A picture's worth at least 5 words...

When I first saw this photo, I nearly laughed myself into a pants-wetting asthma attack. 

Hi-freaking-LARIOUS, I thought!  *laugh choke wheeze piddle*  Oh my God oh my God!  That baby looks like Chris Farley with a page boy haircut and wearing a little pink dress!  PRICELESS!!!  Reincarnation!  Haaaahahahahahahahahaaaa!!!

Usually, if I find something funny, I rarely bother to look too deeply into it.  My brain registers "FUNNY!" and my mouth does the rest.   (I may or may not sometimes be something of an asshole.  In case you didn't notice.)

This time, however, my conscience woke up long enough to drift in to my hilarity and rain all over my parade.  "Ummm, Dani?" it said, "You are laughing your ASS OFF at someone's BABY.  That poor woman probably thinks she has the most beautiful baby in the WORLD.  She most likely ordered an 11 x 13 portrait of that photo to hang PROMINENTLY in her living room so that she can SHOW THE WORLD how FABULOUSLY she reproduces.  The relatives no doubt all got professionally framed 8 x 10S, she probably ordered a gross of keychains with that exact picture in them, AND got t-shirts made that say "Princess" or something equally tragic, AND YOU'RE LAUGHING AT HER.  Also?  You are way too focused on the unibrow.  Stop obsessing so much about eyebrows.  It isn't normal."

CRAP.  I HATE it when my conscience shows up to harsh my mellow and ruin my good time.

Then I flashed back on a memory of the time, many many years ago, when my sister-in-law and I took our babies to get their pictures taken together.  We were sitting in the waiting room, smug in the knowledge that we had stunningly gorgeous children, when a woman walked in with twin girls.  She was returning her photos because she thought the pictures of her twins were ugly.  The really sad part?  Is that the pictures looked exactly like her children, only more so.  As she argued with the photographer about how the pictures looked NOTHING like her kids (which they did... as previously mentioned, they looked exactly like her kids, only touched up and glossy. You know how it is when you see a glamour shot of someone who is really homely and it's horrible and pathetic and you think to yourself, "Oh my goodness, that's the best she's ever going to  look and SHE'S STILL UGLY..."  It was kind of like that) my sister-in-law looked at me and whispered, "Thank God we KNOW we have beautiful children!"

I nodded my head in agreement, thinking how fortunate I was that the odds of me having an ugly child were slim to none.  (I was young, slightly vain, and married a really good looking man.  I had the good sense to plan ahead, people.)  

Then we looked at each other and had the same thought at the exact same moment:  Wait... what if we don't?  What if our children are actually hideously ugly and we don't know it?  

*cue slasher music from shower scene in Psycho*

We were briefly horrified at the possibility.

Eventually we decided that we were both so shallow that if one or the other of us actually had an ugly baby, we'd know it (and talk about it behind each other's backs with other members of the family).  We reassured each other than our children were rock stars, super models, and future heart throbs and pinky-swore that if an ugly baby were to make an appearance from either one of our womb's we would tell the other, so as not to go through life unawares with an unattractive child.  Because that?  Would be the thoughtful thing to do:  "I love you so much that I feel compelled to tell you that your baby is hideous.  But I bet she grows up to have a really good personality..."

And seriously...  How precious were my boys?  Shea was 4 in this picture, Kacey 2, and Brennan had just turned 1.  They were so adorable it wasn't even fair to other children.  

Shea, Kacey, and the Brennan Monster, circa 1990

Brennan, Kacey and Shea, circa 2011, at Kacey's wedding

And just as I planned, they grew up to be the most handsome, brilliant, distinguished young men IN THE WORLD.  I mean, JUST LOOK AT THEM!  I am PROUD to hang this portrait in my house.  I may even get a keychain made, send 8 x 10s to the fam, and get a t-shirt printed up with this picture that says "Don't hate us because we're so beautiful."  I'm pretty sure this will be my Christmas card this year.  

Thank GOODNESS I never have to worry about them taking a bad picture.

While waiting for Inspiration...

After basically having no sleep for 5 days (no, thank YOU, Insomnia!!) my brain has officially quit on me. When I say I don't have a single original thought in my head, I'm actually not being quite truthful: The truth is, I don't have ANY thoughts in my head. Not one. Zip. Zero. Goose egg.

I've been sitting here for about an hour staring stupidly at my empty New Post page, waiting on Inspiration. Well, it just called and said, "Ummm, Danielle? Remember the time we were supposed to get together and hang out and do lunch? Yeahhh... about that... Not gonna happen. Later!"

Inspiration is a real asshole. Just sayin'.

