Dear Aunt Becky,

Sponsorship: Wheredya gettit?

sponsorship (noun)– the act of sponsoring (either officially or financially).

This definition plucked handily from the Free Online Dictionary, not a source I’d probably use if I were writing a research paper, but for this purpose, Pranksters, I suppose it will suffice.

I’m afraid, Prankster, I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about.

I’d guess that you mean someone who pays either for my site, in which case I’d suggest my couch. Sometimes I’ve found upwards of 35 cents in there! The downside to finding change in my couch is that it is, in fact, my own change, not someone else’s, and therefore, I’m only finding my own money. When you think of it in those terms, it’s a little more depressing.

I do run ads on my blog as you can see, and those ads pay for things like hosting this blog, my group blog, Mushroom Printing, and my new previously unannounced group blog that I will be opening this week (claps happily)(does victory dance around living room)(shakes ass). I’ll tell you more about my new blog as soon as it’s done.

As far as getting corporate sponsorship and selling out To The Man any further than I have by placing additional third party ads on my sidebar or shilling out myself to companies so that they may send me to conferences on their behalf, I do not know how to do that. I’d assume that it requires several things:

1) A sizable blog

2) The ability to sell yourself to companies

3) Approaching the companies with a good sales pitch.

Really, that’s your call as to how you want to play it. I don’t do it. I haven’t done it. I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable doing it.

—————-

Aunt Becky,

Ok I know this is probably stupid to ask but how do the “SYWM” shirts fit? I am 6’1″ (yeah yeah I know like I needed to be 6’1″ with a fireball attitude like mine.  I’m probably a matter of national security now because I KNOW I have the Air Force on edge) and shirts never fit me right.

I am (please don’t kill me) a size 8 (156 pounds) so Mediums are usually about 2″ too short and I end up showing belly. WHAT SIZE SHOULD I GET SO I DON’T FLASH MY BELLEH?

Love Kate

PS You Rock.

Yay! The Shut Your Whore Mouth shirts are awesome and they’re super flattering and I probably should mention sizing. I’d order a size up from whatever you normally wear. These aren’t like crazy belly shirts (which make me stabby) and you’re tall, so I’d go with a L or an XL to be on the safe side.

If’n you have a big rack like me, get the XL. They’re hot. You’re gonna be hot. Can’t wait to hear how you kick ass and take names in it. Please don’t kick my ass. Ever.

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Dear Aunt Becky,

I’ve got a bit of a situation I’d like your advice on.  My best friend is a man I’ve known since I was abouut 5.  He’s had a bad run with depression over the last few years, and he’s currently unemployed (unrelated to the depression, but it’s not helping).  Earlier this year he started dating a 21 year old (we’re both thirty), and they’re insanely in love.  Problem is, I’m not entirely sure she’s not just insane.

She has a lot of stories about her past.  She had a child when she was 13 who died 4 years later from the toddler version of SIDS.  Her ex-boyfriend got her addicted to heroin while she slept.  Her mother’s a drug dealer and murderer.  She’s had multiple last names and was in witness protection.  Her other ex-boyfriend beat her and also happened to burn everything she owned of her child.

But she makes my best friend happy, and as far as I’m concerned, you can say your name is Cleopatra and you shit rainbows, and I’ll smile and nod for his sake.

But now the ‘stories’ have started to affect other people.  From what I can gather (because her version of events changes every time she tells it, of course), she was having trouble with her boss, so was relocated to a sister company.  Three days later, she was fired because several of her new co-workers signed statements to the effect of ‘she told us her boyfriend was going to kill her ex-boss’.  Now the ex-boss has taken out a restraining order against her and my best friend.

That one required a lot of tongue biting.  But hey, it’s his life, and if someone’s going to tell her that, even if it was a joke, that was all kinds of fucking stupid, it really should be him. Commandment one of friendship: Thou Shall Not Fuck With Thy Best Friend’s Relationship, right?

Then it got worse.

I got married, and the first time I spoke to her after the wedding, she told me she thought another friend’s husband was ‘really dominant’ towards her, and that he must beat her.
This wouldn’t happen.  He wouldn’t do it, she wouldn’t let him.  But this is a serious allegation and I was distracted that night, and maybe I missed something.  So I asked another friend, one of the most observant women I’ve ever met.  Her answer?
‘WHAT?!’ pause ‘WHHHHAAAATTT?’ It turns out that the best friend’s girlfriend didn’t even speak to the guy she was accusing of battery.  Far as we can tell, she pulled this idea out of her arse.

