BLACK

PURPLE

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

Veronica took my head shots this week. Look at the first two compared to the third photo. See what I mean? She can make an average crazy lady look like a professional crazy lady. Impressive.

And do you see all those laugh lines around my eyes, or that big zit on the left side of my upper lip? No? Me neither. How about the the river system of veins running through my sleep-deprived blood shot eyes, or the scar on the side of my nose? Of course you don’t. Why? Because Veronica is kind of magical.

So, I have posted these photos because at the moment, they are the three top contenders for my new newspaper smug (small mug shot). I NEED YOU TO VOTE.

Please, if you could just pick one and vote in the comment box, I would really appreciate it. The people close to me have differing opinions and I don’t trust any of them (Jen likes the third one best. I think she’s biased because she took it).

And if you don’t know me personally, even better. That way I’ll know that you are being completely honest because I don’t actually matter in your life.

Think of that show on TLC, where the poor under-accessorized person stands in a glass box while strangers off the street guess their age. This is kind of like that show (except I don’t want you to guess my age unless you’re going to guess somewhere between 24-27).

Do me a favor and pick a pic.

I had the strangest “dream” last night around seven-thirty. In this “dream”, my husband and I were standing in a beautiful room, all dressed in white. We were standing in a corner, lightly hugging each other, talking in hushed voices about how great it was to be without the kids. 

Suddenly, out of the blue, a lady in a white dress with short white hair came up and said, “Excuse me, but we can’t allow prolonged displays of affection here.” I laughed because I thought she was a funny funny lady. Then she said, “You’ll have to let go now.”

Seriously? Do you know how rare it is for me to get this kind of casual affection from my husband without some small child disrupting us? To have a quiet, intimate moment with him is a hard-earned reward that should not be disrupted.

“Oh, wow, you’re serious,” I say to the bad white-haired lady. “That’s fine, we’ll take it outside.”

There was a sweet 80-somethingish woman in my dream who I had befriended earlier in the evening. Meeting up with her on the way out, I told her about the bad, bad white-haired lady. “You saw us,” I said, “did we look inappropriate?” I had to ask because I admit, I hate to miss a chance to maul Jason if an opportunity presents itself.

She laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed. Then she told the lady in charge, who happened to a nice white-haired lady, and also her good friend and neighbor (don’t you love it when Karma visits your dreams?). The nice white haired lady was horrified. 

“What did she look like?” she asked me.

“Well, she was medium height with short white hair, and she was wearing a white dress.”

“That should help,” she said with a smile.

Then I woke up in street clothes and we made out in the car. Gotta love date night.

So Harrison spent the weekend mouthing off. We’re talking whiney, snotty remarks about anything and everything, relayed in a whiney, snotty voice that I am so not okay with.

I’ll be honest, I was getting pretty worried yesterday. Besides, all that Easter candy seemed to exacerbate the situation. Here’s an example:

“Honey, it’s time to get dressed for church,” I say.

“No! I hate church! I don’t want to go to church! You always make me do things I hate!”

This came from a kid who loves church (loves anything social) and is rarely forced to do things he hates. Okay, maybe sometimes. Daily. But still.

Comments like this floated freely from his opressed lips throughout the Easter weekend. I was sorely tempted to slap those lips. Luckilly his cheeks landed in enough time-outs to make up for it.

So this morning I was up early with June and went out to the kitchen. Harry woke up and wanted to see the movie we rented for him over the weekend, “Super Mario and the Koopa”. I said yes, of course. (I know, there was a time I had wild asperations of no television before school. That lasted about three days. And frankly, I was so delirious with lack of sleep the kid could have been watching Days Of Our Lives and I wouldn’t have cared.)

So he pops in the movie and somewhere in the early morning fog that is my brain, I start hearing these two little bratty koopa kids trash talking. “This sounds so familiar…” I think to myself. “Where have I heard that tone?” And suddenly I get it.

The koopa kids have taken over my child; he’s been posessed by the koopa. I hate the koopa.

Don’t worry, that movie was instantly confiscated. Anybody want to guess what Family Home Evening was about last night? That’s right, the evil nature of Koopa.

WARNING! The flu shot is a hoax. Save your money, save your children and do not fork over the cash next year.

How do I know this? Because we got our two youngest children vaccinated, oh yes. I folded under the “36,000 die from Influenza B each year…” pressure and paid the killer fee to save my children. The result? We spent the entire week last week suffering from the flu.

