My middle child came to earth looking like he had been scrubbed by Clorox. Upon his arrival, his immediate welcoming party was not in his mother's arms, but with an oxygen tube jammed down his esophagus. So when my mother declared I think that kid's going to be blonde!.....and pale! I immediately discounted it to his pseudo-emergency oxygen scuffle with our loving nurses. No mom, he just needs a good wash. No mom, he's just needs good quality air. No mom, his eyes will darken...all babies start with blue eyes.

Uuuhhhh. No mom. Just wait til he hits puberty.

While Mrs. Olsen may have a hard time admitting that she is completely winging this parenting thing to her mom, it's obvious that Grandma was right. Vanilla Wafer has carressed and loved all things-that-go. His love affair evolved from pop cans, to cars, then to trains.

Does that tan run on batteries?

Where does his forehead end and hair begin?

Was it stretch when playing your role as Silas in The Da Vinci Code?

He's our own little compact fluorescent.

Speaking of which, you've got to love "CFL's" for all the loving work they're doing for carbon emissions. Even those from the "Natural-Warming-Trend" crowd have to appreciate them for their pure economy. Consider this fact:

If every home in America replaced just one incandescent light bulb with an energy star qualified CFL bulb, well, then this would happen in just one year:

• save enough energy to light 3 million homes
• it would prevent the release of carbon emissions equal to 800,000 cars

If every home had just one Vanilla Wafer, this would happen in just one year:

• approximately 300,675,275 kisses would be coaxed through eyebrow flirting and fake crying, giving moms more energy to complete their tasks
• an additional 8 million pounds of carbon emissions would be saved because you would avoid unnecessary trips to the grocery store a.k.a. toy or candy aisle

Which is why Mrs. Olsen is so conflicted. Besides hating to have my beautiful bare feet rubbing dirt or carpet, I have made some attempts to be a grubby granola living more consciously, growing my own food, purchasing hormone-free beef, recycle, whatever...

But these little beauties, these compact fluorescent bulbs? I greet them like Mrs. Olsen meeting Vanilla Wafer in the toy aisle. All the morning hugs and kisses forgotten when I shelve the 20th version of Thomas the Tank Engine. The love is still there somewhere, our mutual benefits tolerated....but the trust is gone.

Stay tuned for Part Deux. I have a dirty little secret.

P.S. Mom you know I love yq!

Quasi-country living means neighbors with roosters crowing in the morning, horses peeking over the fence to watch you play in the backyard, and my autumn favorite....HUGE pumpkin patches. Just a few miles away, a fellow villager has placed all of his pumpkins in his field and relies on the honor system to get paid. Such trust and abundance resides here in the country.

And what a bargain! Two for a buck! I found the perfect pumpkin for my porch....right....over...

there!

Come here my little squash.

I love the crisp air. I love soup! Jenny from Simple Life Love just posted the prettiest pumpkin soup recipe ever, so I wanted to post a link. I will be trying it soon! In the meantime I will be devouring this pumpkin with squishes and kisses.

When the devil pays you a visit, please follow this easy-to-remember rule: Run Away! When the devil sends his chickens when you’re trying to live sustainably, it’s a little more complicated. First there’s a “What the Heck?” then comes a “these chickens are unnatural” followed by an “okay it’s not their fault”. Then you start getting overwhelmed “did they just hiss at Guadalupe?” followed by “where did these chickens come from?” and finally “maybe we should just take them back”.

Please raise your hand if you wish that Mrs. Olsen had pulled out her crappy point-and-shoot camera at this moment (thank you, me too). Okay, now please enjoy the closest thing I found on the world wide interweb.

Before inadvertently deleting my week-old blog, I started a giveaway of a fabulous purse. Before being permanently deleted, the comments/dating ideas were printed off for The Mister of the House. He very democratically read all of the suggestions (with names blacked out!) and deemed this as the winner for a fabulous date for us (and for you?):

Lee Family said...
okay, I'm going to say things you can do with your boat - because you got a boat right?? We've had a lot of fun with Jared's raft. order pizza or make dinner and go out on your boat on a quiet lake for a romantic dinner.


So yes my sister won. This was not rigged however. We have a "boat" *cough*canoe*. Hey, it floats. If anyone wants to borrow a couple of canoes, you are more than welcome to enjoy a quiet evening on the lake.