So, basically, my best friend is madly in love with a pathological liar, and now she’s making allegations about people who also deserve my loyalty. Does anyone have any idea how to handle this?  As weird as this sounds, I love this man almost as much as I love my husband (in a different way, of course!) and I don’t want to lose him.  But not even for him can I just keep smiling and nodding this time.

signed,

Normally, I’m down with crazy.

Bloody hell, Prankster. The upside to this is that I’d guarantee everybody reading this has been in a similar situation with a friend. The downside is that I don’t know if anyone knows how to properly handle it.

So, there are a couple of ways to handle it.

1) You say nothing, bite your tongue and watch the situation unfold from a polite distance. Unless you really think you can make him see the light and see the girl for what she is (a potential lunatic), and allow him to get out while the getting is good, this may be the only way to preserve the friendship right now.

2) You go super-stealth undercover (I just whistled the Mission Impossible song) and find out about this girl’s past, and go to confront your friend with some cold hard facts about her past. If you can blow some real holes in her stories, you might have a chance of disproving her lies and allow him to get out now. Because she sounds like a sinking ship.

3) You confront him with no evidence and see how he takes it. If he’s in love, it may not be well. In these cases, it’s usually decidedly UN-well. He may choose her and leave you standing there like an asshole. It’s happened to us all when we opened our whore mouths and spoke up. But then, at least, you said something, rather than nothing. Which may make you feel a bit better. And in the end, he’ll remember it. She’ll be a phase in his life. The Bad Girlfriend.

4) Stage an intervention with a couple of friends and try and all talk to him about her. If he’s depressed, he may not be seeing the situation for what it is. I would advise trying to bring some sort of evidence to him of her lies, if you can dig it up.

Perhaps some combination of these may help and I’m willing to bet that my Pranksters have some advice to offer you on this matter. I’m certain we’ve all been there.

Good luck, darlin’. This is a tough situation. Much love to you. Let us know how it turns out.

————–

As always, Pranksters, please fill in where I left off in the comments below. And feel free to submit your burningest questions here, to the Go Ask Aunt Becky form.

Also: when the fuck did it turn into September? That’s bullshit!

Yay Pranksters! Today, I have my homeslice Miss Grace of Miss Grace’s Disgrace doing a GUEST BLOG for me. Which is rad because she’s one of the nicest bloggers you’ll ever meet. AND she’s hot. AND she’s snarky. Which is an odd mix. Normally when you say, “she’s nice” you’re saying, “she’s ugly” or something, you know?

Not so, Little Butterflies. Miss Grace is smoking. She was my inaugural BlogHer Hump. But she’s here and she’s awesome and I’m proud to have her.

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It’s time! Time to break one of the cardinal rules of blogging! Gather round children, cuz I’m totes talking about Hated Coworkers.

Yay!

People!

PEOPLE WHO I WANT TO PUNCH IN THE THROAT!

1.  I’m Controversial Because I’m GAY!!1! coworker.

Incredibly irritating, accomplishes NEGATIVE work via diminishing work of others.
Unfathomably bitchy, and, as a bonus, he ENRAGES me by presuming that if anyone doesn’t like him, it’s because he’s gay.

It’s not because you’re gay, you ASSHOLE, it’s because you drain the life force out of my body with your presence, crushing my will to live. I don’t hate you because you’re gay, and now I hate you EXTRA for thinking that I hate you because you’re gay.

2.  Girl with the Unfortunate Tits.

Now I have no high horse about boobs.  Mine served their mammalian function for a year and a half and now they’re all milk-flappy and….unpleasant. No.High.Horse.

However. I don’t come to work with my chi-chis spilling over the top of my two-sizes-two-small skank shirt. Anyhow. This girl? Aside from an irritating personality I mean. This girl? She dresses like a whore for male attention, which, fine. Do as you will. But her bewbs are super fucking disturbing in that they start sagging from like, the collarbone?

Kind of?  It’s impossible to explain but ifyou’ve ever ogled her tits then YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. And OF COURSE PEOPLE ARE STARING AT YOUR TITS.  They are staring in HORROR. And it kills me because her goal is, in fact, the stare-at-my-tits attention factor. But I don’t think you realize why I’m staring.

3.  Old Men Who Ogle Me, exhibits A, B and C. (Hypocritical Much?)

I try REALLY hard not to show my ‘tas at work, because that’s not….just….these men are, all of them, older than my father, and I don’t think they REALIZE that they’re older than my father?

I mean, my dad’s pretty young. But still. STILL. Anyhow, bewbage in the workplace is never the plan. And these men, they are not TRYING to look at my chest, or stare, or anything. But! I’m a girl and I can tell when someone checks out my rack and GAH THIS HIGH NECKED SHIRT WAS INSUFFICIENT.