In case you’re wondering what makes Influenza B so horrible, here’s what it looked like in Rexy (he’s three). Intense, delirium-inducing fevers for, oh, seven to nine days. Misdiagnosis by doctors, (followed by an unnecessary toothpaste shot in the butt that did no good since he DID NOT have strep throat), refusal to take drugs orally, regular bed wetting (because he was too sick to get out of bed, and I was too stupid to think of using pull-ups), and total disinterest in animals.

Often Influenza B is followed by viral pnemonia, and can include vomiting and diahrea. We lucked out there, he didn’t get dehydrated and that’s probably the only thing that saved his life.

The best part? Now June’s got it. And yes, she was vaccinated too. Lucky for me she’ll take meds because I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week.

Did I forget to mention that Harrison had his tonsils out last week as well? I did?

Don’t you just love Spring Break?

I make a lot of mistakes. There are times when I pity the man who married me, moments when my children want to run away to the neighbor’s house, and occasion after occasion where I want to beat my own self in the head with a stick for being such an insensitive idiot.

The thing is, I’m a screw up. Every single day I make at least one mistake that would potentially keep me out of Heaven. I am impulsive, selfish, arrogant and prideful, and I’ve been known to throw stones through every glass wall in my house.

And yet…

I love Jesus. I love Him. I love taking the sacrament each Sunday, and getting down on my knees in search of forgiveness when I’m at the bottom of my rope. I love the peaceful feeling that comes from kneeling with my family in prayer (even though some of my little animals would rather run laps than fold their arms), and watching my husband button up his white shirt on Sunday mornings.

I went to Jerusalem and I saw the empty tomb, but that doesn’t really matter. I would know just as certainly, from my own simple daily conversations with Heavenly Father, that Jesus lives and loves us. He’ll take us however we come, whether we’re sinners or saints, rich or broke, old or older.

And so on this Easter weekend, take time to be holy. The bunny might be a hoax, but Jesus is real. This I know.

Here’s a clip from Elder Holland’s conference talk last weekend. Take four minutes out of your busy candy-loving weekend and watch it. It’s worth it.

There is a huge difference between wanting to be pregnant and wanting a baby.

For example. Before I had children, I wanted a baby badly. We’re talking, sell my soul and trade in my husband badly. It is possibly one of the most incurable itches a woman can get, this need for a baby. My love and affection goes out to all of the women in my blogging and personal life who are desperately trying to scratch this itch because relief is hard to come by.

But here I am, three kids deep in it, and my current mantra is “Let Me Be Done Already”. I will be totally honest here. At the moment, I have no desire for another baby. They cry, they poop, they pull hair, they catch colds and strep throat and RSV, they’re a serious drain on the budget, and as my old roommate Jessie likes to say, “Kids are the biggest scam going.”

And yet I know there’s one more out there, just waiting for the right moment to crowd it’s way into our family. I would happily be done if I thought I was done, but I’m just not done. Am I the only one who feels this way?

I’m not anxious to have a baby, but I’m ready to get it over with. I’d like to have this last kid ASAP–preferably before we move out of the country (our current two-year plan) because I really don’t want to have a foreign child. And I like my doctor. And American hospitals.

Don’t ask me how I’m going to feel once I’m actually pregnant, I’ll deal with that when it comes. The crazy thing is that I want to be pregnant. I guess I’ll deal with the consequences when it happens. Heaven only knows I can’t be the first woman to feel this way, right?

Just one more reason for me to stop screaming at my husband.

Click my face to read this week’s column. And if you missed last week’s article on the end of the world, be sure to check it out in the archives. It’s a doozy. Okay, I’m a doozy. That kind of rhymes with floozy, which I’m not. Of course, that won’t matter once we all fall into the ocean…

How is it people stuck on reality TV can’t see what’s actually happening?

Before I vent about American Idol, let me say a word about TBL.

The Biggest Loser is being completely and totally undermined. For the past few weeks it has been painfully clear that if Brown doesn’t die soon, they’re going to take the whole kit and caboodle and everyone else might as well go home and have a donut.

Everyone wants to win the money, but the scary thing is that Ron only wants it for his son. That means little Mikey has two votes for every one of his. Ron will do absolutely anything to see that his little eighteen year old child wins the show.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met an eighteen year old kid who’s smart enough to manage a quarter of a million dollars. Hey, before the show this kid couldn’t even manage his lunch. He can’t even go get drunk to celebrate the win because he’s JUST A CHILD. What was NBC thinking? Obviously, eighteen year old boys have a higher metabolism and a faster burn rate than, oh say, a fifty-five year old woman. It’s not that hard to see where the odds are stacked.