So instead, I'm going to leave you with a picture of my youngest son, Brennan. This was sent to me on Sunday, while he was getting ready to watch the Vikings play. Brennan was born in California, grew up in California, and yet, for some reason, named his dog "Minnesota" when he was 7 and became an avid Vikings fan shortly there-after. We don't quite know why. There are no Norsemen in my family, or his father's family, or anywhere on the family tree. Not one.

Until now.

Don't hate him because he's beautiful.

When Good Parents Go Bad

I'd like to start out by saying it wasn't my fault.

First and foremost, I blame Halloween Carnivals. I'm pretty sure the little "Goldfish Game", where your extremely uncoordinated small children randomly throw ping pong balls at fish bowls and then win a goldfish BECAUSE THEY TRIED AND EVERYONE IS A WINNER, are a mass conspiracy put together by psychiatrists to insure that one day, someone will be lying on a therapist's couch talking about the time their mom killed their goldfish... and then lied about it for 10 years.

So here's what happened:

Years ago, when my two youngest boys, Kacey and Brennan were respectively 5 and 7 years old, they went to a Halloween Carnival that was conveniently fronted by a church. (That way no one would suspect that the real goal was to send little children home with goldfish that their parents neither wanted nor expected. Bwaaahaahaaa, said Satan.) Both boys "won a fish!" by lobbing ping pong balls at hundreds of fish bowls all smooshed together, which pretty much made it impossible to lose. (Because that's the way life is, people... No one ever loses, everyone is a winner, and everyone gets a fish for their mad throwing skills. Right?)

They were super proud when they came in the house with their little baggies of fish. Since they'd gone with another family, I couldn't exactly refuse to let them bring them into the house (no one wants to be THAT mom, am I right?) so I smiled and said something like "Yay! Look at that! Awesome!" while thinking, "SHIT! FISH! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH FISH??"

After the other family had left, I launched into a speech about how the fish were THEIR responsibility, how they had to feed them EVERY DAY, and I wasn't going to take care of them. (Yeah right.) We bought a fish bowl, some gravel, some random little plants, and the boys promised to love them and cherish them forever and ever.

Every day for two weeks I reminded the boys to feed their fish.

Every. Single. Day.

It was usually at 8:00 at night, minutes before they were supposed to be in bed, when I'd say, "Did you remember to feed your fish today?"

Of course they hadn't. Duh.

They would feed the fish, vow eternal love to their gilled little friends, and go to bed.

After two weeks, the fish bowl was pretty gross and my house was starting to smell like the harbor. After the boys had gone to bed one night, I decided to clean it.

I dumped the fish in a small plastic bucket, scrubbed out the fish bowl, rinsed out the gravel, filled the bowl back up with clean water, and dumped the fish back in.

Literally one second later, they both floated belly up to the top, having died instantly from shock.

It was one of those moments where as I was dumping them in I was thinking, "NOOOoooooo.... stopppppppp... you forgot to make the water room temperature...."

CRAP!!!

I quickly came up with a lie (not unlike the Grinch, when confronted by Cindy Lou Who as he was stealing her Christmas presents), flushed the fish, and set the newly clean bowl on the table, just as if the fish were still swimming in it.

I determined that in the morning, when Kacey and Brennan noticed their fish were gone, I would tell them the cat ate their fish.

Because that's what good parents do, people. Like you would have told your sweet faced, rather clueless children that you were a Fish Killer.

DON'T JUDGE ME.

Come morning, for the first time EVER, the boys, ON THEIR OWN, sprinkled fish food into the bowl and went off to school.

They never noticed the fish weren't in the bowl.

I was a little flabbergasted, but I let it slide.

For the next 7 days, they religiously sprinkled fish food into the empty bowl, every single morning before school.

Oh dear God.

It was getting embarrassing.

They would blow the bowl kisses before they went to bed at night, saying "Good night, fish!" in their sweet little boy voices, making me feel awful (as well as concerned, because seriously... are my kids that oblivious?).

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.

On the 8th morning, as the boys were feeding the bowl, I said, "I can't see your fish... can you?"

"Yes," they said.

*sigh*

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Where? I don't see them!"

They looked again and discovered that THEIR FISH WERE GONE!

It was a mystery, for sure.

With a little prompting from Mommy, we determined that the cat, indeed, must have eaten their fish.

Bad kitty.

Tears and accusatory looks at the cat abounded that day. We mourned the fish, ostracized the cat, and decided that since Kitty couldn't be trusted, we probably shouldn't get anymore fish.

(Yes, I know. I know. Seat, Hell, me. Got it.)

I actually held on to that secret for YEARS, finally telling the boys when they were leaving home to join the Marines.

Surprisingly, they were shocked.

"MOM! Really??? YOU DID THAT??!!! HOW COULD YOU??!!!"

Sigh.

It really wasn't that hard.

Sorry, boys.

Anyway, this Geico Commercial is what brought that to mind this morning... I laughed myself stupid when I saw it: