See what life is like in the Amazon, where all the women in the family are six feet tall...

When my two brothers married tall, thin, gorgeous, athletic, six-feet-tall Amazon women, then Mrs. Olsen officially became the troll of the family. Whenever we get together for the girls weekend, the sissies-in-law, together with my own blood sister Niki (also six feet tall) generate mall buzz from every trendy male wondering if they all play basketball. The troll (me) and the runt (my littlebig sis Monica) go in for the sales after sending in the Amazon league in for the block.

Where they dazed civilization like giant stunners from the jungle, Mrs. Olsen merely seemed to be raised by monkeys.

Meet Keri. She was the first person to marry into my Apache Avenue clan. She dated my brother when I was a wee girl of eleven or so. The first time he brought her to meet the family, I sat on her lap. Farted. Then licked her forehead.


Oh sorry, you don't speak monkey? Right. So Keri, that actually meant that I thought you were funny, beautiful, smart, witty, and I wanted you to marry my brother. Thanks for taking the time to catch the translation.

Keri? This public humiliation trial is allowing you to heal right? How about the Olsen's? Are you still there? Do you still love me?



Sooo...Derek and Keri. What makes their love unique? He's a tease, but not in a mean way. She's got wit sharper than a two-edged sword. This smalltown Idaho boy stunned the family when he decided to be a doctor. She wowed the planet by working her way up to Chief Financial Officer of the University Hospital, slashing the bro's tuition while earning several digits herself. I mean, I don't know whether to groom the locks for lice or take up note-taking on my clipboard whenever I see Keri. Needless to say, when the bro finished his forever tenure as overworked student, Keri stepped away from the glory and fame of being tall, gorgeous, and corporate and started raising up giant offspring that dominate the basketball court. The brother's adorable goofiness, combined with Keri's wit, makes for the most beautiful duo. And amidst their many talents and experiences, you'll usually find them away from the hoity-toity board rooms and running to the next game of their kids.


Mrs. Olsen has to add, that when I finally got this picture, and started doing a little cropping and tinting on Picasa, I was smiling the entire time. Just look at my brother's smile! I can hear his weird laugh just looking at it. I'm so excited to have this picture on my kissing wall, because I know it will cure the blues on a bad day.

Thursday's kiss comes all the way back from 1981...

Behold the woman that gave me life. Here she is blowing me (and you) a kiss in 2 pictures, each twenty-six years apart!

Yes mother, I practiced the piano.

Blah. I'm needing some kissing pictures to fill me with happiness because today has been an off day.

Missed my first ever invitation for an all-female all-fun book club (call me next time!)and have a toddler who can't seem to pass this little infant guy without knocking him down on purpose, then smothering him with kisses. Cute and annoying all at the same time. Let's make out and fuh-get about it shall we?

• Christmas 2004. Stop and think about Christmas 2004.....do you remember the insane natural disaster that happened?

I'm still waiting.

Okay, so that was the year of "the" tsunami that pummelled Thailand, Indonesia, and Sumatra killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Soooo. Holly and Adam: They're in Thailand. Working the globe. Hoping for offspring. Surprised that it works. Expecting in summer. Missing the family. Came home for Christmas. Surprise!Surprise! Canceled their plans to stay at the beach. In Phuket. Where 100 foot waves hit on December two-six. The Olsens all say: That baby is a miracle in more ways than one.

That picture was during that time. A kiss is quite appropriate don't you think?

Here's another kiss, 4 years and 2 kids later...

What makes their love unique? Well, these guys are the only married couple I've had as roommates since becoming Mrs. Olsen and I'll tell you what. I don't think they have ever been in a fight. It kindof ticks me off. They're even smiling in this picture with their lips pressed up against each other. Would you get over yourselves already? If anything, they are the couple that embodies peace. When they come together, you can feel them enjoying a tall glass of water. In each other.

Think of me as retired, conspiracy theorist, and a redneck. I am now resident spammer, but this week I'm not filling your inbox with blonde jokes, I'm goin' for love. I signed up to pay it forward from my old high school buddy, volleyball wizard, and supercrafter Danielle. I'll be getting some homemade love from her, so here's how I'm passing it on:

We're having a celebration of love this week, as manifested through the lips. Yo people. Email me your kissing pictures to mrsolsenipresume[at]gmail[dot]com so I can feel the love this week. If you show me enough of the good stuff, I just might post my awkward desperate love poetry from my high school notebook. It'll be fun!