4.  Dude who wears the cologne of a marine trying to date rape 19-year-old girls in Tijuana. (AKA Cool Water)

5.  Lady who wears the perfume of someone’s dead grandmother, at ten times the recommended potency.

6.  Inability to Read Social Cues Girl!

I HATE YOU STOP TALKING TO ME CAN’T YOU SEE THAT YOU MAKE ME FEEL DEAD INSIDE OHMYGOD ENOUGH.

7.  Passive Aggressive Email Chick.

8.  Lady who sends all the
forward-this-to-ten-people-and-an-angel-will-kiss-your-soul emails.

9.  Profusely Sweating Dude, who smells like he lacks a sphincter.

Your turn to dish on some annoying coworkers, Pranksters! Yay!

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I’ve been publishing a post a day (which is why there’s a delay in it being posted) on Mushroom Printing, and if you’ve submitted one and you’re interested in promoting it once it’s up, just leave your email address on the top with a request to be emailed when it’s up.

Otherwise, I’ve been putting them up in the order they’ve been submitted.

Keep on, keeping on, Pranksters. Mushroom Printing is full of the awesome.

Summer holidays always confuse me. Not just because I think the only one worth celebrating is my birthday, which, *ahem* I did change from the actual date of my entrance into the world (July 15) to a day that should be less, well, cursed (July 28) on Facebook, which is kind of like when you say you’re “in a relationship” on there. It means it MATTERS now.

We’re going STEADY, me and my birthday!

With the exception of my national-holiday-birthday, I don’t get summer holidays. I mean, day off, FUCK YEAH, but we’re not like Jello Mold Salad people who burst out the limbo stick and dust off the old camper on Memorial Day or Labor Day. Probably because I don’t HAVE a camper but mostly because my idea of “roughing it” involves staying in a hotel without room service.

I have lots of traditions, but none of them involve setting up a tent in the middle of the woods where there are earwigs and trees and possibly rabid squirrels that might want to eat my face off while I sleep. I mean, if I want to “get back to nature” I can turn on the National Geographic Channel and not immediately flip through to a Law and Order: You’re About To Be Depressed marathon.

I’m all for a good BBQ, don’t get me wrong, so long as it doesn’t involve any additional planning on my end. Encased meats are kind of my thing, so any chance to roast weenies on a grill makes me happy in the pants (GO MEAT!), but if I have to turn a relaxed, “get your ass over, fuckwad,” invite into,

“Miss Rebecca Sherrick Harks kindly requests your presence at Casa de la Sausage at one ‘o’ clock in the afternoon on…”

then I’ve lost something in translation. I don’t want to have to turn a Labor Day BBQ into a LABOR DAY BBQ. Because then I have to clean and make appetizers and put on pants and we all know how much I hate pants.

This Labor Day, I’m torn. Since I’m clearly not going to be camping or hosting a Jello Mold Party, I’ll be doing one of two things (while eating encased meats pantsless, of course). Making Skittles Vodka or designing a proton accelerator.

Or maybe both. Why have or when you can have and?

———

Are you a Summer Holiday Family? If so, can I come over and celebrate with YOU? Even if I’m not wearing pants? Because pants are BULLSHIT.

First, I have to say that I love you all so much that I am thoroughly overwhelmed by all of your love. Thank you.

————–

So when I say that I’m “not a wedding person,” it’s kinda like saying, “I’m a little stupid.” They’re both understatements that lead to things like, oh, losing your best friends and having to go topless, while riding an angry llama down the aisle of a church* as retaliation.

Weddings are bullshit, Pranksters. I’m love a party like I love a parade, but maybe it’s too many years of serving rubbery chicken and listening to the same vows over and over, or maybe it’s attending the same wedding over and over, I don’t know, but I’d rather gnaw off my fingers than go to a wedding.

I need to be clear: marriage, I’m all for marriage. I am also all for parties, open bar, and gatherings that include dressing up and/or humiliation of my best friends. But please, spare me the Funky Chicken. Take back your plate of gelatinous fish. It’s all the same rinse, repeat, cycle over and over again.

As for me, I’d be down with a quickie Vegas wedding, if I had to have one at all. Frankly, I’d get married in a Shut Your Whore Mouth shirt and happy pants at the JOP office. I love Pomp and Circumstance and any chance to drip with diamonds, but not when I have to fake brideliness.

