The Twilight Double Standard

I was rushing around the house, waving my arms and yelling (in a nice get your butt in gear way) at my entire family. It was Sunday night and I needed everyone in the van. My nauseatingly creative friend, Lil had offered me her homemade stencils to make a Breaking Dawn t-shirt. I had no clue what the stencils even were, but I know Lil and they would have to be genius. The stencils were across town and I needed them.

We all raced down the 215 towards Henderson. I leaned forward in my seat, Twilight sparkle in my twitching eye. Must get the stencils. Nic turned to me and said, "You know, if I was going to wait in line all night with my guy friends to see the latest Megan Fox movie, clad in my homemade t-shirt you would have a fit. There's such a double standard."

I sighed. Edward and I don't have time for this trivial banter.

I tried to explain. It isn't that I lay awake nights thinking in a lusty way about Rob Pattinson. Honestly, Edward could be played by any fool, and I'd feel the same way. It's the romance. It's the story. I get drunk on it over and over. AND I'LL MAKE NO APOLOGIES FOR IT!

Take the old BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. No insult intended on Colin Firth, but he's not the epitome of a manly man. His jaw is not chiseled. He boasts no biceps or washboard abs. But he melts my innards every time I watch it. It's the romance! It's dreamy, so intoxicating. When I see him in that movie...I don't feel about him the way every red-blooded male feels about Megan Fox when she emerges from the explosion in a torn tank top and all dewy with sparkling sweat. It's DIFFERENT! It's the delicious, heady perfume of out -of- this world romance that I love. Not a lusty obsession.

So yes, I will wait in line for hours tonight in my homemade t-shirt. I will cat call and squeal. I will claw the arm next to me when Bella says "I do". And I will come home and crawl in bed with my guy and thank the Lord that he is mine.

It's not a double standard. It's Twilight.

Deep Thoughts in Walgreen's

Nic came home and surveyed the battlefield. Greasy paper plates and empty Cheetos bags littered the kitchen table. My permanent butt print and the butt prints of several of my children still lingered on the couch cushions. The reasons why don't matter, it was just one of those days. He gave me a long hug and told me, "Even perfect mothers need a day off."

He sent me to Walgreen's to buy milk and bread and a flavor of Tylenol that maybe Evan won't barf up on the couch. I gladly went. It was rainy and cool and I wanted to lay on the pavement and smell that wet asphalt smell til I died. I don't know why I love that smell so much.

I had me a time at Walgreen's. The fluorescent lighting was cheerful. I took my sweet time with my undersized shopping cart. I shuffled down each aisle in my sweatpants and contemplated. I knew it was a perfect waste of money, but I couldn't resist picking up a rag mag spewing the sordid details of Justin Bieber - baby daddy.

I tried to think of situations in which turquoise nail polish would work in my life.

I walked by the enemas and was grateful I didn't need one.

I gasped at the audacity of charging five dollars for a pint of Ben and Jerry's.

I lingered in the baby lotions and binkies and felt a tiny pinch in my heart to have another baby.

I smiled down the Christmas aisle and pushed all of the buttons on the annoying singing do-hickeys. My favorite was Miss piggy in a cheap and easy leopard dress singing "Santa Baby".

I scowled at the paperback shelf and wondered how on earth the airbrushed abs and heaving bosom books make the NY times best seller list every darn week? Who reads those?! Gross.

On the way out, there was an Asian man impatiently accosting an arguing couple at the Red Box. He was tired of waiting and wanted the couple to check if the machine had cartoos. Not cartoons, cartoos. The couple had no idea what he was talking about. I'm a mom. I know what he was talking about. He was trying to say Cars 2.

I should have cleared up the matter. But I didn't.

It was just one of those days.

All It Took

Poor me. Poor, poor me. Walking in the rain to the medical building to have my blood drawn. Then the lab was closed down, door locked. Moved to another location. On the cell phone, in the hall listening to the robot lady on the phone tell me of another lab I could go to. Poor me.

All it took was a peek into another room on my way out. The cancer room. A chubby mama, holding her baby with the daddy near by. Cancer? In one of them? How about a peek into the dialysis room? A woman with a ruddy face and watery eyes tucked her dry, messy hair into a baseball cap. Waiting to recycle her blood so she can stay alive.

All it took was a book I'm reading in the waiting room about the Irish potato famine. A mom waking up with no more milk to feed her baby. Pricking the vein of her horse to feed her sons with blood. Fever, death, shallow graves in frozen ground.

I recently ate a dinner with potatoes. They were piled high on my plate, steamy and covered in ketchup. I ate so much I felt sick the rest of the night.

I felt so lucky to make dinner for my kids tonight. Dropping sticky dumplings into a rich soup of fish, onions and cream. I hear them slurping the dregs from the kitchen.

