Last night, as I was sprawled out on my couch, watching Weeds and trying to ascertain just how many balls I’d need to turn my basement into a ball pit, I heard a rustling sound coming from my garage. Well, I thought to myself, it’s probably not someone delivering delicious cuppity cakes. And it’s probably not the Tell Tale Heart.

After I got lost in thought about a heart-shaped cuppity cake, I realized I could still hear the rustling sound. Okay, it’s probably NOT the wind – that wily bastard – either.

Begrudgingly, I slunk off the couch and wobbled my way to the garage to see what, pray tell, was going on in there. Was it a nitrous party thrown by the kids next door? A Jehovah’s Witness attempting to stone my sinning ass? Had my car come to life?

(I may or may not have been feverish)(I also may or may not have stood there for several minutes giggling at the notion of the nitrous party kids being stoned by a Jehovah’s Witness)

No.

It was neither of those things.

It was an adorably large raccoon, scritchity-scratching at a bag of dog food. But, you’re saying, Aunt Becky, you do not HAVE a dog. And I would reply, languidly sipping my coffee, that I did have a dog. Once. He’s, however, died.

He had the audacity to die RIGHT AFTER I’d bought him a large bag of food. And as often as I’d tried to remember to toss the 8172 pound bag in the back of the Family Roadster and dropping it off at the pet store. I kept meaning to, Pranksters, but the idea of trying to wrangle three kids PLUS a 04780737 pounds of dog food through a busy parking lot, well, it was unappealing.

So in the garage it sat, that sad bag of food for my dead dog, until the raccoon found it and decided that it was, in fact, his food.

I couldn’t disagree.

As I approached the door, still giggling, the raccoon stared at me, eyes wide open, all, “FUCK, I got BUSTED.” I see that same look on my kids’ faces whenever I catch them playing in the toilet. We stared at each other for a moment until he decided to slowly back away, out of the garage.

It was then that I decided instead of a monkey butler named Mr. Pinchey, I instead needed a raccoon sidekick.

I shall call him Walter.

It was totally me.

When you stop laughing, let me know.

P.S. Confused? Go here.

I remember the tears I cried after my first son was born.

My kid hated me. I was a twenty-one year old mother. I was the approximate size and shape of a human fire hydrant or an overgrown Oompa Loompa. My friends had, thanks to aforementioned son’s screams, all but run for the hills. I barely slept. I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing – only that this wasn’t supposed to be the way of things. I had no goals. No ambitions. I barely recognized myself in the mirror.

They were bitter – these tears – because I’d spent my entire life knowing where I was going and what I was doing. There was never the slightest hint of hesitation in my step.

Finding myself lost, questioning my every decision, wondering what I was doing wrong (because clearly the problem was with me), well, these were new for me.

My life confused me.

Luckily, with a few suggestions from an old friend, I was able to figure out the What Next and Move Ahead with my life. My son was autistic – I wasn’t a rancid mother. I had to scrap medical school for nursing school. School allowed me to succeed and feel pride in myself again. Slowly, those baby pounds melted off as my son found his voice.

Once again, I was back. My steps were confident and certain, my life on a new track.

It took a lot more this time, to bring back that useless girl. Migraines. Antenatal depression. Encephaloceles. Postpartum depression. Financial instability. Workaholism. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Uncertainty. Anxiety. That purposeless feeling pervaded.

Certainly, during the day, I was fine – I had my blog, I had my Pranksters, I had three wicked cool kids, I had new friends who didn’t mind babies screaming. I had purpose then.

But at night, when the rest of the house was either sleeping or working, those feelings crept back in. Slowly at first. Soon, I spent my nights weeping the kind of soul-shaking cry that only comes with utter heartbreak. I suppose, looking back, I was heartbroken.

I had it all – everything I had worked for, and it simply wasn’t enough. The strings it came with had turned into a noose.

Everyone else seemed to be fine – flourishing even – so the problem, well, the problem was clearly my own. *I* was the problem. Broken beyond repair. Useless. My steps once again a shuffle.