Last weekend, I’d been invited to a wedding for one of my oldest friends, and, oddly (I say oddly because you’ll actually know them, Pranksters), the friends who make my SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH SHIRTS.**

I had no freaking idea what to expect out of this wedding other than that it was in Indiana, which is a state (apparently) that borders the state that I live in (no, not chaos. Illinois) where I have never been. I’ve lived in Illinois my whole life and never been to Indiana or *looks at map* Iowa.

So it was going to be an adventure. Especially since shit has been so fucked up that I’ve been more scattered than normal and barely got a babysitter for the kids in time to go. Because I thought the wedding was this weekend. (I also booked the wrong plane tickets for Type A Mom, which goes to show that my mind has really been elsewhere).

Hitting the road Saturday morning, it dawned on me that Indiana is one of those fucked up states that is a different time zone than Illinois, which operates under the superior time zone of Central Standard Time. Quickly, I whipped out my iPhone and googled the name of the teeny town that the wedding was held in and sure enough, there it was, Eastern Standard Time. Which meant that I was now an hour late.

I’m sorry, but states that butt-hump each other should NOT be on different time zones. When I rule the world, along with mandatory naptime I will make sure that this is the law.

Because I can’t keep anything to myself, I told Twitter, who had a hearty laugh at me, patted my head like the good dumbass that I am, and then the open road called to me. Shockingly, through some miracle of space and time, the wedding was NOT on EST and therefore I was early. Huh.

Indiana, oh, Indiana, I have to say that I love you since you are not Wisconsin, the archenemy of Illinois, but really, I’m not sure that you altered my perception of the world. Except that I learned that Air Supply was still touring. Casinos. In Indiana. I got horribly depressed about that, even though I didn’t know any Air Supply songs.

Anyway, back to the wedding.

First thing I noticed was that although the invitation said this would be a wedding in a barn and backyard, it was freaking awesome. I think barn, I think people humping sheep. This was not that kind of barn, Pranksters. THIS barn had stainless steel appliances, a full bar, a full bathroom with a shower, a pool table, slot machines, and immediately I tried to move in.

I probably would have to remove the bar signs, but I was okay with that. It also needed a pinball machine. I desperately require a pinball machine.

I was aghast that a barn could be cool. I’d always assumed that barns were merely used as a place for animal husbandry.

This was the point where I realized that the more pictures I took in the place, the more I could claim that, yes, I did live there. Why the hell else would I have so many pictures of myself there?

It’s also the point where I realized that this barn had a kitchen nicer than my own.

It’s at this point when the homebrew of my Metal Friend Scottie kicked in. Oh, did I mention this was a METAL wedding? And that these people are REALLY why I’m like this? Because it’s true.

The Metal Heads started popping into my pictures. There’s Scottie.

And that would be Evan, one of my BFF’s.

After we got suitably toasty, I watched one of my oldest friends get married. I’ve known him since we were both 14, and it was just so awesome to see, which means that my heart is slowly melting. Shut UP.

Then, the coolest thing I’ve ever seen at a wedding happened: a Moon Bounce was blown up. Dude. Pranksters. At my next wedding, I am SO getting a Moon Bounce AND a Ball Pit (one that hasn’t been peed in by small children) and it’s going to be epically awesome.

During the toasts, which normally are only interesting to the people involved (and then only marginally, because let’s face it, not everyone is a good speech writer, myself included), we toasted to meat. MEAT! Meat is like my third favorite thing on the planet, only beaten by the word “cacophony” and strawberry lip gloss.

Toasting to meat is very serious business, you see.

Metal Weddings are, apparently, the best kinds of weddings. I even remembered all of the stuff I’d learned from strippers over the years. Who knew?

*Okay, it was leading the prayers, but still.

**I’ve been asked about the sizing, and I wanted to tell you that for women, I’d order up a size. They’re SUPER-flattering (in a bizarre twist that I couldn’t even predict), but they do run a little small. For example, I have big boobs, and normally wear a M or L. I wear a L or XL in these shirts. But trust me, you’ll look fucking hot.

Also, colors? I need to reorder shirts and what colors should I order, yo?

P.P.S. If you do buy them, I want to make a Flickr group of Shut Your Whore Mouth Shirts and you should send me a picture of yourself in one. Or doing something weird in one. Because, OBVIOUSLY.

When I pulled up to the hospital yesterday and walked through those sliding doors, whirring officially shut behind Amelia and I with a snap, I was calm. I’m not sure how I paint myself here on my one-dimensional blog, but I’ve never been prone to anxiety or cases of the vapors, and typically in the moment, I’m about as calm and collected as they get. This was no different.

