Read I Want My Epidural Back Online
Authors: Karen Alpert
I Want My Epidural Back (23 page)
Dear Friend,
Yup, as far as I'm concerned anyone who reads my whole book is officially one of my friends. Like if you came up to me right now, I would put on a shirt that says “my friend” with an arrow pointing at you. And if two people came up to me and said they read my book, I would keep spinning around so the arrow would always be pointing at one of them. And if a whole crowd of people came up to me and said they read my book, I would probably jizz in my pants. But I digress.
Anyways, thank you. Thanks for reading this. Thanks for telling other people to read it and not just loaning them your copy because you know you read some of it in the bathroom and then you would just be handing your friend a book that's covered in poo particles. And most of all, thanks for being another kickass mediocre parent. I mean sometimes with all the Pinterest-y posts and Facebook brags I see out there, I feel like I must be the worst parent on earth. But then I look around and I see all of you guys hanging out in your elastic waistband pants and dirty minivans and greasy ponytails and I'm like, ohhhh, there are so many of us mediocre parents!! Which makes US the normal ones. Yayyyy!! Power in numbers!
So the next time Judy Judgypoo looks down her nose at you because your Tasmanian devil is throwing a tantrum in the
middle of the shopping mall and hers looks like an angel without a hair out of place, try to remember, you're the normal one. And her kid will probably rebel one day and do a lot of drugs and become a hooker. I mean I don't really know that for sure, but I'm optimistic.
Or the next time Muffy McPerfectpants judges you for feeding your kids Happy Meals or soda pop or both at the same time (GASP!!), here's what I want you to do. I want you to grab a fistful of those French fries and shove them into your pie-hole right in front of her face and say, “Nom nom nom, man does that dimethylpolysiloxane tastes deeeelish.” And then deal with the repercussions of your rugrat, who's probably FREAKING out because you stole some of his stupid French fries that YOU paid for that he's not gonna finish anyways.
And last but not least, walk away holding your head up high. Higher than hers. Even if she's wearing four-inch Louboutins and you're wearing slippers. Because you, my friend, rock the Casbah.
Now please excuse me while I go check on my rugrats. Leaving them unattended while I sat in the shitter and wrote this book may not have been the best idea. It's a little disconcerting that I haven't heard from them for a few days. Ruh-roh.
Signing off with a big ole crotch-to-crotch hug and not one of those wussy hugs where people stand a foot away from each other and barely touch.
                                      Â
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo,
                                      Â
The crazy lady who wrote this book
FIRST AND FOREMOST
, I'd like to thank my family for being ridiculously awesome. Life would be so boring without you. Thank you for giving me the material to write about and thanks for putting up with me while I wrote this book and was stressed out beyond belief and turned into a mega bitch. And speaking of people who put up with my shit, thanks to my illustrator, Lyssa Bowen, who didn't laugh in my face or push back at all when I asked her to do all sorts of annoying things like redraw all of the characters with different eyebrows and then after she did it changed my mind and asked her to do it again but to go back to the original eyebrows but this time to try adding mustaches to all of them so we can see what that looks like. I'd also like to thank my agent, Rachel Sussman, who totally kicks ass and answers all of my stupid questions and I'm sure she's reading this right now saying, “Your questions aren't stupid, Karen,” even though they totally are. I'd like to profusely thank my editors at HarperCollins, Amy Bendell and Lisa Sharkey, and my editorial assistant, Alieza Schvimer, who all gave me the most
awesome feedback and helped me polish this turd into a lemon and then turn that lemon into lemonade. Plus, a huge-ass thank you to everyone else at HarperCollins who worked on this book. Without you, I would be nothing but a self-published author doing this all alone and I've done that before and holy crap was it hard, so thank you for everything you do. And, of course, thank you to anyone who's reading this book and actually reading the acknowledgments section. You F'ing rock. That or you're just bored out of your mind and don't have anything better to do. And last but not least, a big ole humungous thank you to my own parents, who I'm sure have wanted an epidural many,
MANY
times since they had me.
I WANT MY EPIDURAL BACK
. Copyright © 2016 by Karen Alpert. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
All photographs courtesy of the author
All illustrations courtesy of Lyssa Bowen
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-242708-3
EPub Edition February 2016 ISBN: 978-0-06-242709-0
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