I cannot tell you, Pranksters, how long I felt this way – convinced I was, indeed, broken. Months? Years? I’m not entirely sure.

I cannot tell you either, Pranksters, when that feeling dissipated. Because it has. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know when that empty space was filled for the first time in my life. My footfalls now echo with confidence and occasionally stupidity. My future is not a question of “if?” but a question of “when?”

I can see now that I was never useless. Never less than. Never without.

And never, ever, ever – not even for a moment – broken.

I’ve never been one for family beds.

Before you fire off angry hate mail, let me remind you that I said “I” wasn’t one for them. You can sleep as a family all you want. I just happen to value my sleep and when I have an errant toddler kicking my kidneys, oddly enough, I can’t sleep. And shit knows, I’ve had ENOUGH problems sleeping, I don’t need kidney punches to compound them.

So I’ve done everything I can to make sure that my kids never ended up in bed with me.

Until now.

Amelia seems to have caught my mysterious Oregon Trail disease – or she’s teething – and has decided that sleep is bullshit. No. Sleep is FUCKING bullshit.

Which makes me sad in the pants. Because of all the things I love in the world, sleep is at the top of my list, right alongside cheeseburgers, dating television husbands and celebrity gossip magazines. I simply cannot understand how anyone who shares my genetics could be opposed to sleep.

You’d think after Alex I might’ve learned, but no.

So every night, right around midnight, she wakes up tearful and exhausted. Rather than just rolling over and going back to sleep, our conversations go like this:

Aunt Becky: “Are you hurting, baby pants?”

Mimi: “NO.”

Aunt Becky: “Do you need another binkie?”

Mimi: “NO.”

Aunt Becky: “Do you need a blankie?”

Mimi: “NO.”

Aunt Becky: “A million dollars?”

Mimi: “NO.”

Aunt Becky: “A pony?”

Mimi: “NO.”

Aunt Becky: “Okay, what gives?”

Mimi: “BED.”

Aunt Becky: “Girl pants, you ARE in bed.”

Mimi: “MOMMY’S BED.”

Aunt Becky: “Mimi, no.”

Mimi (begins to scream): “MOOOOOOOOOMMMMY’S BED.”

Aunt Becky (fearful the other two will wake up): “Okay, okay.”

And off I go, toddler in arms, to go rest in my bed. And by “rest,” I mean, “get kicked in the vagina” or “get kicked in the face” until she decides that her bed is less bullshit than mine. At which point, I scoop her up and plop her into her own bed.

I wish someone would give ME a pony when I couldn’t sleep. I’d have a pony FARM by now.

————

How do you guys handle family bed? Do you do it? Can Mimi join you?

———–

I wrote this post about the first thing I thought when I held my son for the first time for ABC’s Million Mom Challenge. It’s worth a read. Even my son liked it!

Also: GULP. I cannot believe I actually wrote something my kid would read!

It started last week. Or the week before. Or sometime last year. I don’t know. Time isn’t my strong suit.

Alex, the four-year old, had a double ear infection. This on top of being poked in the eye with a piece of cable from my daughter made for one Unhappy Camper. Can’t really blame the kid for that.

Off to the doctor we went, where I was certain he’d gotten a corneal abrasion or some other eye condition that would squick me the fuck out. You’d think that because I’m a nurse, I’d be immune, but BLECH. No.

Turns out, it wasn’t related to his sister’s gentle, loving caress to the eyeball with a piece of metal. No. Pinkeye. Fuck. Ew. Gross. Nasty.

So we did our course of eye-drops, while I tried not to vomit because EW GROSS EYEBALL and then I got sick with the Mysterious Oregon Train Disease (which I still motherfucking HAVE)(talk about bullshit. Dysentery would be SO much more glamorous than this). Come to think of it, it’s probably from the doctor’s office. Remind me to pick up a hazmat suit, Pranksters.

Yesterday, my day care lady informed me that my daughter woke up with goo in her eye too. She, too, went on the eyedrops. Along with my son, whose eye goo has returned. The universe likes to torture me sometimes.