Anyway.

Someone on American Idol needs to go home, and it’s not one of the contestants. All I can say is MY RECORDER MISSED ADAM LAMBERT because the judges don’t know when to shut their traps. I actually had to go here to see him sing. If he goes tonight, so do I. Down with the judges, I say. The producers were idiots if they thought everyone would shorten their monologues this season to make room for a fourth opinion.

At least they finally called Lil Rounds on her performance inability in general, to which she replied, “I am an artist…” That’s like telling people you’re classy. Classy people never use that word, neither should true artists. Well, except for me. I mean, I can’t help it if I’m a classy blog artist now, can I?

So I was driving home tonight listening to Coast to Coast. In case you’ve never been on a lonely road in the wee small hours of the morning with  nothing but talk radio to keep you company, let me explain.

Coast to Coast is a show where old men talk about UFO’s, ghosts, sasquaches, and other odd cultural phenomenons. It’s a very serious, very proper show, with very serious, very proper discussions.

Until now.

So the host and his guest, two men in their sixties, are discussing life after death experiences and decide to go to the phone lines.

“You’re on the air,” they say.

“Hi,” this woman says, “I just wanted to call in because I have an extra set of nipples.”

Whoa. Did she just say what I think she said? I crank the volume.

“Oh! Well, that’s…very unusual,” says Host One.

“Yes, very unusual indeed, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of anyone having more than three nipples!” says Host Two.

“Well,” she says, “They’re small. Kind of like baby nipples.”

ARE YOU JOKING ME?

“Really? Have you ever had them looked at by a doctor?” Host One.

“Yes, I’m sure a doctor would find that very interesting. You know, some mamals have as many as twelve nipples.” Host Two.

“No, not that I can remember,” she says. “They’re not that noticable. They’re only about a centimeter across.”

ARE THEY REALLY HAVING THIS CONVERSATION??

“Well, you should have someone look at those,” Host One.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think he was suggesting what she thought he was suggesting.

“Well, I can have my brother take a photo with his digital camera and I’ll send it to you, if you want.”

Right. Your brother. With his camera. Kill me now.

“Oh! Yes! That would be very interesting!”

“Very interesting indeed!”

I guess it just goes to show that no matter how old and distinguished and proper a gentleman is, he’s still a man. And what man doesn’t want to meet a woman with four nipples?

Have you ever noticed that wallet photos get the most action?

Let me tell you, I would love to invite people over on a regular basis to showcase the amazing professional portraits I had taken of my children, but unfortunately my house isn’t usually company-friendly (due to the small sharp toys littering the carpet and the perpetually sticky counter top and bar stools). Hey, it took me five months to get the darn things ordered, by the time they were up and on the wall we needed new photos.

This is where my girlfriend Veronica comes into play. She’s kind of the most amazing child photographer I’ve ever met. Do any of you remember that one great parenting moment I had? The one where I actually had my children’s photo’s taken by someone other than myself? Yeah, Veronica took them.

Anyway, she’s doing a spring Brag Book special and I can’t help it, I think it’s a stroke of genius. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars for a photo shoot (the end result being three photos you’ll hang on the wall), she’s doing a professional Brag Book photo session: Ten beautifully crafted photos of your kidlets, taken in a 20 minutes photo shoot (it only took her three minutes to capture more cute pics of Rex than I have in my entire candid collection), edited and put in a purse-friendly brag book (she actually give you TWO books). We’re not talking about your home grown internet photo book, we’re talking about a hip, vibrant disigner collection of your offspring that fits comfortably in your purse (or your mother’s purse).

Because let me tell you, as cute as you think your kids are, this woman can make them cuter. With a flash of her frighteningly expensive camera, she can turn an ugly kid into a Gap poster child. She can make a brat look sweet, a backtalker look mute, and a liar look saintly.

And yes, I know this all from personal experience.

The thing is, they’re only this age for a few minutes. The terrible two’s are gone in the blink of an eye, your five-year-old will soon be a toothless seven-year-old, and your toddler with those kissable rosy cheeks is going to be enrolling in college before you know it.

I think the books are brilliant. Pictures on the wall go up and down, but a pocketbook of pictures you can keep by your bed, and in your heart, long after your arms are empty. You can never get this time back. Don’t miss the moment.

Check her out. Veronica Reeve dot com.