Me: "Here, smell my arm. I bought a new body lotion."

Jon casually sniffs my elbow and then pretends to gag. Dramatically.

Me: "What, you don't like it?"

Jon: "It smells like hot garbage in Brooklyn."

Me: "You're an asshole."

Jon: "You're in love with an asshole."

Me: "Apparently you're in love with hot garbage in Brooklyn."

Jon and I returned home late last night, too late to see Leta before she had gone to bed, so we had to wait until this morning to give her hugs and kisses and listen to her many adventures. Jon heard her stirring first this morning, so he went into her room and then brought her back to be with the both of us, and for several minutes we all snuggled in bed as she told us about the monkeys she had seen at the zoo yesterday. I asked her if monkeys were her favorite animal and she said, "Yes, also I would like a little sister."

I wasn't totally awake and didn't fully comprehend the magnitude of her statement, so Jon spoke for the both of us: "YOU WANT WHAT?"

"A little sister," she said as if little sisters were just like seedy tabloid magazines you could pick up when you're standing in line to buy more condoms.

I rubbed my eyes a little bit in a physical attempt to make sense of this and asked, "What about a little brother? Would that be okay?"

"No," she said. "I want a little sister so that she could play with my toys." Which you have to admit is such a sweet sentiment, except it shows just how little experience she has with actual siblings. Little sisters would break her toys or lose them in the backyard. They would also use her toothbrush without telling her, borrow her favorite shirt and then accidentally shrink it in the wash, and secretly read through all her text messages. No, the only good reason to have a little sister is to have someone else to blame when you accidentally set your dad's car on fire.

"You can't just go out and get a little sister," Jon explained.

"But I want to," she insisted.

"Listen," I said. "It takes a long time to get a little sister. At least nine months. And that's after your father and I spend several months partying late into the night. And even then it sometimes doesn't work and we have to party three times a day after you go to school, and sometimes we even have to party when you're in the other room. And then both your father and I are all THERE IS NO WAY ON EARTH I COULD PARTY ONE MORE TIME. In other words, our therapist will finally be able to buy that yacht she always wanted."

"But I want one today," she said ignoring me.

"Not today," I said giving up.

"How about tomorrow?"

"Not tomorrow, either."

She sat there for a second processing the disappointment, did some computations in her head and finally announced, "Okay, then I want a bowl of Fruit Loops."

I am going to be traveling all this week for business, so posting for the next several days will be fairly light. I'll try to post a few pictures and Twitters from the three cities I'm visiting while I'm gone, although now that it is summer they will all probably read: IT IS NOT SNOWING HERE. I AM NEVER GOING HOME. PLEASE SEND LETA AND CHUCK. YOU CAN KEEP COCO.

There is a huge post coming about That Awful Dog and how we now know it's going to be a good day when we come upstairs and there isn't a treasure map of green diarrhea stretching across the kitchen floor. That problem is solved, fortunately, although the following day we accidentally let her roam around the house for thirty seconds, and later that afternoon we noticed several of Leta's dolls were missing heads.

Coco The Decapitator.

Also, today I'm going to wear a pair of mustard yellow tights with a dress that actually fits my body per the urging of two young women in my life who think I need to take my wardrobe up a notch. I suspect I might change my mind at the last second and grab a shirt that hangs loosely over my chest because I am a chicken and also because otherwise Jon might be tempted to grope me in front of Very Important People. Although he would probably turn to the suit sitting across the table and say, dude, you've read her website. You know that this is what I do.

Actually, that's probably how I'm going to introduce him: Hi, I'm Heather, and this is my husband who likes to grope me as I bend over to unload the dishwasher. You should take us very seriously.

Last night after tucking Leta into bed I turned off her light, sat down beside her on the edge of her mattress and told her I was only going to tell her one story. She pleaded with me to tell her a princess story, and I wanted to go, seriously? Do you know how many other stories there are to tell in this world besides VERY SCARY OLD WOMAN CURSES PRINCESS WHO IS THEN SAVED BY STRAPPING YOUNG MAN? Here, let me tell you about the one where the princess marries another princess, they adopt two kids and then take over congress. After helping to get an African American voted into the White House. I like that story better.