In the meantime, I have a tip for the masses of point-and-shoot photographers who drool with envy when they see real pictures taken with expensive cameras. It's called Picasa 3, and I'm getting my full cheese on by turning my pics into black and white, graining them out, and then highlighting cheesy little hearts in full color. If you always wanted to learn how to Photoshop, but never had the time or money...trust me...Picasa is a great tide-me-over. I turned this:



Into this:

I'm not going into business or anything, but you have to admit that it's an improvement. I even gave them a love glow. Are you feeling it? I'm appreciating the long lines stretching shoulder to toe on Jackson, dipping his bride of less than two years.

Jackson and Celeste. What makes their love unique? They rock the glasses with style. Give Sandra Bullock glasses, and she's the ugly duckling in Love Potion #9. Give Jackson and Celeste glasses, and they work it like Sarah Palin (but in a better way). I'm also positive I could have found a dozen pictures of them lip-locked just by stalking their facebook page, they are just full of life and passion like that.

Because they seem to embody the newlywed kiss, I had to share this photo of my sister Niki and her Justin-Timberlake-look-alike-husband, Jared. I added the cheesy by doing a soft focus on everything except the lovely wedding band, all on Picasa.

Thank you! I'm here all week. Here's the crap they gave me to work with:




okay so I took it. I gave myself the crap to work with. But they posed themselves on a perfectly washed out day on the coast of Maine. See how Picasa is my friend?

Of course a full lip-lock is not required to make it on the kissing wall. Here's the sis pretending to be coy with her man:

This one is full on cheesy. Timberlake's obviously been out clubbing with hootchie mama's because his lip curl is totally fake. And the sissy's eyeroll is neutralized by a lip about to turn up. I guuuesssss.... that means that they're really in love! So maybe that's a good thing.

Jared and Niki. What makes their love unique? They somehow embody full on intelligence on a nerdy level but still are cool. Not many people can do that. I can't look at this picture without picturing Jared going slack-jawed and hamming it up like Homestar Runner, then wondering in awe if that's the same guy that's getting screaming A's at his medical residency at Harvard. And the sis is the same way. She started a cold-calling salesman job all by herself, then sold it a year later for more than an SUV with all the upgrades. Smart. Charismatic. And yet, they can rock it in the grown-up world but come home to karaoke, wrestling, and bad Space Ghost impersonations together at the end of the day.

• kids only care about other kids
• Mrs. Olsen is horrible at getting together with her far-flung family members
• perhaps both

It's enough to make Mrs. Olsen's heart ache a little. So a while back, I decided I needed to step it up a notch and start putting pictures of my family on the walls. The wall is not finished yet, heck it's not even started...but I have a theme! It's my kissing wall, and to make it there in print you need to be lip-locked, blowing a kiss, or refusing a kiss, whatever. So in honor of Valentine's Day which is this week, and my own achey heart, we'll be posting some pics I have gathered so far.

If you want to email me pictures of a kiss (don't get nasty on me now) I would looooove to see them and post them on Saturday. Send me a kiss at mrsolsenipresume[at]gmail[dot]com.

Monday Kiss

The "acting sister" to The Mister of the House. In case you missed this short creepy thriller showcasing Olsen talents, you can reminisce here. The video of this real husband-wife-team will deplete the love from your stores. Hopefully this pic will fill it back up again.

Mandy & Bryan. What makes their love unique? She's taller than her man, and it's okay. What he lacks in height, he makes up in chest hair. He went to Juilliard and is my kids favorite story-teller because he makes all the characters come alive. They are both actors and also dabble in screen-writing. I love them because they weren't afraid to dream big!

After hearing approximately three anecdotes of young girls getting unauthorized backrubs from friend's fathers, brother, or peers, Mrs. Olsen established the NO SLEEPOVERS rule for her family. We make exceptions for Grandma's and close girlie cousins, but for the most part, it's just a part of life that will hopefully be norm when we make it to the dreaded teen years. Which is why it was such a rare treat for Rainbow Girl who got to have a sleepover with our little friends, Mabel and Nell.

Apparently, we also make exceptions for soul sisters who are desperately ill with a husband on a three-day business trip. Sally, I love you and you are in my prayers.


Like myself, Sally has a NO SLEEPOVERS rule, so I was actually flattered that we could break our rules together. Ssshhh! Don't tell our kids, we think they haven't figured it out. And would you just look at them? Amid the vomit of patterns in this picture, you will find 3 little girls who each found a soft friend to snuggle them through the night : unicorn, puppy, alligator.


