They have stolen thousands of dollars (money I was saving for a house down payment). They keep taking money out of our account and not paying it back like promised, thus leaving me to pull from what little savings we had to help us get through winter in order to keep the bills paid.
They are slowly draining me of our money and my soul.
I am obsessing over what they are doing; where they are going. I’m searching the house for stashes.
I found a box of baking soda and a burned spoon.
I found the missing (now empty) money pouch from when my kids were fundraising.
I feel like I’m going crazy.
I went to an Al-Anon meeting tonight. It was my first time. I didn’t share, or even speak.
It hurt so much that everything that was said was so relatable. That they’ve all been through this, felt this way. I didn’t even tell them anything. They told me I wasn’t crazy.
That hit me. Hard.
I think I’m living with an addict. And I don’t know what to do.
Aunt Becky (calmly): “What does it look like I’m doing?”
The Daver: “It LOOKS like you’re gearing up to go outside in the middle of a fucking tornado with your rose pruners.”
Aunt Becky (bored): “Yuppers.”
The Daver: “There was a TORNADO SPOTTED, Becky! You should get into the basement or something!”
Aunt Becky: “The storm has driven off the wasps, Daver, I can finally prune the fucking roses in daylight! Without the EARWIGS ATTACKING ME!”
*shudders*
The Daver: “There may be a TORNADO! It’s pouring buckets AND there’s a thunderstorm going on!”
Aunt Becky: “Don’t be such a puss. The tornado won’t come here. We’re in the middle of civilization. Tornado Alley is MILES out west. You Wisconsin people, I SWEAR*.”
The Daver: “But!!!”
Aunt Becky: “Besides, if I’m outside, I can hear the sirens of the town much more clearly than if I were inside. THEN, I can come in and alert you and we can make a break for the basement.”
The Daver: “Are you REALLY putting your roses before us?”
Aunt Becky: “Um. Dramatical much?”
The Daver: “YOU COULD GET SWEPT UP IN A TWISTER OUT THERE!! WITH COWS!! AND HORSES!!!”
Aunt Becky: “Perhaps you should go hide in the bathtub, then. I’ll let you know when it’s all over.”
The Daver: “Maybe I just will.”
Aunt Becky: “I’ll rescue you when it’s all over, okay?’
The Daver: “TELL IT TO YOUR ROSES, BECKY. Maybe they can keep you warm at night!”
Aunt Becky: *walks out into the sheeting rain whistling “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn.”*
*There’s a longstanding rivalry between Wisconsin and Illinois (not, oddly, any of the other states surrounding Illinois). Wisconsinites call we Illinoisans FIB–Fucking Illinois Bastards–and we Illinoisans, uh, don’t have any clever names for our neighbors to the north. But shit, they can’t fucking DRIVE
I don’t tend to watch videos on blogs because I always assume it they are hilarious pictures of cats playing the piano and frankly, I have SCADS of (insert term for computer memory) of my OWN fake cat Mr. Sprinkles and his wacky antics! He’s quite an accomplished fake piano player, don’t you know!
But this, well, Mitch doesn’t send me bullshit, so I watched it. You should to. It’s like 40 seconds, and it’s WICKED AWESOME. DO IT, I’ll wait here.
Apparently, The Daver did have reason to worry…IF I WERE AS TALL AS THE SEARS TOWER*.
(hint, I’m not, but I’d be WAY cooler if I were)
Or perhaps had he come outside to see this:
I know, can you believe it? How had I not shown you photographic proof before? How had it not ruined my camera? How had I not been sucked off to Kansas City to be welcomed by a swarm of very tiny people?
It’s almost like it hadn’t existed in nature before Photoshop was invented. (thank you Mrs. Soup for helping this bitch out).
While I was selfishly off pruning my roses, my daughter escaped from jail:
Then, proving that she learned what thug life means, she stole a cookie and ate it wearing her gold chains. Maybe SHE stole my pants!
And indeed, she never DOES say please. Or anything else, really.
Then, my middle son decided to outdo us all and become half human-half arachnoid:
When he starts scaling buildings and fighting crime, I’ll totally claim it’s my awesome genetics.
And my last son, Benjamin, became a teenager at age 9. He is also for sale.
Actually, I may PAY you to take him for a couple of years. Attitude is included. All sales final.
A couple of weeks ago, because I’d been too busy watching dancing cat videos, I forgot that I had Jury Duty. I’d actually been pretty excited to serve, because I watch Law and Order: Their Life Sucks More Than Yours So Shut Your Whore Mouth like it is my job and I was all, “IMMA JURY OF MAH PEERS, YO” so when I opened my date book and saw I was four hours to late to show up, I panicked.
