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.
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.
One of my goals for the new year was to “spend some time living outside the computer, even though the real world is fast and scary and full of people who wear jeggings.” It seemed a bit loftier than “Not become Lil Wayne” (which I should add, is a resolution I’ve managed to keep for an entire month and a half now) and loads better for my self-esteem.
See, people are all, “bloggers are introverts who have no social skills and hate crowds of people,” which makes me all, “um, not so much.” Because while I may greet you for the first time by humping your leg while eating a hot dog, THAT DOESN’T MEAN I DON’T HAVE SOCIAL SKILLS. In fact, I’d venture to say that it means I EXCEL at social skills. Just ask all the people who have restraining orders against me.
What can I say? I’m a friendly sorta person.
But when I dared to tell myself that I had to be more social, the Universe was all, “bwahahaha, sucker,” and threw me a wicked case of the flu. Two weeks and counting.
(and yes, Pranksters, I’d go to the doctor if I actually had something worth treating)
So when my good friend Dana showed up at my house unexpectedly, I was all, OMG A REAL PERSON IN MAH HOUSE. I ran around frantically to find a hot dog to eat while I humped her leg. It was pretty wicked to have someone over. Especially since I can now make people spend at least ten minutes oohing and aahing over my purple-flavored walls.
We sat and caught up for a couple of hours while Amelia performed tricks in front of her Auntie Dana like a good show-dog. It was nice. I can’t remember the last time I spent any amount of time with someone who didn’t want to talk about work.
She also noticed how clean my house was, which made me all barrel-chested with pride. See, I like a clean house. Problem’s been that my husband works a kajillion hours a week and doesn’t seem to care one way or another whether the house looks like a shot out of a Hoarders episode or not. I’m not entirely convinced he’s not blind.
Plus, the three crotch parasites used to delight in pulling absolutely everything out and leaving it in one ginormous pile for me to break my toes on. I tried to keep up with the mess, but damns, it was hard.
Then a magical thing happened.
My children grew up. They got anal about house-cleaning. Dave started giving a shit about the house. The Guy on the Couch helped me clean.
And most importantly, I have been sticking to my other OTHER New Years Resolution – “one a day.”
I’ve been donating, dumping, and throwing away one thing every single day. It sounds really hard, right? Like, one thing a day for a year is a fuckton of shit to dump. I hate committing to things that take a year (mostly because I’m an impatient sea-hag).
You know what?
It’s been easier than I’d thought. I’ve managed to get rid of more than one thing each day, which means that my house becomes more manageable each and every day.
In the same way that it feels good to hear, “damn, you look like you lost weight” when you’ve been dieting, it felt amazaballs to hear “your house looks the best I’ve seen it,” from someone who knows you well.
(others might have been offended, but not me)
Now if only I could find a home for that stupid monogrammed embosser thing I’d bought (while probably drunk) that I’ll never use.
Anyone who has had to bear the burden of being married or in a long term relationship has inexplicably been stuck in the same predicament year after year. Who gets you for the holidays or any other day of the year that your family may deem IMPERATIVE that you be home.
I have been blessed with both in-laws and a family who do not become angry if I am unable to make a particular holiday. Neither of us gets outright YELLED at or threatened to be written out of a will or two. No, they’re MUCH more subtle than that. I’ve experienced the passive aggressive, sullen and disheartened,
“Well, ooooookkkkkay, I GUESS it’s OKAY if you don’t make it. Your BROTHER would have made it.”
The Daver deals with the same stuff.
And I have to be honest, I ADORE the holidays.
It’s the most wonderful motherfucking time of the year, after all. There is nothing more magical than the Christmas season, aside from maybe a freshly shorn nutbag, but I digress. The lights, the smells, the sounds, the bells, I love it all. I love shopping for gifts, I love decorating for the holidays; I love that magical first snow of the year.
And I admit that I even love seeing my family and my in-laws. I adore both sides of our family; and I love seeing them for the holidays.
As usual, there is a catch: both sets of parents EXPECT that they are the most important members of the family, and are therefore entitled to certain unalienable privileges. Most of those being our time WHENEVER THEY WANT US TO for the holidays. It isn’t as though I don’t want to see them; I do.
