Since moving The Guy On My Couch onto my couch, we’ve had a lot of desserts around. We all know I can’t cook. Shit, I’ve burned Jello and tried to microwave a can of SlimFast (not recommended, by the by), and not been even the slightest bit put off by it.

But the Guy On My Couch can cook. He LIKES to cook. He also likes home repairs and would probably clean the pool if the one I had wasn’t four feet across and made entirely of plastic. And no, you cannot have him for yourself. MY Guy On The Couch.

(he doesn’t know that he’s never moving out)

Anyway, he likes making desserts for the crotch parasites, who, in turn, love him more than they love Mario. Which is a lot.

This week, he made them a cake. A white cake with chocolate buttercream frosting THAT DIDN’T COME FROM A CAN. Did you know that you can HAVE frosting without using a can?

(my next invention: aresolized frosting)(PATENT PENDING, MOTHERFUCKERS)

It’s not been a great week for Child Behavior around these here parts – I’m sick, you’re sick, we’re all sick, which means I have three extraordinarily crabby children fighting over who gets to the top of the stairs first and who gets to use what cup (despite having three identical cups).

So I haven’t been doling out the cake. I figure, why reward bad behavior? The cake has been largely untouched by the rest of the house, since, well, it looks better on your ass than mine.

(hey, have you been working out? You look HOT in those pants).

I woke up this morning to see this:

The remains of the cake.

The vultures have been steadily removing frosting from the top of the cake when I was too busy playing Angry Birds or watching dancing cat videos.

You can’t help but laugh.

Wait, what’s that next to the cake? (hint: it’s not Hong Kong Fooey)

Why, it’s one of the Twitter Klout Perks I got!

With Klout like THIS how could I ever want anything else?

Seriously, does ANYONE want a Banana Hanger? Because I keep thinking “Banana Hammock” and laughing, which means it’s going to stay in it’s box for the rest of eternity (or until I get low on my “throw/donate one thing away every day” resolution).

P.S. Klout, you are a genius.

Dear Nintendo,

I was not a Nintendo Kid. I was not a part of the Nintendo generation. I mean, technically, I should’ve been – the NES came out when I was at the absolute right age to be enchanted by your two tiny Italian plumbers, trying to save the princess from um, someone mean.

I’d have known the NAME of this “mean person” except that my parents were all “video games are stupid! They rot your brain!”

Apparently, Nintendo, that only applied to the NES games. My brother happily played his Zork games on the computer. And the following Christmas, just as Super Mario 3 came out, I was given a Sega Genesis.

For a couple of months, I happily plugged away at my Sonic The Hedgehog game, always wondering why a wee blue hedgehog cared about getting rings or beating some evil genius villain. About the time I got Kris-Kross “Make My Video,” I realized I was the only fucking kid on the block with a Sega Genesis. Everyone else had, you guessed it, a Nintendo. Or a Super Nintendo. Or a Super Nintendo hold the lettuce sub mayo.

Sure, my system had better graphics, but Mario could wear a raccoon suit! HOW COOL WAS THAT?

Answer: ludicrous.

Eventually, I ditched video games forever. I’m no gamer girl.

When I had kids, I expected they’d be like me – they’d prefer to read books (with pages!) rather than waste their time moving badly animated characters around the screen.

Nintendo, I was wrong. I was so, so wrong.

We got a Wii for Dave (under the pretense of being for Ben) after we moved into our house. Well played on that one, Nintendo. The Wii was used for awhile until, well, it wasn’t.

Then the kids switched to a Game Boy or DS or whatever the hell the hand-held video thingamabob was. Soon, I had not one, but two sons obsessing over beating level four or five-niner or whatever. I bit my tongue – I remembered being the only kid on the block unable to talk about how “cool” the “Mario raccoon suit” was. I remembered, Nintendo, feeling saddened that no one wanted to see my Kris-Kross “I Missed The Bus” video.