I gripped my phone like a talisman and strode over to the desk where sure enough, a new volunteer greeted me to help me find my way. The scent of lilies was heavy in the air and I tried mouth-breathing (one of the few perks of having been a barfy pregnant lady) to stave off the smell. Calla lilies are one of my favorite flowers, but the rest of them remind me of all of the friends I’ve buried.

Amelia, refusing to be held, led the way through the hospital, past the gift shop where I bought her heart necklace, past the chapel where I prayed for her, past the cafeteria where I remember laughing for the first time, my throat rusty and dry, the laugh unfamiliar, past the NICU and PICU, her little legs chugged along, sturdily running so fast that we had to half-jog to keep up with her.

Finally we reached an unfamiliar corridor and the volunteer whom I’d been handily chatting about tropical plants with bid us adieu. Amelia trucked on ahead, thrilled by the freedom to run up and down the corridors, uninhibited by the ghosts that roamed them.

When we found our way–because Mili always finds her way–I saw the Children’s Memorial Hospital sign on the wall across from her new neurologist’s office. In a bizarre twist of fate, this happens to be a satellite unit of the same hospital that I did my pediatric rotation through years ago. It’s an amazing hospital.

It’s hard to believe that my daughter is now a patient.

In the waiting room, Amelia made a beeline for the crayons and happily dumped them out all over the table. Screw coloring.

Eventually, we went back and met with the neurologist, who I was understandably anxious to meet. Neurologists, for those of you happily unawares, aren’t perhaps the kindest of all doctors. They’re sort of at the top of the doctor heap, only beaten by infectious disease doctors, and what’s more is that they know it. So people skills aren’t exactly important to their profession.

I was prepared to go all Campaign of Terror on him and be all “you DO know who I AM, don’t you?” and not because I am a pitiful blogger who might pathetically attempt to sully his reputation on the internet (I wouldn’t), but because I come from a line of well respected doctors who are well known. My now-middle name would be a dead giveaway, but I was all, you’ve got to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em and stuff.

I didn’t even have to whip that out because he was FULL of the awesome. When Amelia took his reflex hammer and started trying to test out MY reflexes, he simply went and got another one rather than try and wrestle it out of her fists of fury.

For any of you not playing along at home, Amelia was born with a midline parietal enecephalocele which is a neural tube defect caused by the failure of the embryonic neural tube (the primitive spinal cord) to close properly. Her skull didn’t fuse and part of her brain, the part right about at the crown of her head (for anyone who doesn’t know where the parietal lobe of your brain is) developed outside of her head. It was a true encephalocele, not a meningeocele, meaning that there was actual brain matter inside of the defect, not just cerebrospinal fluid.

Having an encephalocele reduces the likelihood of survival at birth to 21%. Half of those live-births survive. Of those survivors, 75% have a mental defect. The poorest indicators for survival and associated anomalies are true posterior encephaloceles. Like what my daughter, Amelia, was born with.

At three weeks of age, she underwent massive neurosurgery to repair the bony defect in her skull with a skull implant and to remove the herniated brain tissue that had developed outside of her skull. The surgery was a success.

Mili’s neurologist suggested that we follow up with an EEG to look for any possible seizure activity while she is sleeping, as she displays none of the signs of seizing while she’s awake, because it is the last thing that can be treated. Neither the neuro nor I believe it’s seizures, but it’s worth a shot.

Any other developmental problems are simply a continuing result of her encephalocele and the microscopic neurological problems that they caused when she was developing.

Logically, I knew this. But my heart was filled with darkness as I left the office, my daughter chasing the light shining through the windows in the corridors of the hospital as I trotted to keep up with her. I wanted it to be easier.

I ducked into the gift shop and bought her a necklace. A new necklace for a new battle. And as I strapped it to her brave chest, the tears falling down my face, I whispered, “there’s the light, Princess of the Bells. Now you find your way. Don’t let anyone stop you. Ever.”

And she won’t. She’s her mother’s daughter, and if I can find my way in this crazy fucked up world, my daughter will, too. Her light will guide her, just as mine has. In lumine tuo, videbimus lumen.

Shine on, you crazy baby, shine on.

The old me died in a puddle of tears on that birthing table as my daughter whisked freshly from my body was clucked over and examined and I was left paralyzed from the waist down, terrified and alone. I was reborn into a new world where all of my old besties and allies were no longer at my side, where my husband was gone, and where I was, again, alone against the world.

It’s not terribly different, I guess, than how any of us are born, it’s just that I was older and not covered with that cheese-type stuff (say it with me now, Pranksters, thank GOD!).