Back in Rainbow Girl's bedroom, her usual snuggle buddies had a cold night alone on her bed.

Plushie on the left? From Grandma Anderson. On the right? Grandma Cozy. And in the middle? Mrs. Olsen's first love.


As a kid, my family squeaked out of Apache Avenue to visit our big city cousins in Albuquerque. While there, we visited a rare building called..... a mall. And for some unknown reason to me, my mother pointed to a huge wall of stuffed animals and told me and my sister Niki "Go and pick whatever animal you want!"


I couldn't believe it. There were rows and rows of squishy animals that weren't boring teddy bears! I swiftly picked this monkey and christened him with what I considered to be the coolest and funniest name I could come up with. First, combine two gross and hilarious words: Zit &Wart; then create your own groovey moniker : Zort.

Niki, my stretched out sissy, chose a boring teddy bear and named him Chubby. Together we loved those guys night after night. It became such a habit, I had that guy cranked under my sleeping chin all the way up until high school. We had sleepovers back then (without a hitch thank goodness) so there's many witnesses to me and Niki's madness: Hackworth, Little Red, Toley, Paula, Sop, and our born as a grown-up sister Monica.

I was cured of my cuddling sesssions with Zort after winning a student election in High School. Cranked in the fetal, I laid in bed curled up with Zort under my chin only to have the covers ripped off while still in the middle of my REM cycle, by none other than the cooler older girls that were leaving office. Surprise! Early morning breakfast for the new student officers!

Dazed, I shot up in bed and swung Zort desperately on the ground against the wall. I said a quick prayer that coolgirls Liz Moss and Missy Thatcher didn't see my monkeychild, and stepped out of bed, onto Zort's head, and changed into my clothes.

My mother was warned ahead of time to make sure I was wearing PJ's and didn't shock innocent Idahoans with a sports bra and panties. Apparently she didn't think about Zort and the possible persecution I could have received when the high school learned I still cuddled with my stuffed monkey. Lucky for her no one mentioned anything, but there was still a price for this folly.

I vowed to myself my monkey love was over. Over dammit! Then I relegated him to the shelf for many many moons. And just look at that sweet face? Do you think he's forgiven me?

I eventually let him back in the bed while serving 18 months in the nunnery for my church. Three months into the mission I wrote home:

Enough is enough! Send me the monkey!

He was later replaced by a Mister of the House, and so Zort became resident plushie to Rainbow Girl. He's currently enjoying prime real estate on her bed, but he knows all too well how quickly that can change.

And Mrs. Olsen will be quick to squeeze in a one-night stand should Rainbow Girl ever. Thoughtlessly. Chuck him on the floor then step on his head before shelving him for life.

There's something about the ocean and it's tide, that will always bring me home. I've never lived by the ocean, but sometimes (and this might seem silly) I can feel its heartbeat. Swoosh. Washhhhh. Again. And Again. Once I slim down and can fit into my size 8's again, I shall take the Mister of the House to the beach and make out. But in the meantime, I'll share my delights from the web that always, constantly, forever, provide the following:

Laughter till it hurts. I could watch this ten times a day and laugh every time. Out loud. It shall never age for me.

The fact that he picks up the mic, then signs off his newscast officially earns him a post as newsanchor by my books. And don't forget the big cushy chair. He'll need it. That Stud.


Motherly love boils over whenever I watch Charlie and his sweet older brother. Plus those accents! If only we could adopt from the UK and have a guarantee they'd keep droppin' the R's like these little mutts. We've all seen this, but I swear it's like wine, and improves with age (i.e. the more bitter and ugly I become, the sweeter these boys remain).




Motherly Love Part Two comes from this kid. Too young and natural to not be telling the truth (in this commercial) makes me want to scoop him up and take him to a good (but clean) action flick. *P.S. he says a word that isn't a big deal in my house because I'm potty training a little boy. But maybe it's a big deal in yours**




Excited. Having been a business owner for years, and wondering how some younger people seem to despise an honest day's work, not to mention the occasional wash of apathy over issues like the war and the environment....well this next clip, in all its simple creativity, makes me stop being annoyed, and start getting excited. For the future.




Humility. Beautiful photos ask: What would it have been like to be there? I often wonder, and yet am grateful for the many written and living witnesses that tell me what my heart already knows : God is our Father. I am His Kid. He Sent His Son. And tough though it may seem at times, sacrifice, patience, humility is really the tough stuff of life.