I had planned to tell her The Tumble Bus Story, the one where she was so reluctant to go on the Tumble Bus that she moaned and hollered like a hyena being gutted with a Phillips Head screwdriver, and when I tell it I always imitate that noise. Except I exaggerate it a little bit, AS I AM WONT TO DO, so when I get to the part where she starts screaming BUT I DON'T WANT TO GO ON THE TUMBLE BUS, I tend to fall off the bed, wriggle around as if overcome by a seizure, and then pretend to puke inside her Barbie Corvette.

It's a very technical maneuver I have perfected over the years through my love of cheap tequila. And Leta thinks it's so hysterical that often she makes a puking noise in unison with my own. We become a chorus of vomit.

So I tell her this story, except instead of it being about her I say that Sleeping Beauty is the one afraid of the Tumble Bus. Sleeping Beauty is her favorite princess right now, so she is the obvious choice. I finally get to the part where I'm flailing around on the floor, and I'm giving it my all, I'm letting the demon inside me crawl its way up through my throat and out all over the walls like a fire hose of noise. I become the physical illustration of Leta's disdain for life when suddenly she sits up, motions for me to stop for a second and says, "Mama, I don't think Sleeping Beauty likes that Tumble Bus."

Last week the price of gas forced us to switch cars, and now instead of driving around in our mammoth SUV we're folding our bodies to fit inside the two-door 2000 Honda Civic that has been parked for months inside our garage. It is a car I could fit in my front pocket. We tried this about two years ago and gave up after a few months because of the subsequent back aches, but this time we've promised ourselves that we'd give it a more hearty go. For me that meant we had to recharge its ailing air conditioning unit, but for Jon this meant we had to upgrade its stereo. That right there is a pretty clear delineation of our varying priorities, that I would prefer the family not die of heat and he'd prefer that if we did at least we'd go out keeping it real.

So we had the air conditioning fixed, and that has helped the temperature of the car somewhat, as much as you can help a car that is jet black and so full of tall human bodies that in order to breathe air we have to suck it through a straw poking out the top of the window. I actually think the weak air conditioning is a bit of an environmentally friendly feature because it makes us want to drive less. Do we really need those groceries? If it means I have to sit through that twenty-minute red light on Foothill Dr. and bake my internal organs, then nah, let's have some of that canned sauerkraut. Again. What will Leta eat? A bowl of ketchup.

But then Jon had a new stereo installed, one that I did not approve beforehand, which is basically like saying to a kid, look, here's my checkbook, go to the mall and pick out a toy. And that kid comes home with a pony.

He described the stereo to me in certain terms that did not give me any idea as to what he had installed, and I did not realize the staggering magnitude of it until I had gone to check our mailbox and needed to put a few boxes in the trunk. There I am in the parking lot of an outdoor mall, a stack of boxes about to tumble out of my spindly arms, when I finally jigger open the trunk with the tip of my foot and sitting there is a seven-by-fourteen-foot subwoofer.

Yes, the subwoofer is bigger than the car.

I mumble a few inappropriate adjectives under my breath on the ride home, storm into the house and go, WHAT IS THAT COFFIN DOING IN OUR TRUNK?

And he's all, baby! BABY!

And I'm all, CALLING ME BABY IS NOT GOING TO SAVE YOU.

So he prepares an hour-long PowerPoint presentation on the advantages of The Subwoofer That Could Eat Moby Dick, and I sit through it and nod and ask him if it helps him sleep better at night knowing that he could churn butter just by setting a jug of milk on the hood of the car while listening to Bob Marley on the stereo. A CAR BUILT FOR HOBBITS.