A couple of weeks ago, Nintendo, my eldest saved up all his cash to buy a new Wii. See, Nintendo, our old Wii had stopped working months before. I was not saddened, but my children, well, my children were prostrate (not prostate!) with grief.

And now, now Nintendo, we have a Wii. We have two Game Boys. We have Mario candy and Yoshi figurines. We have two boys who want a “Mario” themed bedroom. We have a mother who is banging her head against the wall, still saddened that no one wants to see her Kris-Kross video.

Nintendo, you are a crafty bitch.

So for now, you win, Nintendo.

I know Sega will make a comeback any day now. And when they do, the whole WORLD can see my mad video making skillz.

Love,

Aunt Becky

This is a guest post from my friend Barb, who wrote to me after she read my post on Monday, The Middling Place. She’d sent it to me as an email, but I strong-armed her into allowing me to share it with you, Pranksters. It’s a beautiful post about special needs parenting.

(I’ll probably steal it again for Band Back Together, because I am a jerk like that)

P.S. Barb, I love you.

I, too, live in the Middling Place. Off and on since November 1987.

We will never be able to be completely away from there. It is as much a part of you and I as our livers or kidneys. After a while, you will know when it’s time to be there, the Middling Place.

You feel the cold fog press over you as though someone has thrown burlap trimmed with heavy metal weights over your head. You try to peer out through the gaps, see the world around you, feel the sunshine on your face. Shivering, you watch the images of what may have been. Your child growing up “normally.” Walking, talking, and laughing. I’d even accept the tears.

You see her standing outside of Life, looking in at the others. They are growing, and dancing, sneaking kisses, driving and going to College without much thought. Does she know she is different? Does she feel what I see?

As the seconds and minutes and days and years tumble into the heap called ‘Life,’ you learn to control your tears and overwhelming sadness. ‘Fake it ’til you make it,’ you always say. But when that deafening call sounds within your heart, your soul, your entire being, you know can no longer ignore it.

You’re commodious: ‘I can handle anything” facade crashing noiselessly to the ground, landing as shrapnel at your feet.

You turn and limp wearily to the Middling Place.

You glance back at your parents, your husband, and your other children. You are regretful to leave them, but you have no choice. You are carried away by a force stronger than yourself and soon you relent and let it take you. You are being eaten alive. Gobbled by the ferocious monsters’ hunger, ripping at your flesh, tearing your heart out, laughing clamorously, and finally injecting you heavily with Guilt.

Blame and Fault become your champions, reminding you of the day you sat in the sun too long, or had a sip of your husbands wine or didn’t sleep enough or swam in that river. Her pain, her disfigurement, her disabilities, is of your own making.

Finally, struggling, stumbling, exhausted and weak, you get up on your feet. You straighten your clothes, wipe the tears, and fix your hair. We can’t allow her to see. She can’t know she is the reason.

Back where she is we practice, prepare educate and train, make plans and see ‘Professionals’. We try anything we are told will help her.

She begins to speak! One word, two words, three words in a row! We count for years! Warmed by the silly sentences she utters.

She’s walking now, that jilty gait, like she will spill over at any moment. You valiantly let her go on her own, cringing inside as you imagine what the possibilities are.

“I love you,” you tell her. ‘Yes’ she says. I want to snuggle her, wrap her in my arms and cover her with kisses. She rejects me, cringing as though I am poison.

One day though, she will bring some artwork, a picture of the two of us, she and I, maybe sing a song, and let me touch her hair. Clap, clap clapping loudly through the house will make you smile, because you know she is happy. Her enthusiastic attempts at jokes will make you laugh for days, repeating them to friends who will never understand.

This is our life.

We wish they were different, yet at the same time, we don’t ever want them to change. We love our babies.

They make us stronger, more insightful, more perceptive than before she was here.

Before the Middling Place.

When I was a kid, I had a fainting couch in my bedroom.

Not because I was prone to fainting or requiring long periods to regroup on a fashionable yet comfortable accessory, but because my parents had antiques – lots of ’em.

But I was always mystified by this contraption. When I was sick, there were two things I wanted: The Price is Right and a pillow. Later, it became a bottle of green death flavored Nyquil – for all those times you want to be comatose without a traumatic brain injury (TM).

(I should really run their advertising campaigns)

Now, of course, I have kids, which means that I can’t spend the day in a Green Death Coma. Kids have these NEEDS, you know? Like FOOD. And DIAPERS. And the Wii. No more Green Death Coma for me!

Which is usually fine. Nyquil makes me gag and generally when I’m sick one of two things happen:

1) I can sleep it off

B) I can work through it.

But I’m in the middle of a nasty withdrawal from my maintenance migraine meds (alliterations for the win!)(Carbitrol, for those who care), which means that sleep is out of the question. So is doing everything from writing a coherent blog post to taking a pee without whining.

I took yesterday off, a rare occurrence, figuring that spending a day huddled on the couch with my blanket and a Hoarders marathon, taking the time to properly moan, weep, and feel sorry for myself, in the hopes that I’d feel better today. I mean, I got shits to do. Like write crappy blog posts. And use The Twitter. And walk upright! And learn particle physics! AND LOUNGE AGAINST THE MOTHERFUCKING MACHINE!

It didn’t help.

So I will be taking today off as well, obnoxiously resenting kid germs, plotting the untimely death of Mark Zuckerberg and trying to lounge against the machine…from the couch.

If only I had more Hoarders and my fainting couch back. I bet that’d get me right again.

For Crys

I sat there, glued to the end of the couch, holding onto my new baby like she was a life vest, the light from the end table next to me bathing us in a soft, yellow hue. There were other people around, although it was late in the evening. My sister in law? My mother? I can’t remember.

My sons, too, were around. Perhaps it was just the big one. The small one, based upon my memory, should have been in bed, although perhaps he was not.

Softly, I rubbed the top of my new girl’s head, breathing in that new baby smell. Each time my hand brushed that bump on the back of her head, that hard, fluid bump, the tears formed, my eyelashes grew heavy and I began to moan. I wept into her, so scared of the future. We’d been discharged from the NICU with very little beyond a scary diagnosis and a follow-up card for a neurologist who didn’t take our insurance.

The diagnosis was new, and I refused to use Dr. Google to make myself feel worse. I knew what a “posterior encephalocele” was. I just didn’t know how dire a diagnosis that was. Until later. Much, much later.

I’d bought myself some books – pre-nightmare – to read during those boring hours I planned to nurse my new baby. Word searches, books, and a potential maid service – all things I’d busied myself thinking about, feeling they were very important, until the doctor had said the words that forever changed me – “Becky, there’s something wrong with your baby’s head.”

Now it all seemed so stupid. Who gives a shit about spot-free mirrors when you’re not sure if your new baby will be celebrating a birthday?

But I could not bring myself to talk, to open up, to any of those around me. I knew it would be in vain – if I opened my mouth, I’d just begin to cry those awful, gut-wracking sobs anyway. Lord knows I didn’t need to cry any more – I could barely see through my shiny, swollen eye sockets.

Instead, I reached down into my thoughtfully packed hospital bag and pulled out a book. I’d bought two – a luxury considering I was about to have two under two – The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and Revolutionary Road. I had no way of knowing that these were not books that someone with a medically fragile baby should be reading (one is about a mother who delivers two babies, one with Down Syndrome, who is taken by a nurse and raised separately from her brother and the other about an unhappy housewife in the 1950’s who dies after attempting to give herself an abortion).

I had no way of knowing how horrifying my choices of book were, but there I had them. And I read them both.

In the quiet of that cold February night, I read them both.

It was the beginning of what I called The Middling Place. The space between learning how quickly your world can be turned on it’s head and learning how to live sideways. The space between diagnosis and reality.

The place where you wait.

The place where, in those quiet moments, your heart feels heavy in your chest, the demons and monsters threatening your every move. The Fear a permanent resident in the back of your own skull.