I wonder how many days I've truly, truly worried. I worry about if I have too many dimples on the backs of my thighs to go swimming in public. I worry if my Tivo recorded Vampire Diaries. And of course, like all of us, I have true worries.

But for the most part, I have a blessed life. I need to worry more about my hands. What have they done to lift another today?

Summa Summa Summa Time

I think I've won the award for most epically lazy blogger this summer. Lest I spoil my rep, I shall continue blogging with the least amount of effort possible...hence this hodge podge of unrelated summer photos.

My handsome tan husband had a birthday. The highlights were the puppy I bought him last minute and the incredibly manly wrapping paper I found for him. Not that there's any shame in the Tinkerbell and Elmo motif last year...Julie was my first friend I made in Las Vegas. She is a superstar among women and I am sad sad sad she moved away. This was our fancy farewell photo.
This is Nic getting Jemma psyched for the chicken chase in Gunlock, UT.
Two faces I kiss often. Wouldn't you?
The 4th of July celebration in Pine Valley Utah was so darn patriotic I about had a heart attack. I love my country.

I was just feelin' it that day. Doesn't it just look like I was feelin' it?
Did you know there are cool hikes that are super easy for kids up at Mt. Charleston? Well, it was a little much for Jemma apparently, but check out the cool pay off at the end! (Scroll down)
A waterfall! Who knew?
Do you remember feeling like you were hot stuff when you were little? For me it was when I got some lime green sunglasses with rainbow paint splatters on the lenses and a flash dance sweatshirt that hung off of one shoulder. HOT STUFF. For Afton and Ellie it was sitting on the top of the truck at the drive-in. Doesn't get any cooler.
There you have it friends, the laziest summer re-cap ever. Go me! :)

Strange Brew

You never know what a new day will bring. Lots of times it brings exactly what it brought the last ten days. Not so today. When I woke up this morning I had no idea that:

-The dog would eat my stash of powdered Crystal Light.

-Jemma would eat the powdered stash of my feet skin which was still sitting in the Ped Egg after I tamed my Sasquatch feet.

-I would have an artichoke and a spoonful of Nutella for lunch.

-I'd be diagnosed with a geezer ailment. A hernia. What?!

-A one armed man in a turban would steal my cell phone and then lie his head off about it.-When I told my sister about my phone she happened to know the guy who stole it. Ha!

It's been a weird day. I'm going to go hide my other electronic devices and powdered substances now. I also can't get over the thought that he hid my phone IN his turban. I keep picturing myself unwrapping it slowly while saying, "Ha-LOW! My name is Angie Larkin. You steal my cell phone. Prepare to DIE!

For Two Minutes

For two minutes I was a fish at Walmart. It was a rather dark exercise of imagination.

For instance, what if I were that one Beta fish that was more brown than magenta or turquoise? Who's going to buy a brown Beta? How many times would fish get restocked while that little brown one just sat there?

There is always that one fish who is sucked up against that vent thing. Deader than a door nail. Did that fish gradually drift that way after death, or did it die because it swam a little too close and got trapped and died of a massive hickey?

Goldfish are either at the bottom of the gene pool or they get no respect. Because there were at LEAST 20 dead ones all in a pile at the bottom of their tank. What's that all about? And do the live ones just swim around and avoid the dead gaze of their fallen comrades? That's gotta mess a fish up.

Why do some float when they die and some sink? And the saddest thing of the day: The little fish who swims sideways because he's on his way out. I'd rather be the trout in the meat aisle, dead under plastic with my son repeatedly poking its eye than be the sideways swimmer.

They say fish brains totally reboot with no memory of the past every three seconds. I hope that's true.

Excuse me, I will now go apply some black eyeliner and lipstick, stick a few hundred safety pins on my t-shirt and lay in a dark room listening to My Chemical Romance.

Friday the 13th, 2001

I woke up on the second day of my honeymoon and cried like I never cried before. It wasn't a wailing cry or a puffy nosed boogery cry, just a cry I felt down into my bones. It's not like I didn't know that one of us would die before the other (unless we performed some sort of Thelma and Louise stunt), it's just that I understood for the first time that there would come a day when one of us would wake up without the other one. And now that I had found THE ONE and married THE ONE, the thought truly soaked in that morning and it vaporized my heart. I hugged him so tightly. I wanted to be absorbed into his body so that it would be impossible for us to be parted. I know, I was so dramatic. But it's how I felt!

So he sung to me. Ladies, I lucked out in this department. His voice is like butta. He sang:

Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine,
I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine,
A million tomorrows could all pass away,
There I forget all the joy that is mine, today.

By then I was bawling too hard to listen to the second verse.

What a beautiful and a scary thing to let yourself love someone so much. It requires inhuman amounts of trust, because if they turn out to be a dud, you are so hosed. Luckily, he's anything but a dud.