For eighteen months now, I’ve carefully picked up the pieces of who I was and assembled them back into a reasonable representation of who I am now. I discarded some of the old things I didn’t need: the anger that I’d held onto for so long and the inability to let people in and the long-held opinion that I didn’t need anyone but myself to be happy.

In turn, I’ve added some new things that I think I always needed but didn’t realize: I’m warmer, more loving and I’m more thankful of the people who do love me. There are bad things woven in there too, of course. You don’t go through major traumas without picking up some hell along the way. The darkness inside me is heavy sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if it’s more than I can bear.

These shards of who I am now are stitched loosely together with the belief that the universe is far less random than I’d ever thought it was and that someday, it’ll all make more sense. I have to cling to that idea or I’d probably go crazy and shave my head and tattoo a fire-breathing scorpion on it.

Monday morning, I will go back to the place that I was born. Not Highland Park Hospital, where on July 15, 1980, Rebecca Elizabeth Sherrick* was born, but Central DuPage Hospital, where Becky Sherrick Harks was born on January 28, 2009. I haven’t been back since her surgery.

My daughter, her curls like a halo, finally masking the scar that bisects the back of her whole head, she and I will march into the place where we were both born on the very same day. My ghosts will roam the halls with us, carefully holding my hand, gently guiding me find the place where I will take my daughter to help her find her words.

I hope that when I pass the ghost of myself in the hall I can send her a hug; some silent signal of strength from her future self. Because while the darkness is omnipresent, the sadness an integral part, there is always hope. I hope that she knows that the future is large and that while she will rage, trying to fit in to a world that no longer exists, in all that she has lost, there will be more that she gains.

Monday, the flowers in the vase on the desk will be fresh, and the volunteers will smile, confused by the visibly upset young woman and her beautiful daughter. They will not understand that sometimes, it just hurts.

They will not understand that sometimes, you slay the dragon.

Sometimes the dragon slays you.

Today, Amelia, Princess of the Bells**, she and I will slay my dragon.

————–

*what? You didn’t think my parents named me Aunt Becky, did you?

**Amelia, by my amazing friend the Star Crossed Writer

An army stands ten thousand strong and tall,
But you shall rise above the bloody fray
And rain down vengeance ‘pon your enemies
And all those who would stand against your will.

When darkness threatens fainter hearts than yours
And calls ring out for champions to arise,
The cries will cease and everyone will see
Amelia, the Princess of the Bells.

Anyone scouring my archives will note that this is a rerun of perhaps my first (?) Go Ask Aunt Becky column, which I am lazily reposting since probably 2 of you have read it before.

———–

Dear Aunt Becky,

Is it trashy to hang your child’s art work (one construction paper size piece from each child) on the storm door?

Oh, Gentle Reader, if only you knew how many nights I stayed awake, soaking the pages of the newest Pottery Barn catalog with my drool, dreaming, just dreaming of the days when my sofa might match the drapes and I might be able to use my coffee table for more than a toddler-jumping-off platform (it is also used, I want to add, as a bed for Auggie. Which, I know. Huh?). I fantasize about the days when I will have end-table books and breakable hurricane lamps on my dining room table.

Truth be told, I fantasize about being a size 4, too, and, well, yeah.

I’m no (insert home style star here) and if I had to describe my house, it would be kid chic, complete with a side of dog and cat fur! So I may not be the best person to ask this question to, but I will try to answer you proud.

Providing that you’re not trying to score a centerfold spread in Architectural Digest or act like you live in a house that has no kids, I say why not? Providing, of course, that the drawings aren’t of anything graphic (OR DECIPHERABLE if so) and/or containing: penises, vaginas, butts, poop, or people in various stages of killing each other.

Unless, of course, you’re trying to scare off potential door-to-door salespeople or people who want to tell you about how God Can Save YOU. Then, I would be as graphic and foul as possible.

If it’s cute and it makes you happy to look at and you don’t mind telling the world that you have kids, I’d say go for it.

—————-

I have a family member who gives Mister and I, and our children, things we really don’t need. (Or want) This person is a semi-compulsive shopper in recovery, and I think a lot of her “gifting” is actually “cleaning off a shelf.” I’ve tried to hint that we really don’t need these things, without sounding like an ungrateful bitch.

What really makes me feel bad is that she takes the time to wrap them, and pays good money to ship them across four states. Is it rude to say, “Let’s just exchange one gift per person this Christmas.” Which would be code for, “Please don’t pay Fed Ex to ship me a(nother) salad spinner, a shoe shining kit, a pair of socks with cats on them, and a flashlight, wrapped in red and green paper.” (Ugly! Hateful!) Help!

