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

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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.