So now I wait, Pranksters. I wait for the day when I wake up with The Blob on my face. Because anyone who knows me knows I’m twenty-five-niner times more likely to get infected with kid crap than the average bear, I’m certain that when I do, it will be a Blob That Ate My Face. I’m altogether certain, in fact, that my Blob will mutate and become an actual living, breathing Blob, like the pink goo from Ghostbusters II.

Here’s hoping it’ll dance to “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher.”

A couple of weeks ago, Pranksters, I came here and dumped my thoughts all over your screen. In this case, my thoughts were not about SkyMall kitties or why John C. Mayer ruined my life, but about hate.

Specifically, hateful comments.

I took a comment I’d gotten in January of this year and explained that it had caused me to live a [redacted] life.

(sidebar: [redacted] means to edit out sensitive information)

It wasn’t a particularly good post, however, it was one of those things I had to write to get it out. By getting it out, I’d hoped to be able to move on to a non-[redacted] life. I don’t much appreciate having to shit rainbows and kittens when I’m in a shit ON rainbows and kittens kind of mood, and I knew it had impacted me. I also knew why.

But in the comments on that post, I was asked a question. A question that deserves more of an answer than a comment reply could offer. And a question that I’d welcome your opinion about.

The question was simple (pardon me for paraphrasing):

“Do you feel that the negative comments outweigh the positive?”

The answer? Not so simple.

While I haven’t been subject of numerous hateful comments from Internet Mole People (read: trolls), I have gotten a handful, although most about my dog, Auggie. Just FYI, Pranksters, the Internet is sensitive about dogs.

Most of the hateful comments have been of this ilk:

“You’re boring.”

“You’re not funny.”

“This was navel-grazing.”

“You have problems.”

“You should kill yourself.” (from The Twitter)

To which I would heartily agree with all but the last sentiment. After all, the world needs ditch-diggers too.

Not one of those bothered me, except for the “you’re not funny” bit. And that only bothered me because I never SAID I was funny. Funny LOOKING perhaps, but funny? Not so much.

(pointless sidebar too! Who SAYS “I’m funny” about themselves anyway? UN-funny people, that’s who.)(also: your mom)

Anyway. Those type of Internet Mole People comments are fine. Just because you leave them doesn’t mean I have to publish them and just because I publish them doesn’t mean I cry unicorn tears into my pillow at night. You are CERTAINLY welcome to your opinion. And we all know Anonymity + The Internet = Assjackets. The difference is, I don’t have to give you the platform to broadcast it. Sorry, ’bout that.

(also: I am NOT sorry)

But the comment in question, well, it called me an addict. That was not cool. Why? Well, if I didn’t have massive migraines or two alcoholic parents (note: I am not bashing my parents, simply stating the truth. They are recovering addicts)(see also: I am only as sick as my secrets), maybe I’d have laughed. After all, I was the dumbass who named my blog “Mommy Wants Vodka.” What can I expect?

However, it’s something I worry about. Becoming an addict myself, that is, not renaming my blog. I’m not sure how to avoid that one.

So to be called out like that by “someone who knows me, the REAL me,” well, ouch. Condescending + hitting a nerve = hurt. That sort of comment sticks with you.

Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe I was in the wrong for allowing it to hurt me. Maybe I’ll get hit by a bus crossing the street. Who fucking knows?

The point is, though, that sometimes cruelish comments do hurt. I think, though, that they only hurt when they hit a little too close to home.

————–

So I hope that answers your question, oh wise commenter. And now it’s your turn, Pranksters. How would you answer this question?

I bring to you something that will certainly keep you up all night long (but not in a creepy Lionel Ritchie way).

I should be back later with real werds, but for now, have these kitties to keep you company. Oh, and, is it creepy? Or am I just tired?

I was gently asked – nay, begged, by my friend Rachel to do something “touristy” while she was in town over the weekend. In addition to the tours of the dumpster and other assorted places I’d once gotten wasted, I decided it was probably time to actually bother doing something annoyingly touristy. Like stop in the middle of the sidewalk and stare at the tall buildings while making comments about “these here tall buildings.”