He assures me that because of this stereo he will not ever be tempted to take the SUV anywhere, so I half-heartedly chalk this up to a victory for the environment. At least, I did until the first morning that I took Leta to school with the new stereo, and because he had satellite radio worked into the new unit and I could now listen to My Stories, I got to listen to a fifteen-minute investigative report on Napoleon's penis, how it was cut off when he died and then passed around in a decorative box for hundreds of years until it ended up in the historical collection of an eccentric, and then wouldn't you know, when the journalist finally saw it he described it as looking like a wee piece of beef jerky.

When I got home I walked in the door, plodded over to Jon who was compiling in iTunes a bass-heavy iPod playlist for driving, and told him I forgave him. And when he asked why I said because of Napoleon's penis.

Dear Leta,

Last week you turned fifty-three months old. I should have written this then, but the actual day fell right in the middle of a series of major events, the most noteworthy one being that I finished my manuscript. Leta, pretty soon you're going to learn that life is basically one final exam after one final exam, and in between each exam you're busy writing term papers. Every time you finish one exam you've got about a day to celebrate before you have to start studying for the next one, and if you're not careful your celebration may land you in the ER. In college I used to go back to my apartment on the last day of finals week, put a Pearl Jam CD into my stereo, and head bang to a song called "Alive" for three hours. And since I was a conservative, white Mormon I wasn't very good at head banging and would always sprain my neck while trying to sling my hair around like Eddie Vedder.

The day after I finished my manuscript I didn't listen to Pearl Jam, but I did have a couple glasses of wine. And then I tried to do a backflip on a trampoline. Why your almost thirty-three-year-old mother was anywhere near a trampoline is a question you will hear your father mumble under his breath for the rest of your life, but there I was, and then suddenly there I wasn't. I can't imagine what I must have looked like to the dozen or so people gathered for a barbecue, four gangly limbs shooting through the air, crashing with a thud on the ground three feet below. Luckily I landed flat on my back and was able to stand up and walk, but then I had to endure days of family of friends going, you did what? I did learn that if you ever have to go to the ER you should try to time your injury before dark on the fourth of July. You'll get right in and have the full attention of the staff because it's early enough that your shirtless neighbor Wade hasn't started setting off bottle rockets in his mailbox. Or in the crease of his butt.

The following day I was barely able to move, and more than once you walked over to my lifeless body on the couch and pressed your hand to my head. You offered me your blanket, tucked it up under my chin and said that you hoped I would feel better, all in imitation of what I do and say to you when you aren't feeling well. I notice you doing this a lot, mimicking how we act in certain situations or repeating phrases we often use. One morning I walked into your room when it was time to get up, told you good morning and then headed to your window to open your shades. You sat straight up in bed and said, "Do you have something to say to me?" Now, that is something you say to your husband when he comes home late smelling of someone else's perfume, and since I didn't remember participating in anything so scandalous I just shook my head and continued going about the morning ritual. But you were adamant and repeated that question emphatically several times until you'd had enough and screamed DID YOU SLEEP OKAY! DID YOU SLEEP OKAY! DID YOU SLEEEEEEEEEP OKAAAAAAAAAY! And then your face fell off. That's something I usually say to you right after I say good morning, and here I was deviating from the script. So I paused, asked you if you had slept okay, and you picked your face up off the floor, attached it to your head and said, "Why, yes, thank you very much."

This month your relationship with Coco had improved slightly, enough that you now tolerate her. In fact, sometimes you even engage with her, albeit usually when you're trying to stave off bed time. One night a few weeks ago you were coming up with every excuse to stay up late and got so desperate that you started encouraging Coco to chase and lick you. That dog had been waiting almost seven months for such an opportunity, and the fact that you paid her even the tiniest bit of attention almost sent her into cardiac arrest. Your father and I just stood back and let it happen, and within a couple of minutes she had licked you to the point that it looked like you had been doused with a bucket of water. Other times your interaction with her is more of an older sibling who is looking for any possible way to get the younger sibling in trouble, and if you hear either of us groan or grit our teeth you come running and say, "WHAT DID COCO EAT NOW?" That is your immediate assumption if it appears anything is wrong, and it is your hope that we will threaten to throw all her Polly Pockets away.

Earlier this month we took a vacation to Florida, and the trip there was the longest day of traveling we've ever attempted with you. Surprisingly you held up quite well through both plane rides and the two-hour-drive to our condo, and the only time we thought you were going lose it was on the descent of the second flight into Mobile, Alabama. The pressure in the cabin started messing with your ears and at one point you started yelling, "I DON'T HAVE A VOICE!" Which I thought was a pretty hysterical description of that sensation, but you did not find it funny at all and continued to lament your muteness, vocally, going on and on about how your voice was all gone and gone forever. It was kind of like how you tell the Sleeping Beauty story, how you like to say that she pricked her finger and then died and died and died, and she was dead a long time. And then she was dead. From dying.

We spent seven days in Florida, and although we tried to get you to enjoy the beach you would not put your feet down and touch the sand. So you spent the majority of the time in the pool. It was a little sad not to have created a few memories of us together on the beach building castles or dipping our toes in the ocean, but if there is one unassailable truth that we keep butting up against as your parents it's that you will try something new only when you are damn well ready. This has been true of every milestone in your short four years here, from sitting up to crawling to walking, from eating and sleeping to meeting new people. Everything is and has been a battle, and the more we try to force something the more you resist. Our instinct as parents is to panic and try to fix the problem when in reality there is no problem. You are just taking your time. And really, all you want from us is to give you that time.

On the last night of our vacation we were out getting dinner at a restaurant on the beach when suddenly I looked up and saw you running after the two kids who had been with us all week. On the beach. In the sand. WITHOUT SHOES. All of us just sat there in silence and stared. I know it sounds weird to say that I was proud of you for walking on the beach, but there it is, I WAS SO PROUD. That moment was just a continuation of so many other moments when you were saying to us, hey, everything is fine, I'm just deciding for myself when I'm ready. And right now I'm ready.

Love,
Mama

Last night at about 6:00 PM I called my mother on her cell phone and asked her to pick five numbers between one and 42,232 to select the winners in the Wii and Wii Fit give away. She folded her arms, said a little prayer and then carefully made her selections. So five people will at least for a day have a testimony of the generosity of Mormon Jesus.

I've notified the winners via email, and once I hear back from them all I'll announce their names here. Many thanks to everyone who participated, and because of my content management system the site held up pretty well under the strain, only once screaming out in agony. Its voice sounded a lot like Marlon Brando.

In other good news, at least for my marriage and the many months it has had to withstand the strain of book deadlines, I finished a round of revisions to my manuscript this morning. Not quite sure how to describe the kind of relief I feel by reaching this milestone, I just know that the manuscript is no longer digging its heels into my brain or waking me up in the middle of the night with thoughts of sentences ending in prepositions. These book nightmares are just as terrifying as the ones where my high school contacts me to say that because of some computer glitch my senior year didn't count, and if I don't go back and redo that year of high school then I have to forfeit my college degree. Because DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD I WORKED FOR THAT DEGREE? It takes me hours to recover from that dream, and I would much prefer to have the nightmare where I accidentally show up to the Homecoming dance naked.

For those in the states, I hope you enjoy your holiday weekend. We'll be spending some time with family, swimming with Leta, and taking leisurely late night walks with the dogs. I feel like I have been freed from a several-year stint in prison, and tomorrow morning when we're all lounging around in bed together, watching cartoons and stealing a few minutes more of sleep, I'm going to reach over to my bedside table, grab the copy of Elle Decor that's been sitting there waiting for me to finish my book, and I'm going to rub it all over my body. And then I'm going to cuddle with it under the covers and whisper dirty things into its spine. Things like SHOW ME YOUR HAND WOVEN RUGS and LET ME TOUCH YOUR MARBLE COUNTERTOPS.

This isn't at all new, but I've been listening to a certain group nonstop for the last two weeks, and I think you'll love this song. They're a band from Brooklyn called MGMT, and they remind me of early Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and Supergrass. This song is a bit of an ode to the rock and roll lifestyle which makes it perfect to listen to during the summer. (click here for the video, they will not let me embed it, which sends me way over into the red because how am I supposed to show you how awesome they are? LET ME SHARE YOUR MUSIC.)

And this is a video of me having a bit of a hard time on the fourth day of the cleanse:

(thanks, Sarah)

Finally, why I sometimes miss the South so much I cry myself to sleep:

(thanks, Cookie)

A little over a month ago some good people from Nintendo came to my house and threw a Wii Fit party. My job was to gather up ten of my friends and prepare them to be humiliated by their Wii Fit age, something determined by your BMI/weight, your age, and some balancing acts that would cause a veteran circus performer to fall over. I don't think it helped that almost everyone had consumed at least two glasses of wine before attempting to balance themselves on one foot, or that some of them like myself would have a hard time balancing on one foot when completely sober. On average, everyone's Wii Fit age was about 10 years older than their actual age. Except for a certain 24-year-old who has yet to be beaten down by life, so of course, she aced the balancing tests. This is one of the problems with the Wii Fit, that it doesn't allow you to input all the years of therapy you've been through, the sleepless nights, the hours and weeks and months spent worrying about your kids, that one Thanksgiving dinner with your in-laws, how you almost filed for bankruptcy, or the countless times your boss belittled you in front of the entire company. Because if you take all that into account then MY GOD, IT'S A MIRACLE YOU'RE STILL STANDING. In those instances the Wii Fit should hand you a cigarette.

My Wii Fit age was 35 (I'll be 33 next month), which isn't too bad, but it's something I'm definitely going to work on as part of the overall changes I'd like to see in my life. The reason I'm even writing about this is because Nintendo has agreed to give me five Wii and Wii Fit systems (as a set) to give away to five of my readers.

I get approached to do things like this all the time, but this is the first time I've done a give away because this is a product I use, something in my house, something I'd love to share with you. Nintendo is not paying me to do this, and just to clear up some confusion, I would never accept money to post about anything here. That's not how this website works. Everything you see in my style section is something I have bought with my own money or is a gift sent to me from one of my readers, a gift I would have gone out and bought had I known about it beforehand, something that fits right in with my aesthetic. I work very hard to make sure that you can trust that what I say here is in no way influenced by advertisers or corporations who are trying to reach a bunch of eyeballs. Your eyeballs deserve as much.

The give away is going to work like this: I'm going to leave comments open on this post until Wednesday July 2nd at 5:00 PM Mountain Daylight Time. You are free to leave a comment as many times as you want, preferably a comment about the Wii Fit and what you think it might do for you or your family, and then on Wednesday night after I close comments I'm going to call The Avon World Sales Leader (my mother, for those who are just joining us), tell her how many comments there are, and then ask her to list off five random numbers between one and that number. She will not have read the comments, so the only thing she will be influenced by is The Spirit. And maybe the vodka she had in her orange juice that morning. HA HA! Just kidding. My mom doesn't drink orange juice.

By commenting on this post you agree to the terms and rules of this give-away (read here) and, should you be selected as a winner, consent to letting me use your name when I announce the winners. Anonymous comments and comments without a valid email address will be disqualified.

Winners will be announced Thursday morning. Ready, set, go!

Last Thursday was day four of my cleanse, and at about 3:00 PM that afternoon my caffeine-withdrawal headache subsided for a few hours and I got a rush of energy that I had hoped would be an indicator of things to come. But that night I did not sleep a wink, and I felt like puking all day Friday. Saturday morning I woke up with a sinus infection to end all sinus infections that I tried to ignore, but by that afternoon I was lying prostrate in bed moaning in pain. By Sunday the entire right side of my face was paralyzed, and I could only chew food with the teeth at the back of the left side of my mouth. Which basically narrowed down my food choices to whatever would fit through a straw. My dead grandmother was allowed to eat more than I was.