But I can’t say that I enjoy my holidays spent in the car going from one place to another. Although traveling isn’t a problem for us; we like to get going as much as the next person. But spending 7+ hours a day in a car with a small child for a couple of hours with each set of families is going pretty far beyond what anyone else in the famili(es) do.
It only compounds matters exponentially that my parents, living about 1 hour from us, see us far more than Dave’s do, living 3+ hours from us (although, by some untapped miracle Dave claims that it only takes an hour and a half. Aside from teleportation, I have no idea how he gets there with such speed), which makes us feel bad. This, in turn makes us try to bend over literally downward facing dog AND the tree trying to appease whatever holiday requests they ask of us.
But no matter how much we break our backs for the families, no one else will meet us halfway. We get no”Well you came out by us last time, now it’s our turn.” If we cannot attend a gathering, there will be no offer to see us or come out to our house at a rescheduled date. Which would explain why I found a couple of little gifts I had picked up for my in-laws LAST YEAR in my vanity. Just SHAMEFUL.
Let’s compound things once again: I have a child whose father is not Dave, and said father wants to see his child on the holidays, too. So Dave, Ben and I are stuck grappling with the seemingly senseless fragments of 3 timetables from 3 families.
We have to make it to cities, W, X, Y and Z in a matter of 1.5 days. These cities are 1-4 hours apart. So we could alternate the cities based on a number of factors (If we leave for W at 6pm after work, get there at 9, stay til 6am drive 4 hours, arrive at 10:30, open gifts, smile, laugh, eat, leave at 1pm if Ben has had nap, drive another hour, drive an hour back, open more presents, better not nap b/c you’ll look like you’re not having fun, drive 1.5 hours home, utterly exhausted), but it essentially boils down to extra traveling time for us, but not for anyone else.
Here’s my resolution, dear Internet, next year this foolishness will be done, and we won’t exhaust ourselves traveling multiple hours in the car just to appease everyone for the holidays.
Okay, that’s a total lie. I like many things more than a bargain, up to and including sleeping, heavy sarcasm, sitting on my ass, strawberry-frosted donuts, The Twitter, mocking the founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, mocking myself, obsessing over cardigans, Vicodin-chip cookies, Hostess orange-flavored cupcakes, designing photon rings in my backyard, my roses, test-driving cars, napping, thinking about napping, and watching reruns of Law and Order.
But when I get a bargain, I get the rush that I’m pretty certain causes otherwise normal people to get up at midnight and stand out in the freezing cold to be the first in line to buy something abnormally cheap on Black Friday.
I just couldn’t bring myself to actually do it, rush or no.
I’ve thought about why I wouldn’t do it most of the week (still flat on my back in pain)and I think it boils down to not being a Team Player. I’m just not a Team Player. Shut your whore mouth.
Even if I could get my spot in line and guarantee that the item I wanted would be mine ALL MINE, I would be carted off to jail well before the doors opened.
How the hell do I know this without ever having stood in a single line? SIMPLE. I read your blogs. You guys DO stand in those lines. And between my Pranksters are peppered The Crazies. Aunt Becky don’t play with The Crazies. Especially the PUSHY crazies.
The very moment some asswad threw an elbow, tried to cut in line (HATE! THAT!) or made a comment about my happy pants (they have hearts on them!), I’d be all, “Nice teeth, Cleatus, why don’t you and your recessive genes kiss my white ass and crawl back under the rock that you crawled out from under.”
Then, his fifteen cousins would come over and beat my very small-wristed ass into a bloody pulp. Not before, of course, I got in a couple of squirrelly kicks. Then the cops would come and we’d all get hauled to jail and I wouldn’t end up with the electric back-hair groomer I’d so desperately wanted for 90% off.
What a mess.
So instead, I’ll sleep leisurely in and when I wake up, I’ll catch a few shitty sales online. None will give me the same sort of thrill that getting my nose-hair trimmer would, but I really need to let my surgical scar heal before I can go to jail. That way, I can avoid being someone’s bitch by beating the shit out of someone when I first get there.
It’s not the same, I know, so instead, I’ll live through you.
Tell me your stories. I’m sure someday I’ll go shop the Black Friday sales and bring a video camera to capture it all for maximum hilarity (for my blog, of course). Hopefully Cletus will avoid the lens when he beats me silly.
So tell me all about your experiences with the sales.
My delicate wrists are going to live vicariously through you this year.
