becky the kid (she was weird)(you already knew that, right?)(say no, it's polite)

i was trying to explain something to someone on some sort of blog (have you guys heard of those? they're pretty neat. you should check one out today!) and i realized that there was like a whole long drawn out back story that would help this person to understand my current ahsomeness. we've already gone over the fact that my mother's a crazy person. this post will detail our crazy upbringing.

we only watched pbs ever and it wasn't a lot of pbs. when we were little we could only watch a half hour of tv period. then we had to go do something constructive. the nerve! good news was we had a pool in both california and texas and i know how to read! i know, right? so i read the shit outta books. i'm not even kidding, my mother would check out the maximum amount her special professor library card allowed her. we would have brown paper bags chock full of books. i remember one time we returned 50 books to the library. five. zero. now, that's hardcore.

i was telling nikkkkki that i was severely traumatized by the scene in the little mermaid where octopus lady ate teh leetle shrimps ALIVE! nooooooo! i can still clearly see it happening. i didn't eat shrimp until like a year ago. i was eight at the time, we saw it on the overwhelmingly large screen where everything was all dark and unfamiliar. i've never been the same. my innocence died on that day.

in high school i clearly remember rationing my one hour of tv to use it on ER which was at nine pee emm and i had to be in bed at ten. it was cutting it short but i wanted my full allotment when i wanted it for the ER. it sucked because my dad always made me go to bed before i could see the little ending preview for next week's show. my dad would shout, "go to bed!" i would automatically say, "i'm gooooing!" he countered with, "doesn't look like it," because there i was sitting in front of the tv, trying to catch the last bits.


another thing that made me into the monster you see before you was the fact that we didn't have any cool snack foods. the only snacky things we ate were vegetables and air popped popcorn. they still have that machine. sigh. we drank only water. on special occasions, we could have sprite or watered down apple juice. i don't think i had caffeine until i was in high school. there were no snack packs, there were no ho hos. twinkies? what's that? you guys have small bags of chips? holy fuck! let's be friends.

on the one hand, i'm glad i like to eat veggies and "ethnic" foods, on the other? i'm sad that once i was in college, i went like mega insane and gained approximately one million pounds in mostly cupcakes that i had to lose.  i think it's mostly funny that people think i'm weird when i eat an entire cucumber for lunch or a head of lettuce just because i can't get over how crunchy it is on my teeths. so crunchy. *crunch, crunch, crunch* i won't tell you the amount of times people have asked, "what is that????" in regards to something i'm eating.* as if i were eating a fried baby head on a stick. most of the time it makes me giggle. it gives me a chance to explain and to ask them if they want to try it. sometimes i make them, i wheedle them into trying it.

*just ask butterbean's mom :)

my mother even made us healthy birthday cake. it was zucchini bread with cream cheese icing. she always left out half the sugar in any baked good because she insisted that it tasted "just as good." to this day, i get sick to my stomach from regular people icing and chuck hates it when i make cream cheese icing because it still tastes mostly like cream cheese. (zucchini cake and underpants below)

i've been posting so many old photos that it just got me reminiscing. so much shapes us into who we are today: big pots of brown rice, swimming every day it was above 70, bowl hair cuts, a darkroom in the spare bathroom, cutting flowers with an axe in the backyard, a gift of a wild hare from the single guy down the street, the plum tree that had more bees than plums. all of these things conjure distinct images, burned in my memory forever.

what kind of cake did your mom make you?