However, staring at buildings is only really fun when you’re wasted and they’re swaying because YOU’RE swaying and then you vomit on the shoes of a businessman wandering past you.

I figured it was time to break from tradition and do something awesome, rather than sitting on my couch, watching dancing cat videos. Also: I was afraid Rachel was going to beat my ass.

So I packed the three of us into the old Family Truckster and navigated our way downtown, while fantasizing about how wicked it would be to have “Slasher” as my license plate rather than some letters and numbers. Because, obviously.

We ended up at the Museum of Science and Industry, which is probably MY happiest place on earth (with exception to the Hardware Store, which always trumps all). Like the auto show and Chinatown, it’s a place I’ve been going since I was a wee lass and somewhere I’m always proud to show off to non-locals.

Of course, we showed up an hour before closing. I’m excellent at timing things, Pranksters. Like I should win a medal at it.

And, as per usual, I immediately dragged them up to the anatomy exhibits, because, well, I’d rather swallow my tongue that hear ANY MORE about earth science.

When I showed up there, looking for the gigantic walk-through heart, I saw that the museum had acquired a number of the exhibits from Body Worlds, that traveling exhibition of preserved human bodies prepared using plastination to preserve the anatomical structures.

If you know my great love for anatomy, you’re probably all, “ZOMG AB, THAT SOUNDS FULL OF THE AWESOME!” And I really, really, really want nothing more than to agree with you. That I love looking at these bodies, so beautifully preserved for all to see. For ALL to fall in love with anatomy as I did so many years ago.

But you’d be wrong.

There’s something, I think, macabre about the whole thing. While I love looking at the circulatory system, so neatly preserved and lifelike, there’s something inherently creepy about seeing a dead guy riding a skateboard. Even if I can see the glorious muscular system in use just as it was when he was alive (presuming, of course, that he’d ever ridden a skateboard before).

I recall the day that my anatomy teacher asked me to help with the dissection of our cadaver. It did not bother me to see someone dead, someone preserved in formalin, or someone who once had hopes, dreams, and loved just as I did. No. What bothered me was that he had a shunt in his left leg left intact from the paramedics attempting to save his life.

It dawned on me, as I was examining the circus-like Body Worlds exhibits, that we who count ourselves among the living simply do not want to think of our dead as like us.

It brings it all too close to home, I think.

And while I learned many fascinating tidbits while at the MSI – my liver, for example, is a mere three years old – I walked out of there ruminating about the freakish sideshow of Body Worlds.

My hope is that the Body Worlds exhibits inspire a young crop of anatomists much like I was inspired, as a wee tot, by the mere pictures of the body from an old copy of Grey’s Anatomy.

Otherwise, we’re going to have some seriously fucked up serial killers out there.

Today, as I’m finally remembering my middle name (I think it’s “wants“) and using up what miniscule brain power I have left to decide whether or not I’d like a pony on rollerskates or a unicorn on rollerskates, I am getting ready to show yet another friend what living in Chicago is like.

Namely, my living room. Because I’m re-watching Weeds, dammit, and I have to know what happens next!

(besides the obvious “Nancy will make the worst decision ever“)

Clearly, I do not win at life OR as a tour guide. Unless it’s a tour of my living room. Which Dana can vouch for. She knows I win at the “tour of my living room.”

It goes like this: “here’s the couch.” “here’s the other couch.” “watch me sit on it.”

Really, it couldn’t be awesomer.

Anyway, this gem appeared in my inbox and I’ve been saving it for a rainy day. Which would be today. It’s ASS outside. HEY, WELCOME TO CHICAGO, IT’S ASS HERE!

That’s totally the awesomest thing ever. Jimmy Motherfucking Wales? Eat your creepy-eyed heart out.

P.S. I think I need to put this on my header somehow. HOW SICK WOULD THAT BE?

Also: Am here and here today.