The Middling Place is a lonely place – a secret place, a land of tears, inhabited by you and you alone. Other people may drift nearby, stuck in their own Middling Place, but yours is a solitary land. Some moments, they’re filled with the purest of joy. Others with an unending sorrow.

It’s not always a bad place, The Middling Place, but in those quiet moments, the voice in your head reminds you of how fucked up this really is, your skin crawls and your guts threaten to expel themselves any way they can. You’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole, Alice, and why yes, I’d like a cup of tea – two lumps, no milk, if you please.

And you wait.

I sat there, on my freshly cleaned couch (thank you o! gods of steam cleaners), in a group of my very best friends. We were eating the greasiest of greasy pizza, occasionally stopping to fetch a rogue binkie or wipe a dirty face. We laughed, talking about the times we’d shared, where our lives had randomly found us, pausing now and again to wipe tears from our eyes.

These people, my friends – my very best friends – they’d flown in from all over the country to celebrate my daughter’s birthday with me. They didn’t have to. I didn’t have to threaten them with a tube sock full of quarters. They did it because they wanted to be there with me, with us, together.

I’d never felt quite so at home in my living room.

It had been so long since I’d sat in my home, surrounded by people who know me as I am, fucked up bits and all, and laughed so hard that I was afraid I was going to whiz myself.

Seeing packages that my friends, my Pranksters, had sent for my daughter, knowing they’d cared enough to send her something for her third birthday, it reminded me of the connections. How lucky I’ve been to know so many wonderful people.

Because I am.

Lucky, that is.

Back when using the Internet cost approximately nine bucks a minute and I used it to fuck with people in chat rooms (oh, like you didn’t), I’d never really understood that there were people behind those words. Even as a blogger, back in 2003, the very notion that the words I hastily strung together would be read by another person was mind-boggling. I assumed my site was read by porn bots trying to increase my penis size, not living, breathing people (I assume that the un-dead don’t have internet access, but I could be mistaken).

I have never been so happy to be wrong. No, not about the un-dead.

When I get asked about making money blogging, after I stop laughing, I’m always a little bit…stung. Not because I don’t understand the desire to make a little cash on the side, but because to me, it’s not what it’s about.

I’ll take the friends I’ve made, the connections I’ve formed over a stack of cash any day.

A pony on roller skates, tho…well, maybe not so much.

A present from my very best friends who work with me on Band Back Together.

(if you’re a member of the Band and would like to vote for Band Back Together at the Weblog Awards, you may do so here. MWV is nominated too, which OMG, but The Band deserves the award for all of the bravery they’ve poured into our site.)

After obsessing (I’m being kind here) and beating my brain against the wall, trying to allow myself to get over that stupid lump in my throat and just. fucking. do. it, I manged to, this year, talk myself out of talking myself out of planning a birthday for Amelia.

(did you follow that? I barely did)

I had my reasons. They sounded good rolling around in my head. I had my convictions. I held onto them in my grubby ass hands like a bottle of vodka. I didn’t NEED to throw her a party for her – she’d be happy eating Mouse Pizza while I suffered epileptic fits near the pee-smelling ball pit as we all contracted some mysterious Oregon Trail Disease.

That much is true.

She couldn’t care less if we had a zillion people over or if we went and played SkiBall until my arm threatened mutiny. I know my daughter and that’s the truth (truth time – she’d prolly giggle if my arm did, in fact, fall off)(if my severed stump of an arm did fall off, tho, I’d like to hope it would get me 100,000 points on Skiball).

But I had to do it. It wasn’t for her. Or Alex. Or Ben. Or The Guy on my Couch. Or even The Daver.

It was for me.

It was a way to challenge myself to do something that I was entirely certain I couldn’t do. Something I wanted so badly to do. Something that meant well more than eating sugar until we passed out.

