Apparently I am the last person on the planet to realize that 2010 = the next DECADE. Okay, so I never claimed to be a particularly bright person, but this takes the cake for even me. Especially since I turn 30 in July and I was born in 1980 and…yeah, I should have seen the BIGGER PICTURE, but apparently I was too deeply ensconced in my nervous breakdown to see out of my butthole.

I’m not much of a New Year’s person, so I suppose it’s not entirely shocking that I wasn’t all HOLY FUCK, PEOPLE!

Anyway.

New Decade, New Aunt Becky abounds which makes me think that I should get some Moon Boots and a flying car. Because obviously.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to dragging myself back out from under the piles tiny fucking Playmobil pieces and I’ve been making steps in that direction. When I do something, I tend to go balls to the wall, which is why an itemized list of resolutions isn’t really necessary. Plus, even as neurotic as I am, I hate making lists almost as much as I hate cream based condiments *shudders* but I’m making myself accountable.

To you. The Internet.

Ima check in now and again just to let you know how I’m doing in my progress to reclaim myself. You can let ME know what YOU’RE doing or how you think I can do better, or shit, you can just fucking tell me how awesome you are in the comments.

(Because you guys are full of the awesome. You were so nice to my formula-feeding friend–the Go Ask Aunt Becky questions all come in anonymously–yesterday and I was so grateful because she doesn’t need anyone to attack her when she’s feeling low. Also, have you lost weight? Your ass looks HOT in those pants. Let’s make out.)

1) First, I bought an elliptical. I know, I KNOW, it sounds like a BAD IDEA because it’s one of those things that you can easily ignore and use as a clothes hanger and what better to remind you of your failures? But this one was effing cheap and time is kinda precious right now. So ANYTHING is better than nothing.

Ima get my ass on it as soon as I can wear a bra lest I knock myself out with a rogue boobie.

2) I bought more clothes. I’d all but stopped buying clothes when I realized how depressing it was to do it because, well, I’m still rocking the baby weight. The elliptical will help that. But new clothes help me feel better about myself, which will make me feel EVEN BETTER about myself and so on and so on.

3) I started listening to music again. Because I’m home with the kids so much, I’d stopped jamming out with my clam out to things that made me happy because if any of them get a whiff of music coming from my computer, they’re all over me to watch stuff on my computer. Which, hi, TOTALLY NOT MY THING.

I do important stuffs here like surf porn and write on my blog, not watch CARTOONS (for the record, I hate cartoons).

But I love music. It’s one of the things I love dearly and since I stopped commuting every-fucking-where it’s something I stopped doing: humping on my music. Music makes me Aunt Becky again and it makes me feel alive.

4) I’m going out to California next weekend with The Daver even though we couldn’t find anyone in my family to watch my kids. There’s a certain baby shower that I’m pretty stoked to go to and to miss that would be like gnawing off an arm, but getting anyone to watch my kids is always like pinning Jello to a wall.

I know they have sitter sites out there, but I’m not entirely comfortable leaving my kids overnight with someone I don’t know. By the grace of God, my friend from high school is going to do it for me and I owe her SO MUCH.

5) I’m back to looking for places to submit my work (let’s agree that “work” here is a very loose term) and expand My Empire.

Most importantly, I’m allowing myself the opportunity to make progress without expecting perfection. I tend to expect things from myself that no one really should expect of themselves and I’m going to stop.

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I may never own Moon Boots, because maybe I DID own them when I was a kid and maybe they weren’t NEARLY as cool as I thought they’d be. But slowly, I’m digging myself out of the hole I’ve sunk into and rediscovering who I am. Turns out, I’m the same person I always was.

Progress, not perfection. Unless I’m listening to Britney. Which is total perfection.

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And if you’re looking for me elsewhere, I’m talking about the time I got courted by (no shit)(seriously, why would I lie?) Wife Swap.

Over at Skirt! this is the link to the post I threw up yesterday (Sunday = The Internet is closed) about Finding Myself Among The Dirty Diapers.

“Now my friends are wearing worried smiles, living out a dream of what they was.

Don’t you think it’s sometimes wise not to grow up?”

–Rolling Stones, 100 Years Ago

In terms of blogging years, I’m practically a geriatric and I often have to stop myself from being all “IN MY DAY, BLOGGERS WERE HONEST AND DIDN’T EXPECT…” so I can safely say things like, “normally in my New Years wrap-up posts I say something about how happy I am to kiss the year goodbye” because I’ve had enough of them to choose from.

This morning, I sat here trying to figure out what I wanted to do for my New Years post because it felt weird to not mention that today is the last day of 2009. Normally I do the only meme that I ever do, but today it just didn’t feel right. Then I thought about doing a year-in-review-through-posts and that didn’t sum it all up either because seriously? January and February alone could have each had 10 or so links to posts.

So instead, I’m going to be uncharacteristically honest about my year.

2009 was not the worst year of my life. I don’t know how a year that started by bringing my last child, my daughter Amelia Grace Sherrick Harks, into this world could possibly be a bad one. I was so proud to finally have a daughter and nearly a year later, I am still so proud to have a daughter that even as I type this, my eyes fill with tears.

She was born with an undiagnosed neural tube defect, yes, an encephalocele and I very much feared that I’d birthed her only to send her in for neurosurgery to sacrifice her on the operating table, but would I have traded those three weeks with her? No. Even if she’d passed, I wouldn’t have traded those minutes with her. She’s my daughter.

Amelia, all 8 pounds of her didn’t pass on the table and she’s gone on to beat all of the odds of her grim diagnosis and has proved to me that just because someone tells you that you shouldn’t be able to do something, doesn’t mean that you can’t. It’s a lesson we all could stand to remember now and again.

While Amelia has thrived and continued to place at or above level for every single test that she’s been given, I’ve sort of managed to tread water this year managing to keep my head mostly above water. Lately, I’ve been drinking gasoline to keep warm.

I’m not sure it’s working.

I was diagnosed with PTSD stemming from her traumatic birth and I don’t know if it’s that, or PPD or some other weird acronym, but I’m not sleeping well or eating well, and some nights I manage fight off the demons and others, I’m slain by them.

But I’m hopeful. I’ve been here before and I’ve always managed to claw my way back out of the hole and into the light again.

So I approach 2010 full of renewed hope for the future, because no matter how full of the darkness I feel, I can feel the light on my face and I know it’s all around me. Soon it will be within me.

I am hopeful.

I have hope.

Happy New Year.