Now this, my dear friend is a tricky question.

First, I would probably thank her for her generosity (on, at least, the phone, if not in person. Email can be tricky because tone cannot be interpreted) as kindly as possible, because, well, that’s polite. Then, as she’s ‘you’re welcoming you,’ I’d throw in a really, really, really sweet sounding “you really don’t have to go to all the trouble!”

I would probably leave it at that so as not to offend her.

If she persists (getting rid of some of this stuff may be sort of a gift in and of itself to her, because perhaps it makes her feel as though she’s really sending the stuff to a good home) sending gifts, I would donate them to charity.

Because I understand that you need another whimsical Santa-head oven mitt like you need a hole in your head.

Trust me.

——————-

Hey Aunt Becky,

Since you’re such a people person, what thoughts do you have on avoiding relatives who plan on sleeping (and yelling) at your house for a week during Christmas WITHOUT actually telling them to their face how much you can’t stand them?

No this is not early, they just ordered their plane tickets on the internet, and I do not have the money to send my family of five flying in the opposite direction.

Thoughts?

“In the Middle” (Thanks, I’ve always wanted to use a corny pseudonym.)

ps. Something is messed up on the sight right under “ask”.

First, corny pseudonyms are drastically underused today, Aunt Becky agrees*.

If being honest about this is out of the question and straight up mentioning (or having your spouse say) that having a houseful of guests isn’t feasible, I would go with one of the following options:

Option 1: I would do whatever (and I MEAN whatever) I could to make sure that they stayed in a hotel. Your sanity is worth a hell of a lot, and if you’re dreading Christmas already (SO been there), then maybe you can find a cheap rate for a nearby hotel. You could GRACEFULLY, tactfully insist that they stay here, as your gift to either them, or to you.

Option 2: Depending on your relationship with them, if it were good enough, I might ask at some point (in my stupidest, I don’t know anything tone) “Oh! Where are you staying!? I hear there are some AWESOME rates at (name local hotel). Want their number?” Be forceful, stupid sounding and gentle at the same time.

Option 3: Convince your family that you have some horrible communicable disease like rabies and they cannot possibly be exposed! O! The humanity!

Option 4: Call your doctor and get a prescription for Xanax and spend your holidays living on a fluffy, pink cloud where you won’t care that everyone is yelling at you.

Option 5: Call your liquor store and get a case of (insert your drink of choice) and spend your holidays living on a fluffy, pink cloud where you won’t care that everyone is yelling at you.

Option 6: Move out for that week. Fake a work trip, a separation, whatever, and get the hell out of there.

Option 7: Praise Sweet Merciful Baby Jesus that your family doesn’t live closer and try and grin and bear it. Then say a prayer thanking Sweet Baby Jesus that the holidays only come once a year.

Now, none of these options excludes the other, so if you like a little from Column A and a little of Beaker B, feel free to mix them up.

I wish you good luck, my friend. Good luck indeed.

—————

As always, should you have a burning question for Aunt Becky other than “How does anyone stand you?” please go up to the top of the page and click on the “Go Ask Aunt Becky” page. You can freely send me questions, compliments and marriage proposals which I do answer every Sunday.

And, Pranksters, please feel free to fill in where I left off in the comments.

Today, Pranksters, I’m bringing you a guest post from my homie, The Girl Next Door Grows Up. It’s pretty much word-for-word what goes on in my house, so you could sub out the names “Tyler” with “The Daver” and have the same story. Because it’s full of the AWESOME, naturally.

Also, I have a giveaway going on here at We Know Awesome. AND Imma write something for Mushroom Printing today.

—————-

When Aunt Becky sent me an email asking me if I would do a guest post for her, I actually looked behind me as if the email was meant for someone else. I am deeply honored and dumbfounded that she thought to ask me since she was the very first blog I ever read and that was before I even created my own blog.

Her post was about the Wonder Pets and why Ming-Ming can’t pronounce words correctly. I laughed so hard and I was tickled to think that there was another person in this world who thought the same way I did.

Now… some of you know me, a lot of you don’t. I usually write about the “funny” in my life.

How I am continually yelling “Jack! Off!” everywhere I go with my dog, Jack.

Or, how we have a pair of scissors named George.

My parents, who are my neighbors by choice, provide a plethora of blog fodder. My 67 year old mother colors her bangs fire-engine red, or purple, or pink depending on which mood she is in. Need I say more?