My marriage is a testament to me that God has a plan for us all. He shooed me like a clueless baby chick through my crazy life and into the arms of the perfect man for me. He has taught me to repress my swamp witch tendencies. Through watching his meekness I softened into a new person. He's never yelled at me once in our entire marriage. Bah! I wish I could say the same!

He woke me this morning with a little blue box and a kiss. If I may quote Salt and Pepa: "Whatta man whatta man whatta man, whatta mighty good man".

Happy tenth baby. Yay us!

A weekend in favorites

The best thing anyone said to me this weekend was: You look like Elizabeth Taylor, only more wholesome.

The best thing I ate this weekend was something I have never before tasted: It was breaded shrimp in this sweet mayo-like sauce with candied pecans. Oh, and the bowl of flawless huge berries atop chewy granola and Tahitian vanilla yogurt wasn't bad either!

The funniest thing I saw this weekend was a huge missile aimed at the sky on the side of Route 66. Perched on top was, wait for it....Snoopy.

My favorite thing I wore was a new pair of cork wedged heels with silver flecks in the corky part. I buckled them too tightly though, and almost required amputation after dinner.

My favorite person I met was a man who has worked in 32 different countries. He was like Indiana Jones and held me captive as he regaled me with the tale of his 500 mile trip down the Nile river with a bunch of refugees aboard.

My favorite fuzzy moment was waking up with my sweetheart in a pillowy king sized bed and watching The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. They were happy little trees indeed.

My favorite thing I wanted to buy but didn't was a can of bandaids that looked like strips of bacon.

My favorite traveling song for this weekend was Hurt. The NIN song that Johnny Cash so expertly covered.

Scottsdale, if you weren't an even hotter armpit than Vegas, I'd almost move there.

A Sunday

Oh...my little blog, I still love you. I know it's been a while.

I was strangely reflective today. Like a monk. A really happy monk. I even got teary a few times. I gave out random hugs to people I don't ever hug. It was weird.

I was sitting in church. My observation super powers were working overtime. A 10 month old baby behind me wore the facial expressions of a poised 25 year old pearl -wearing lady. She was a lady- baby and she kept looking at me. Adorable. Her dad directed the choir in a song that made my heart do a Grinchy swelling thing. I watched a plain woman in a simple black dress sing with meaning and joy. It made her so beautiful.

I noticed the soft ringlets curled into a little girl's hair. Her dress and headband so fancy. Her mom - careful and quiet.

I looked around at many faces I knew. People with problems. People I've had problems with. But all of them together in this place. All of us hoping to soak in a little strength. Add some oil to our lamps. Show our God we love him. I felt it, that we all are the same to Him and it made me love those faces.

Then at home some family gathered around my table. We laughed and remembered the time (he who shall remain unnamed) put soap in the fancy Country Club fountains and the suds grew to 8 feet tall and out into the street. We ate bacon wrapped chilis and deviled eggs and drank grape Kool-aid and Dr. Pepper on ice. Little ones who don't want to be little anymore laughed at jokes they didn't quite get. A kid ran through the living room missing his pants and Dad had to go on a turd hunt. Grown -up girls told harmless secrets while grown -up boys did what they do which happened to be giving a test drive to a random dude in a car we weren't selling. Boys.

Then everyone left and I looked at my table. It was sticky with used up fudgescicle sticks, and littered with mostly empty plates. Someone wanted the chili, but not the bacon. I could hear the noise we had just been making and I wanted to call them all back to spend some more time around the table with me.

I feel blessed to be around all of my peeps. All of 'em.

Don't Wanna

In the days of the Cosby Show and Madonna, McDonald's served the most delectable apple pies. Not the dry crumbly wannabe pies of today. The old ones were deep fried, boiling hot with crispy, oily skin covered in crunchy golden bubbles. They trumped hot fudge sundaes if that tells you anything. I loved them like Gollum loves his precious.

One day, while eating at McDonald's, my dad saw me looking a little glum.

"What's wrong Angie?" ( I was about 5 btw)

"I'm depressed."

"Why?"

"Because this is my last bite of apple pie."

All good things come to an end. Now Christmas is over and I feel like I just ate my last bite of apple pie. My Christmas manicure has chipped off. I poured the eggnog down the drain. It glubbed out thick and yellow and coated the sink. I haven't had the heart to plug in the outdoor lights for three days. Okay, that was dramatic...I just forgot to actually. But still. I wouldn't have forgotten if it were still Christmas!

But the worst - Trashing the gingerbread houses. The trash was full and I pressed them down in the bag with a flat palm, crumbling them into sweet smelling victims of Hurricane Angie. Christmas is over and all evidences of it must die. Okay. That also was melodramatic.

Sigh.

You know what, though? I'm leaving my cards up. I'm leaving them up well into February!

The tree's getting the boot on Monday.

At least I have the extra 10 pounds I'm sure I've gained to keep me warm through the rest of the winter.

Gag.