctor if I actually had something worth treating)

So when my good friend Dana showed up at my house unexpectedly, I was all, OMG A REAL PERSON IN MAH HOUSE. I ran around frantically to find a hot dog to eat while I humped her leg. It was pretty wicked to have someone over. Especially since I can now make people spend at least ten minutes oohing and aahing over my purple-flavored walls.

We sat and caught up for a couple of hours while Amelia performed tricks in front of her Auntie Dana like a good ickle show-dog. It was nice. I can’t remember the last time I spent any amount of time with someone who didn’t want to talk about work.

(what, me a workaholic?)

(you shut your whore mouth)

She also noticed how clean my house was, which made me all barrel-chested with pride. See, I like a clean house. Problem’s been that my husband works a kajillion hours a week and doesn’t seem to care one way or another whether the house looks like a shot out of a Hoarders episode or not. I’m not entirely convinced he’s not blind.

Plus, the three crotch parasites used to delight in pulling absolutely everything out and leaving it in one ginormous pile for me to break my toes on. I tried to keep up with the mess, but damns, it was hard.

Then a magical thing happened.

My children grew up. They got anal about house-cleaning. Dave started giving a shit about the house. The Guy on the Couch helped me clean.

And most importantly, I have been sticking to my other OTHER New Years Resolution – “one a day.”

I’ve been donating, dumping, and throwing away one thing every single day. It sounds really hard, right? Like, one thing a day for a year is a fuckton of shit to dump. I hate committing to things that take a year (mostly because I’m an impatient sea-hag).

You know what?

It’s been easier than I’d thought. I’ve managed to get rid of more than one thing each day, which means that my house becomes more manageable each and every day.

In the same way that it feels good to hear, “damn, you look like you lost weight” when you’ve been dieting, it felt amazaballs to hear “your house looks the best I’ve seen it,” from someone who knows you well.

(others might have been offended, but not me)

Now if only I could find a home for that stupid monogrammed embosser thing I’d bought (while probably drunk) that I’ll never use.

I’m not a creative person.

I’m not saying that to elicit sympathy or fish for the occasional, “there, there, Aunt Becky, you’re SO creative,” because I know it’s a hot pile of bullshit. I’m not creative.

Take, for example, the time in high school that I took a drawing class as an elective. I sat there, my beret perched neatly atop my head, all, “Imma be an ARTIST,” until I had to actually draw my first picture. A still life of a bowl of grapes looked more like a pile of testicles hovering over a tire than actual fruit. It took a few weeks, but after I realized I had no artistic aptitude, I simply copied the work of someone much more talented sitting next to me – the first and only time I ever cheated in a class.

My desire to be a creative genius, a veritable child prodigy, went back a lot further than that, though.

We always had Lego sets lying around when I was a kid. My brother, the actual creative one in the family and a full ten years my senior, was able to build these amazing creations from a bin of random Lego bits. I figured I could do the same. It couldn’t be THAT hard, right?

Heh.

One Saturday, as I watched the morning cartoons, I decided to prove to the world – and my family – that my mug belonged squarely on the cover of Time Magazine as the “World’s Most Awesomest Kid” (alternately, “The World’s Best Genius.”) – I wasn’t sure which would be more effective.

I schlepped down to the basement in my footie pajamas, careful to avoid slipping down the stairs, on my quest for the basket of Legos. Tucked away in the corner, right behind the antique butter churn and some ancient copies of the New Yorker, I found it.

I brushed off the dust (my brother had long-since traded Legos for sports cars) and lugged the basket up the stairs. I plopped it in front of the television, marveling at all the ways I could make super awesome stuffs. Like a pirate ship. Or a pony on roller skates.

After, of course, I cleaned the cat pee off the Legos.

I sat there, in front of Jem and the Holographs and started trying to put something together out of the random bits of Lego. Hrms. I couldn’t create a pony – no horse head. Roller skates required wheels, which I didn’t have either. And a pirate ship? Well, not so much.