Congratulations Niki!

Whenever a new little baby comes to our planet, there's always a rush to see how the baby incorporated their cocktail of DNA from mom and dad. Because The Mister of the House has what I like to call "shutters" as eyelids, I never suspected such an exotic eye-shape he would pass on to our offspring. Mary Kay would find a hard time finishing off these lids. There's no space for the true color zone, it's disappeared under the sub-cutaneous fat desperately holding onto his eyebrows.

When my firstborn, Rainbow Girl, came to earth, store-clerks and shopping moms would always stop to ask me if my husband was Asian.

Then when my middle child came, we were surprised with his complete inability to tan. His skin, hair and eyes had been scrubbed with bleach. Even with his beautiful blue eyes, the exotic tilt to the eyes was apparent.

We're still in the throes of babyhood with number three, our own little Buddha Baby. Starting his sojourn at nine-plus pounds, he was (and is!) the squishiest softest baby I've yet to manhandle.


Take me to the Emperor!

There's something about his eyes that amazes me still. They're so.....dark. And yet, so reflective of light. During the six times this desperate-for-momma has been held by another adult, I love to sit across the room and just look at him from far away. I begin to understand why every female store clerk that meets this kid exclaims "Wow! He's gonna be a charmer when he grows up. He is gorgeous!".

When pregnancy pulls out the ugly stick and smacks you over the head (and down the back-side) then these statements are all you have to cling to for consolation. Now if I can just make sure he can do dishes, he'll be a true catch someday.

For a mother who is constantly forgetting her camera, doesn't scrapbook, and is easily distracted by chocolate, it pays to have married into the Olsen Family (where you get the occasional video scraps showing your kids delighting in an Easter Egg Hunt). I know you didn't believe me when I told you the this clan that I married into was genetically mutated to all things multimedia. They practically dream in digital.

Fortunately, I have someone to back me up on this. And it's not Grandma or The Mister of the House either. Try Nora Ephron. Try Apple Computers. Try thousands of registered lovers of the iPhone and The Mac.

About one year ago, 2 of my DNA-warped brothers-in-law showed up at my doorstep on a Saturday morning. "Do you have any matchbox cars we can borrow?" "Do you know any neighborhood boys that still play with cars and tough guys?" and thus was born the short film Imagine.

It was all part of Apple's Insomnia Film Festival. They give a list of film requirements that you need to incorporate, and students across the country have just 24 hours to create a film. Imagine was last year's Celebrity Judge's Winner, an entry among 1,800 or so. For one who sits back to watch, but not create, I was amazed by the scramble it takes to film, edit, score and build a three-minute seventeen-seconds film. The full 24 hours was a bunch of filmmakers scrambling. Who would have thought?

One year later, I like to pretend that it's a movie about collectors hunting down all of the Joe Six-Packs, the Molly Mallrats, and Joneses who recently remodeled their castles. You know, the average American citizen swimming in credit card debt, bad mortgages, and cheap plastic toys. So please when you watch this, don't imagine that. Just sit back and be entertained, and forget about the fact that it's time to hoard cash, live off food storage, and ride your bike to work in the winter. Please don't think about that. Just be mindlessly entertained. It's good for the stress levels in small doses.

This film features my old neighbor and dearest friend Sally, along with her son Luke (Rainbow Girl's buddy). Directed and filmed Clay Olsen, little brother. Story by Jackson Olsen, little brother #2. It's a short high-octane thriller! Enjoy!



So after watching this film, please comment and let me know what do you Imagine?

[An embedded video from another website was here; it is no longer available.]

Being married to an entrepreneur who has started multiple businesses has permanently damaged my brain. I am in constant wonder of product development and consumer education. Having operated a retail operation for five years, hauling around Rainbow Girl all over town to buy supplies, make home-made signs, research the competition, improve your product and then wonder how you can educate the public on your amazing wares with an advertising budget of twenty dollars...it's enough to make you cross-eyed, or at least make your house dirty.

I am one of the rare few that reads all the billboards while driving down the interstate.

I am one of the cursed few that sits around and thinks of product concepts that could be successful if I had money for product development, focus groups, and the single vertical billboard on the way to Interstate 15.

And it's not just retail that gets me obsessing over product development. Take my older sister, Monica.

This is Monica now. You wouldn't believe she has produced 5 offspring. And NO she was not a teen mother.