It meant that for one day – one single day – I could tell my demons to fuck off, go back to bed, and leave me be. I could drown my anxiety in my little girl’s smile. I could show the world that while I had been knocked down, I wasn’t planning to be knocked out any time soon. That my demons could threaten me all they want, but they weren’t going to stop me from living.

I did it.

It’s a small victory, for sure. A child’s birthday party isn’t exactly the penultimate of challenges, however, it was one. more. thing. I couldn’t properly do. If PTSD hadn’t taken enough away from me, it tried to take that, too.

I call bullshit.

Since throwing the party, it’s as though a minor weight has been taken off my shoulders. Certainly it’s not the first or last challenge I’ll face, of this I am entirely aware. But it is a challenge. And I took that challenge, stared it in the face, and told it that I was, in fact, going to beat it into submission, if I had to go eye of the motherfucking tiger on it to make it scream UNCLE.

It did.

I’m one step closer to kicking PTSD in the taco.

And that feels fucking great.

—————–

How do you battle YOUR demons, Pranksters?

(Also: Band Back Together (which I know many of you are a part of) as well as my own site were nominated for a Bloggie this year. If you’d like to vote for one of the many deserving nominees (myself not included), you can do so here.)

On Saturday, thirty of my favorite people in the world came to celebrate my daughter’s birthday – finally. She was so excited (read: crabby) while waiting for her party to begin that I nearly sold her into slavery. But I didn’t.

We prepared by getting into our party dress:

Shockingly, she allowed me to help her pick it out. Generally my suggestions are bullshit in Mimi’s book.

She showed a little sass before complaining that her party wasn’t ready. Guess that next time, I’ll start the party at 8AM. Hope she doesn’t mind if I’m not there. SO not a morning person.

She promptly spilled her morning coffee on her dress, which pissed her off, but she quickly got over it. Her aunts Dawnie and Teala (all the way in from Texas with her boyfriend Brian) and uncles were arriving to help set up the party.

Now, I’m not a party person. I mean, I can do a keg stand like nobody’s business, but when it comes to all artful “this should go…THERE. PERFECT!” I’m pretty useless. One might argue that I’m ALWAYS useless, but that is neither here nor there.

While The Daver and The Guy On My Couch strung streamers, Dawnie and I got relegated to salting the driveway.

(P.S. we did a shitty job)

SPOILER ALERT!

(P.P.S. No one died)

Once the streamers were strung, it was time to bust out the real sweet shoppe stuffs I’d been hoarding.

Kinda looks like Willy Wonka barfed everywhere, right?

Right.

I don’t actually know what this is (it could be tampons) – but it was purdy and colorful.

I can’t resist something shaped like hearts. It’s against my DNA. Plus COLORS!

Then, an old favorite (that’s a lie) that can double as a toilet brush!

ROCK CANDY!

Gratuitous snap of rock candy:

(no one ate the rock candy.)(I’m going to pretend it’s because it was pretty, not because it tasted like raw ass)

Remember these? I do. Back before I had common sense (shut up, I do SO have some now. Like 5. At least.), I remember eating these. By the time I was 8 or so, I was all, WAIT A MINUTE, THIS CANDY TASTES LIKE GARBAGE EVEN IF IT IS SOOOO PRETTY!

I think I got tired of accidentally eating the paper.

And where would a good sweet shoppe party be without weeeee cuppy cakes? (answer: I don’t have an answer)

These cupcakes, made by Dawnie (who cannot salt a driveway to save herself), were not only freaking adorable, but delicious. Mmmmmmm….cuppycakes.

Also made by Dawnie were these:

Tell me these aren’t beyond full of the awesome. Because you’d be a lying liar who lies.

Instead of adding ribbons to the balloons so they could be dragged around the house, plastering my poor allergic face with latex, The Daver had the bright idea to simply fill the room with balloons.

If I teach you NOTHING else, Pranksters, let it be this: DO THIS FOR YOUR NEXT CHILD PARTY. I swear, the balloons occupied the children for at least three hours.