My husband could not be more supportive of my writing and on the days that I write about him, he takes me through each sentence line-by-line to discuss, what he says, are inaccuracies. This, it seems, is going to be one of those days:

I Might Live to Regret This…

“I don’t care what I have to do, as long as I never have to do yard work.”
-Tyler 2005, Our Engagement

I mowed the grass and weed whipped up until I was super-pregnant with Sarah. Then when I had her, Tyler took over. And he kept on doing it.

Last summer, we completely re-landscaped our yard to include a new deck, pool, shed and we even leveled out the hill that we once had. We laid sod, planted stuff… you get the idea. Ever since the snow melted this Spring, Tyler has become slightly obsessed with the yard.

Almost every day I hear him tell me how he either has to mow soon, needs to mow now, or is thinking about mowing. He mows on Sunday and on Monday he is back to talking about when he is going to mow again because the grass grew overnight.

He texts me to tell me that he might come home early… to mow.

It’s going to rain so he must mow before. The sun is shining and making the grass grow – OH NO! He needs to MOW! However, there is no joy in his voice when telling us about his mowing plans. In fact, he dreads it. He will openly tell anyone who will listen how he does not like yard work. So I said something.

I am taking over my duties as the “official” lawnmower of this family. I have had it with all of this grass talk. Grass grows. It gets mowed. End of conversation. I actually am looking forward to it. I really like to mow. I get to be outside. I get to be alone with my thoughts.

Tyler can spend 2 hours entertaining the girls with paint, playdoh or chalk while dealing with tantrums, dinner prep, and potty accidents. I am going to go and be by myself.

Did I mention for 2 hours?

By myself?

You know what? It is going to rain tomorrow. I know I mowed yesterday, but I think I might need to mow again today. But you won’t hear me complaining about it.

——————

How do you feel about yard work?

Do you like it, or would you rather have a tooth pulled?

So, I’m all, ‘DAWN, I dunno what I want,” when I went into my tattoo appointment, and because she knows me, when I said, “just draw my soul,” she laughed because I was kidding and sketched some stuff on my arm. THAT, Pranksters, is how you know you have a fucking awesome tattoo artist. For SERIOUS.

Anyway.

Scroll to the previous post if you want to see the “before” snaps, because I don’t want to put the pictures up again when you’ll be all SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET TO THE NEW SHIT, AUNT BECKY.

This, Pranksters, this is the “after” (until I go back in a couple months for the clouds below it. EVENTUALLY, I want to do a sun, but I think I need to wait for the sun)(GOD that sounded convoluted):

And for those of you *ahem* ZOMBIE JULE, who have asked me where the Phoenix’s head is, I have included a diagram:

(yeah, sorry about the boobs. I’m not a big “show us your tits” person, because, uh, I dunno why)

Also, if you look closely, you can see that I bleed RED, not green. So I’m not a damn reptile. SEE?

Anyone who wants a better angle better get their butts over to my house with a bottle of narcotic pain killers and a econo-vat of vasoline.

P.S. Please?

So instead of being a good mother and writing some heartfelt post about how my kid started school today (he did) and I cannot believe I have a fourth grader (I totally can) and how fast summer went (it dragged like a cats’ ass), I’d much rather discuss something more interesting. Tattoos.

Specifically, the one I am going to get worked on today.

Back in January, I was all, IMMA GET A NEW TATTOO! on Twitter, and I decided that I had to do it now, RIGHT now, because I lack impulse control. I was fortunate to be referred to someone whose work I loved, who is like world famous and shit, and she got me in because someone canceled, which is kinda like kismet and stuff.

This is what I wanted, a phoenix tattoo:

And after my first appointment, I came back with this:

Then, I went back in February to get this done:

THEN, in April I went back to get the color filled in:

Awesome, no? (if’n you like tattoos, I suppose)

Today, though, I’m going back for touch-ups and, like I said before, because I don’t plan ahead very well, I’ve finally decided what I wanted to do. First I was gonna be all, “IMMA MAKE THAT PHOENIX RISE FROM SOMETHING!” because people are always like, “Nice Peacock,” and I’m all, “Imma shoot you.”

And I probably will, some day.

But today, I want to put something THERE, where the nifty arrow is pointing. Last night, because I am brilliant, I asked Twitter. Twitter said that I should put in that space:

1) a meatball

2) RIP Tupac

3) Bacon

4) a giraffe

5) OJ Simpson’s Face

Twitter is an asshole.

I’m adding something into that space because eventually I want half of my back done. My mother, she will shit a brick (she hates tattoos), but I’ve always wanted something part of the way down my arm. Not, like, SLEEVE style, because I am a chicken shit, but something that goes along with the Phoenix.

So, Pranksters, what would YOU put there?