Remember this picture? This was Monica back in 1982, and even then she was a wonder in time management and product development. By this time she was already filing away her underwear by color neatly into her dresser. She also was helping my mom pack all of our school lunches. I'm pretty sure she still has these jeans. They're worn out now so she only wears them when doing major home renovations, so only every other day or so (at least I can find consolation in the fact that she's wearing a matching fanny pack *sigh* at least I have that).

So when I use up an afternoon thinking of how I could market family vacation photos and felt fabric, well, that's the same amount of time that Monica opens up three gallons of paint and does this:

And this! (hello little niece)

And this!

It's amazing what she can paint, finish, or bake with whatever she's got lying around. Which reminded me of someone else who's pretty good at taking rough wares and producing the most amazing results ever.

Exhibit A: One single, shriveled little corn kernel. A.K.A. garden seed. And yes that front appendage is a thumb, where does it end? It must be a foot long. If I had ever been a hitchhiker, I would have gone far I'm sure.

So this seed, right! Throw some dirt over this humiliated shriveled-up little lady, add water and sunshine and before you know it you have this monstrosity taking its place.

I'm sorry but what in the Sam Hill? How did this happen? This isn't even the product! This is just advertising! Look at me. I'm taller than you. I took worm poo, water and sunshine and made dinner for six!

Thankfully, I wasn't in charge of this product development. I probably would have boiled the seeds, spray painted them black, compared them to river stones from Valley of Elah, packaged them into an over-sized plastic Goliath, called them !Philistine Filibusters! and tried to sell them to Congressional Seats from the Southern States. I would have never seen their true potential. Their simple, delicious, over-abundant potential.

Exhibit B: Final product produced from one stalk of corn. Six delicious ears of corn. This pattern is going to look familiar. Every time you see it, please say to yourself : one shriveled seed produced this.

(Okay, so we've been eating corn on the cob for 3 weeks, just filled a bag for my cousin and invited my neighbor to feed a big Sunday crowd with my corn. So yes, I threw 2 extra cobs in, but I 85% guarantee that this is still a conservative estimate and I should have thrown in three more on top of this)

Exhibit C: Offspring Numero Three. We'll call him Buddha Baby. When you and The Mister of the House are debating whether your baby production days are over, let's just say that every sprouting seed in the garden rises singing the Halleluja! Chorus. Halleluja! God is Life! Fertility is the order of the Universe! Every living thing bears seed and testifies of continuation of life! Of love! God is life and love! Fertility becomes you! You have a million eggs in your ovaries! Plant and live! Grow and love! Babies! Babies! Babies!

If I didn't have Buddha Baby eating up our disgusting sandbox while trying to work in the garden, then this glorious chorus just might bore a hole in my head. Don't you know there are cats in the neighborhood?! Bad Baby!

Look familiar? One shriveled seed produced this.




Let's get undressed, shall we? Oh, and don't forget! One shriveled seed produced this.

There she is! Right there in the middle. What a humble little darling. Are you sure she did it?

Yep.

One shriveled seed produced this.

Now let's get those bulky cobs out of the way. Let's just take this down to the basics. Here we have cut all the delicious kernels from the cob.

Repeat after me: One shriveled seed produced this.



One shriveled seed produced this? Yes!

It kindof reminds me of my uterus. Isn't it beautiful?

If only I could educate consumers about this amazing product! I'd make millions I'm sure. It's almost like magic isn't it? Even Monica would be impressed with the market potential I've discovered.

When what to my wondering eyes? Some left over seeds that didn't find a home in the dirt!?

Just look at that market potential! Multiply each of those kernels by the hundreds of morsels dancing around their long straight cobs...I could feed a hundred people! I have a market! I'll make millions! Come sister, let us package this stuff with colorful stripes and sell them in a high-end boutique!

*Cough* Excuse me? A measly buck n' ten? People pay $1.10 for these magic beans? That's it?!

Who makes this stuff anyway? They're obviously not in it for the money.

Sing with me now:

HaaaAAaaa-le-luja! HaaaAAaaa-le-luja!

Ssshh! I found out the source of our magic beans. In my neighborhood we call Him Heavenly Father and He has produced many amazing products, including the one pictured above. I love Him.

p.s. thank you Heavenly Father for my lessons in the garden. I know you can read my blog and I love you.