And a Hello Kitty cake for my birthday girl. Made by Dawnie. If she can’t properly decorate the house, at least she can bake. Right?

(I can’t even do that)

For all of the chocolate cake lovers, Dawnie made this:

The birthday girl was quite thrilled by her cake.

The day after her party, the kids opened some presents. We always buy the children who aren’t celebrating their birthday buckets of trinkets and stuffs to play with. It helps a little.

Amelia decided to show off her cannibalistic tendencies.

(lookit Alex. Bwhahahahaha!)

OH GOD, MY EYES!

Hello Kitty did NOT go gentle into that good night.

Alex, tearing into his bucket. Ben was hiding from the camera.

Girlfriend is going to be a better photog than me any day now.

And lastly, I made people sign something for her bedroom.

I’m totally leaving that fake baby in there.

Birthday hangovers, man, they’re a BITCH.

Since my brain is essentially mush (or mushier than normal!), I’m pointing you to this article which could use some opinions.

Will be back tomorrow with a less mushy brain.

Dear Amelia,

You were born, January 28, 2009, amid the whirring and clicking of the NICU team, over my frantic wails, and my doctor’s shouts of “GET THE NICU IN HERE STAT,” a whopper of a baby. Your rolls had rolls, making you look like a mini Stay Puft Marshmallow Baby. I longed, from my place on the bed where I lay weeping, to examine every one of those rolls. There’s nothing I love more than a brand new roly-poly, chubby cheeked, shit machine.

(you, post surgery)

But it wasn’t so simple, was it?

Amelia, you were born with a defect on your head. Right after you were born, it seemed as though it was probably a cosmetic issue, a benign cyst upon your wee head. The alternative, I knew from years of medical and nursing training, was a big. fucking. deal. indeed.

Guess which one you had?

My daughter, you are always the overachiever.

We had about twelve hours between birth and diagnosis in which we feverishly hoped that it was a boring cyst – your daddy and I and your Internet Aunts and Uncles hoped and prayed that you would be okay. It was only after your first CT Scan (I have to note that there is NO heading in your baby book for “Baby’s First CT Scan” which makes me think those baby book people have it ALL WRONG)(Okay, you don’t have a baby book. I really WISH you did, but you don’t)(sorry kiddo) that we learned that you were more of an overachiever than your mother.

It took hours to talk to a doctor that day, but when we did, the news wasn’t good. You’d already been ripped away from me and whisked off to the NICU, leaving your daddy and I to howl in sadness in our now-empty room. Your dad had tracked down your neurologist and was told that you had a neural tube defect. An encephalocele. You would need major neurosurgery and soon.

Amelia, why did you have to be such an overachiever?

It was there in the NICU that you were given your middle name – Grace. For you, in the face of all this adversity, showed me what grace looked like. Your father, he named you there.

The diagnosis left the future full of question marks (and you with a scar that neatly bisects the back of your head). Would you be normal? Would you survive? Would you learn as your brothers had?

The answer has always been a resounding *shrugs*

See most kids, my tiny overachiever, who have neural tube defects in the location that you did, do not survive. Most die before or after birth. Such a small handful of children with posterior encephaloceles survive that there is almost no data about them.

You are not only a million dollar baby, but a one in a million child.

For you are easily the smartest of my three very smart children. The connections you make between things. The way you understand concepts that puzzle most adults, that is nothing short of a miracle.

You are nothing short of a miracle.

In your short years, Amelia, you have done more good than any three-year old should be capable of. While your birth shattered me, you’ve helped assemble me back into a new person; a better person. You have given hope to people who have never met you, hope for parents whose children have the very same diagnosis – encephalocele – that you do.

You are the sole reason that Band Back Together exists. Through The Band, you have saved lives – actual lives.

That is nothing short of a miracle.

So to you, on the day before your third birthday, my darling girl, I want to thank you. For all you have given me. For the light you’ve bestowed upon the world, and your light – a light that continues to shine.

May your light always shine brightly, Amelia Grace.

Always.

Love,

Mommy