But I tried.

And after about an hour of blood, sweat, tears and Legos, I looked down at my masterpiece. It was a square box. With one window – no door. Even the house I tried to make looked all janked up. Who the fuck can’t make a house?

Me. I couldn’t.

I sighed deeply. Clearly my “muse” was a lying fucking bitch. Ever since, I’ve eschewed anything Lego-related.

That is, of course, I had children.

My eldest, who has autism, loves Legos. There’s something innately soothing to him about lining up all the wee parts, following directions, and creating something grand. That is, of course, until a piece goes missing. With two smaller siblings and a mess of cats, that’s pretty much all the time. Shit, I STILL can’t find my whore pants, which are, needless to say, much larger than a piece of Lego.

Once a piece is lost, the set is “ruined” and he refuses to play with it.

I’d mostly banished Legos from my house until The Guy On My Couch moved in – there’s too much pressure to make sure the sets are in pristine condition for me to actively buy Legos for my kid.

The Guy On My Couch, he loves Legos. I know, you’re probably all, “so, he’s an overgrown teenager, right?” to which I would reply, “yes, but he also cooks.”

I find his obsession with Legos more endearing than not – one look at my orchid collection and you’d know that he’s not the only one in the house with collecting issues.

He’s been carefully assembling Hogwarts Lego sets and putting the completed pieces in my china cabinet (I will soon have to find a new place to store my china and Cock Soup packets), which has sparked the Lego bug deep within my children. Apparently a love of Legos is created by osmosis. And I get it – the finished kits are pretty fucking cute.

I wouldn’t mind living in Lego Land so much if I hadn’t stepped on approximately 800 Lego pieces in the last week.

Those motherfuckers hurt.

I started work at age sixteen (no, not uphill both ways in the snow) in a fancy restaurant. Before I could serve tables, I had to turn 18, so I spent those years as a hostess. I’m telling you – you’ll never learn more about people than you do if you are forced to massage egos – very expensive egos.

It was there, at the now-defunct Mill Race Inn, that I learned about Valentine’s Day.

That’s not to say that I didn’t know about VD Day before working there – I simply didn’t understand the great lengths people went to to create the “perfect night.” I also didn’t understand the ire that was evoked by having a “perfect night” go awry. I don’t know how many people pitched fits when they didn’t get sat at the perfect table, but it had to be in the hundreds. One perfectly normal looking woman actually got down on the floor and began kicking and screaming. In the middle of a crowded restaurant. With no shame.

Valentine’s Day was always a cluster of fuckery.

I personally haven’t had a typically romantic Valentine’s Day regardless of relationship status – one year I ordered us a heart-shaped pizza. Other years, I went and purchased myself something shiny. It never mattered to me much.

Most importantly, it never changed the way I felt about the holiday – I love Valentine’s Day. Pink, puffy, glittery hearts type of love.

When Ben was a baby, my best friends and I found ourselves (rarely) single at the same time on VD-Day. Rather than mope about our doomed relationships, as we could easily have done, we decided that it was high time to start a new tradition: Lesbian Valentine’s Day.

No, no, we didn’t do a Four Girls One Cup kinda thing – that’s for amateurs. Instead, we fed my (now-deceased, overly large and awesomely adorable) cat bacon cheeseburgers. We ate Wendy’s there in my living room, the lot of us together, laughing and talking until late in the evening. They’d interrupted my studying for the evening – something that I rarely allowed to happen – and we had one of the best Valentine’s Days ever.

So what if we weren’t drinking Cristal atop the Hancock building? So what if no one had purchased us baubles and trinkets? So what if we didn’t have a special someone to tell us all the reasons we were worth loving?

We had each other.

We had Lesbian Valentine’s Day.

We also had Big Pink.

Yep, my best friend bought the lot of us Big Pink – the world’s best vibrator.

I will tell you here and now, it was by far, by FAR, the best Valentine’s Day gift I’ve ever gotten.  Even better than the heart-shaped pizza and the diamonds.

Although, I’d have been pretty happy with a Shut Your Whore Mouth Shirt (that’s the perfect VD Gift, I’ve seen), had I created any at that time. P.S. I started a Zazzle Store, which I’ve been working on in pieces. That shit is confusing.

What’s your favorite VD-Day memory?

I’d reached the point where I was simply praying that my middle son was going to find a particularly nice young man to room with in college – the kind who didn’t mind occasionally changing my son’s diapers.

I figured that there were plenty of people in the world who liked to poop into diapers (after watching Hoarders, I now know that there are plenty of people who like to poo into bags AND THEN SAVE IT. Best of all? YOU KNOW IT TOO, NOW.)(You’re welcome).

I mean, there was that crazy astronaut lady who drove across the country to kill her lover’s wife or something WHILE WEARING ADULT DIAPERS. Clearly, there’s a market for that stuff. And clearly, my kid was going to join into that market.

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t a good example. Hoarders + Crazy Astronaut Lady don’t = great sampling size.

Either way, I’d resigned myself to it. It was that, or pull my hair out one by ever-loving one until I had a bald spot the shape of Alaska on my previously hair-covered scalp.

So yesterday, still sick as a motherfucker, I tried again with the potty training. As my son admired the tiny Lego Hogwarts that The Guy on my Couch (who firmly believes he will no longer be known as The Guy On My Couch once he does not, in fact, live on my couch) had lovingly put together, Alex asked to play with it.

As The Guy On My Couch tried to pick up his jaw from the floor (one does not, it appears, play with The Guy On The Couches Lego sets), where it was handily collecting cat hair, I seized the opportunity:

“I will buy you that set AND have Big Ben put it together with you, Alex.”

His eyes opened as wide as saucers as he looked at me. He’s too young to know that statements like that are always followed by a rather unpleasant, “if…”

“…if,” I continued, “you go poop in the potty.”

“No.” There was no room for argument. Guess that wasn’t the currency the kid wanted to dabble in.

“Okay, if you poop in the potty,” he giggled as I continued. The word “poop” is always cause for much ruckus and merry making in my house. “I will take you to Chuck E Cheese TODAY.”

I’d been promising them a trip there as AMELIA had already dropped her deuce in the shitter – but I was going to hold off until whatever bug is currently eating away at my soul decided that my feeble immune system was actually going to kill it. Going to a Chuck E Cheese on a Sunday is worse than waxing the cat or picking out stray pubes one at a time with a pair of tweezers.

His siblings, also in the room with me, chimed in, all pressing the kid to take a shit on the crapper. After a couple minutes, an overwrought Alex protested so loudly that we all stopped and then went about our day (read: tried to stave off a headache, while the banshees chased each other about). My eldest, Ben, continued pressing his brother.

Twenty minutes later, Alex was actually perched atop the porcelain throne and five minutes later, he dropped his first deuce.

The whole house erupted into cheers as the small ones scurried to find pants to wear to Mouse Hell, Where A Parent Is Reminded To Take Her Birth Control, to eat Mouse pizza.

Ears still ringing from the sounds of Mouse Hell, I looked at Dave sheepishly, as we pulled into the toy store after our hour in Mouse Hell (happily, I noted, firearms are not allowed there), and shrugged. I had promised the kid a zillion hundred dollar Lego kit.

“I never thought he’d do it,” I said.

“Me either,” The Daver replied.

And that is how Your Aunt Becky learned to never, ever bribe a kid – no matter how unlikely it is that aforementioned child will actually perform a feat.

Turns out, I am as stupid as I look.

How was YOUR weekend, Pranksters?

(I have to apologize – I’d been planning to start writing my Go Ask Aunt Becky column again – I have plenty of questions, but I was beyond sick on Saturday)