Monday morning Jon said that if I didn't call the doctor to get some antibiotics he was going to call up there himself, except he wouldn't say it was because his wife had a sinus infection, he'd say it was because his wife needed a lobotomy. Did they have any spare q-tips? How about some cotton balls? Could he borrow a pair of dull-edged scissors? So I made an appointment for that afternoon, hauled my miserable body up to the clinic and told my story to the doctor. He nodded, said, yep, sounds like another sinus infection, and as he picked up his pen to start writing me a prescription I casually mentioned that I had started a diet cleanse a week earlier. Not a crazy one, no. It's not one of those cleanses that requires you to shove a garden hose up your colon, so you can stop worrying that I am going to poop right here on the table in your examination room.

He stopped himself immediately, set down his pen and was all, you're doing what? So I repeated myself and listed off all the things that I had not eaten in almost eight days. He shook his head silently, leaned over so that his elbows were resting on his knees and said, "Do you want to know my medical opinion about that?"

"That depends," I said, not sure yet if I wanted him to agree or disagree with me. Here I had gone almost eight days on this cleanse without slipping up once, and if he was going to tell me that he thought I was crazy then I might just have to poop on his examination table. Because DO YOU KNOW WHAT I HAVEN'T EATEN IN ALMOST EIGHT DAYS? I COULD GIVE YOU A LIST BUT YOU'D GET BORED AFTER PAGE 200. But if he thought that what I was doing was fine, then oh my god, I'd have to go how many more days without sugar? Thirteen? I can't even count that high.

He continued to shake his head. "I am absolutely certain," he continued, "that the reason you have this sinus infection is because you're doing this cleanse. And my opinion is that you should stop."

I almost kissed that man on the lips.

I hadn't gone into that room looking for a reason to stop the cleanse, but when those words came out of his mouth I realized just how miserable I had been all week. And because my emotions were so out of whack it felt like he had told me that from now on when I peed, one hundred dollar bills would fall out of my vagina and into the toilet.

So I got in my car, drove to the grocery store, dropped off my prescription at the pharmacy and then walked over to the British foods section, picked up a package of Hobnobs, and ate one right there in the aisle BEFORE I EVEN PAID FOR IT. I had to grab hold of the shelves to balance myself because I experienced a full-body orgasm.

And then Mama had a glass of wine with dinner.

But the interesting thing has been that I haven't gone off the cleanse all that much. In fact, I tried having a cup of coffee yesterday morning, but it tasted rancid. And all day today my meals have been meals I would have eaten on the cleanse. So I think that what I experienced and learned in those eight days has made a huge difference in my attitude and awareness of food. I've already made the decision to give up artificial sweeteners and to cut back dramatically on milk, cheese, and bread. I'm also excited to eat more of the foods that I found that have no added sugars (pasta sauces in particular, and I'm loving pasta made with brown rice), and am ready to cut back on all meat that hasn't been raised ethically (yes, I know, many of you will have so much to say about this in the comments, I can see the adjectives now). This means I will most likely go without meat for long periods of time which doesn't seem like such a big deal to me now that I've found The Sweet Potato. Also, I don't see myself ever being a regular coffee drinker again. That's a huge change in just eight days.

The biggest difference I noticed and continue to notice is how much better I am at handling my anxiety, it's almost like night and day. I'm knee-deep in the middle of making revisions to the manuscript of my second book that comes out next year, and because I'm looking squarely between the eyes of a deadline I'd normally wake up feeling like I'd just swallowed a box of razors. And I haven't felt that in over ten days. It's been a refreshing break from the dizzying nausea that usually greets me in the morning.

My friend Carol had been doing the cleanse with me, and she got just as sick if not sicker than I got, so when I was driving from the doctor's office to the grocery store I called her from my cell phone, something I don't normally do because if it were legal I'd carry around a gun and shoot people who drive and talk on their cell phones at the same time, but this was important, I was about to change someone's life. When she answered her phone she sounded like she was on the verge of dying, so I told her what my doctor had told me, and I thought I heard the faint whisper of a tear roll down her cheek. "Thank God!" she said. "Thank God you got sick and went to the doctor!"

And then we agreed that we should both send him flowers.