Immediately, I tried to figure out what to do when the cops showed up to bust me for contempt of court. I put on a full face of makeup and hid in the bathtub for awhile while I contemplated blacking out a couple of my teeth, just in case COPS, the TV show, showed up, too. I mean, this was my television debut, and I should act the part, right?
Eventually, I got cold and bored and the lure of Uncrustables pulled me from the tub. I put on one of those fake mustache and glasses, which meant that when the cops DID show up, I’d fool them. Clearly, I wouldn’t look like Your Aunt Becky any more. I’d look like an entirely different person now!
The following day, I realized that I liked to wait as much as I liked to cook (read: not at all), so I called the number on the back of the Jury Duty summons.
Me: “I’m a total idiot and forgot to show up yesterday for Jury Duty. I considered fleeing the country, but figured I’d call you first. I’m really sorry.”
Her: “Bwahahahaha! Happens all the time. We weren’t going to arrest you.”
Me: “OHMYGOD I hid in the bathtub for an hour. But it was really like twenty minutes. But still, I’M SO SORRY.”
Her: “BWAHAHAHAHA! The cops do have better things to do than stalk people who forget Jury Duty.”
Me: “OHMYGOD that’s so relieving. I didn’t want to have to adopt a new identity!”
Her: “No! You don’t have to do that! We’ll just put you back in the Jury Pool. When is good for you?”
Me: “Doesn’t really matter. I don’t have a job or anything.”
Her: “How’s November 8th?”
Me: “Sign me up!”
Her: “You got it.”
So there I had it. My new date in court! I was all a-flutter! I was going to help DECIDE THE FATE OF SOMETHING OTHER THAN A DELICIOUS UNCRUSTABLE. I couldn’t have been more excited.
Until, looking at my slightly unexpected surgery date, November 3rd, I realized that November 8th was…uh…kinda close. Like, really close.
I debated what I should do. Should I call and try to reschedule AGAIN? Get a doctor’s note? Limp my sorry ass in there with a cane and sexy drains hanging out, all doped up on pain meds?
SHOULD I FLEE THE COUNTRY AND ADOPT A NEW IDENTITY?
To think straight, I put on the fake mustache and glasses. Then I called the Jury Duty lady and left it up to her.
January 3.
Watch out, petty criminals: AUNT BECKY is coming to give you JUSTICE.
Probably while wearing my fake mustache. Just so I can think straight. AND so they can’t find me and firebomb my car or something. Because, obviously.
I normally find Sundays to be the most worthless days on the planet, a day that I feel should be blown off the map entirely to be replaced by The Day To Worship Baby Jesus AND Aunt Becky (or something other than Sunday), but this particular Sunday, I finally finished something that had been sitting in the back of my brain, beating to get out, and I knew that what I had finished was good.
It was the end of a series of essays and I’d managed to fit them all together perfectly. Months of waiting and finally, the right thing came out. The relief was enormous.
Monday dawned and it was like that part of my brain (admittedly, a very small part) was open again so that I could once again fill it up with thinking about all of the reasons I hate Averil Lavigne, since I did call off my war against John C. Mayer.
Immediately after I got up, my daughter managed to, while getting her fingernails trimmed, slice the tippy-top of her thumb off. (this is why I beg other people to do it) Blood every-fucking-where. Fingers are way vascular, so it took ages to clot. Seeing my daughter’s blood triggered some pretty bad flashbacks from her first weeks of life for me.
But I’m all EYE OF THE MOTHERFUCKING TIGER, BECKY, SHAKE THAT SHIT OFF.
When I’m upset, I’m not all, mope-around-the-house, I’m all, let’s-get-r-done, so I started cleaning the shit out of the house and paying all the bizarre bills I owed. Like the ones for $2.10 that were all, “IF YOU DON’T PAY THIS, WE’RE GOING TO TAKE YOU TO COLLECTIONS” and I’m all, uh, you’re wasting your ink, because I just forgot because it’s two fucking dollars and they’re all, “I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS” and yesterday I’m all, “FINE, HERE IT IS.”
Because really, I wasn’t trying to keep the hospital away from their fucking two dollars, I just wasn’t rushing it because it was two fucking dollars. MY BAD.
So yesterday, I sat down to seven dollars worth of bills that I’d neglected for months because I am a lazy fuck who never has stamps because mailing things makes me break out in hives because I am lazy.
Then, I opened my day planner, which I have to use, because I take a really high dosage of a medication for my My Grains called “Topamax.” Topamax, for those of you unaware, is an old-ass epilepsy drug that has many side effects, including as my neurologist so kindly puts it: “cognitive impairment.”
The Max, as I call it, makes you dumb as fuck (or in my case, dumbER). You forget words, names, dates, times, things you’re supposed to do. It’s a well-documented problem and it sucks. My memory used to be full of the awesome now it’s full of holes. But, it helps with my My Grains, so that’s that.
(I have a particular problem with numbers and names)
Yesterday, I’m all, OH SHINY DATE BOOK! and I popped it open to see what I had inside for the week, knowing I had Jury Duty on Tuesday, 8AM.
And my heart thudded to a stop in my chest. There, right on the Jury Duty summons I’d neatly clipped into my date book was the actual name of the day: “MONDAY.”
FUCK.
It was 1:30 in the afternoon on Monday, hours after I was supposed to be in court.
I just SKIPPED Jury Duty by accident. I wasn’t doing anything better. I had no grand plans. I was going to show up in the courts on Tuesday, like I’d planned. I nearly died.
I checked to see if my jury number had been called and it had. Of course it had.
Immediately, I called the number on the back of the summons and got, you guessed it, voicemail. Nothing could have been resolved right then and there. No, not yesterday. I left a panicky message and waited for the cops to show up to arrest me. The back of the summons said that if I didn’t show up they COULD fine me! Or send me to JAIL!
I tried to figure out how Young Hollywood or COPS would handle it if they were waiting for the 5-0 to come and arrest them. I put on a full face of make-up and hid in the bathtub for awhile until I got cold and hungry and wandered back into the kitchen for an Uncrustables.
When nothing had happened by 7PM, I figured I’d the system might have lost me. Or maybe they’d wait until I least expected it. I put on a fake mustache and a hat because I knew THEN that the cops would totally not recognize me when they came for me. That way, I could watch House, MD and not have to sit curled up in the bathtub with a mattress on top of me any longer.
My name is now Senor Aunt Becky. I am officially a fugitive from the law.
Because I gain a metric fuck-ton of weight when I’m gestating crotch parasites, I am also stuck removing it once I am done expelling the parasite from my body. Shockingly, the weight doesn’t just “fall off” of all of us. Especially those of us with GLANDULAR PROBLEMS.
*kicks thyroid*
Anyway, so I’m on a diet*. Why? Because I really don’t want to be fat.
One of the things that I had to give up was the delicious sugared syrup in my coffee. It’s not that I couldn’t use it because I COULD, but I’m trying to use less carbs and I know that you can use the stuff with Splenda, but honestly I think Splenda tastes like licking the devil’s butthole (and I am being GENEROUS here) so I just go without.
Until I came up with a BRILLIANT solution!
Extracts! I could use VANILLA fucking EXTRACT! There was nothing not awesome about that solution!
Until the cap got all stuck on and shit and I was denied the delicious vanilla flavor I had grown to love. So then I turned to it’s more delectable cousin: ALMOND extract.
Now, I love an almond latte like it’s my job, so this was an ideal solution for me, except in those rare moments when I’d wonder if I was being poisoned (I have a vivid imagination, y’all) until I remembered that I was in charge of the almond flavor addition to my coffee and it prolly wasn’t cyanide.
The other day, I was drinking my almond flavored coffee and I noticed that it had a bit of, well, BITE to it. Almost an alcohol flavored bite. It was weird, because I certainly didn’t add any alcohol to my coffee, but there it was. I could taste the booze, just underneath it all.
Hm, I thought to myself. That’s curious.
Then I promptly got distracted by staring at my cat’s butthole (there are SPIES in there, Pranksters!!) and forgot about it.
Yesterday, I finally read the bottle of fancy-pants almond extract. There it was, in bold letters: 35% ALCOHOL. DO NOT LEAVE AROUND CHILDREN.
Turns out that all of this time, I’ve been wondering why the hell I’ve been so fucking TIRED in the mornings, it’s because I’ve been getting sauced by accident. What the fuck kind of fool gets inadvertently drunk off ALMOND EXTRACT?
So I’m off the sauce this morning, and I’m going to guess that coffee will be a hell of a lot more effective in waking my ass up this way.
Also: I will probably have less of a hangover by lunchtime.
*Weight Watchers**
**Yes, it works.
What’s the dumbest thing you’ve done lately (besides read my blog)?
This post was originally posted on Mommy Wants Vodka, written by me: Becky Sherrick Harks (or Your Aunt Becky) and has been reprinted with the author’s (that’s ME!) permission.
