My husband is a very amorous guy. He’s romantic and touchy-feely and sweet, three things I’m mostly not. He’s constantly rubbing up against me, so I didn’t think much of it one recent Sunday morning when he basically started to give me a full-body massage at the kitchen sink.

“You want a piece of this?” he whispered in my ear.

Please picture this scenario: It’s about seven-thirty in the morning, I’m scrubbing dishes from the night before, and the kids are sitting at the table 10 feet from me eating jellybeans. (It was Easter morning, okay?) I’m in my big fuzzy robe, I probably have crusty zit cream on my chin and I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet.

“Um, I’m good at the moment,” I muttered back.

He leaned into my ear again. “But it’s Easter.”

“And?” I asked, turning to face him, thoroughly confused.

“It’s a holiday,” he stammered. “You know, holidays… are… like… sure things, aren’t they?”

I had to stifle a laugh.

“First of all, we’re not even religious,” I reminded him. “Second of all, your birthday, our anniversary, Valentine’s Day and maybe even St. Paddy’s day–if you make me corned beef–are the only sure-thing holidays. It’s not like I’m automatically giving it up just because it’s Groundhog Day. Unless we’re on vacation.”

“God I love vacation sex,” he said with a sigh.

The good news is, I think I’m going to get a nice trip out of this.

You guys might recall that the video trailer for my latest book was sponsored by a badass little product called Zestra.

I didn’t realize until yesterday that some people still don’t know what Zestra is.

There I am at Costco with my kids (which isn’t as godawful hellish as it sounds because I got them yogurt sundaes the size of their heads before we went in, plus they dig the free food samples) when I run into a male friend of ours. Not that it matters, but this friend happens to be single and smokin’ hot–and recently broke up with a dear friend of mine–a combined cocktail of facts that made the following exchange even more uncomfortable than it would have been otherwise.

Me: What’s up, Smokin’ Hot Single Friend?

Smokin’ Hot Single Friend: I’m going to Costa Rica tomorrow.

Me: Sweet!

SHSF: Yeah, I’m pretty psyched. Oh, hey, can I swing by your house and borrow some Zestra before I go?

Me: Um, sure, I guess. Or, you know, you can pick some up at CVS. [To self: Really? You just broke up with my friend and you're jetting off to Costa Rica to have amazing Zestra-sex with god-knows-what and you're practically bragging about it? You've got balls, SHSF.]

SHSF: It’s not a prescription?

Me: Nope! You can get it right over the counter.

SHSF: And it works pretty well?

Me: Oh, yeah. It works really well.

SHSF: Does it help Joe, too?

Me: Well, you know what they say: Happy wife, happy life!

SHSF: And do you usually sleep through the night?

Me: (To self: Dude, WTF kind of question is that?) I guess sometimes I wake up. It’s not a miracle cure-all or anything. [*laughs riotously*]

SHSF: How do you feel in the morning?

Me [coming close so I can whisper the following and spare my children from this knowledge]: Zestra is a sexual enhancement oil. You know that, right?

SHSF: Oh. No. I thought it was a sleeping pill.

Me: Nope. Sexual enhancement oil.

SHSF: Oh. [Pause] But it works really well?

Me: I’m a big fan.

SHSF: Okay then. Good to know.

[Ten year pause with lots of furious head nodding on both sides.]

Me: I have some Benedryl you can borrow if you’d like. That shit knocks me right out.

SHSF: You know what? I think I’m good.

And then we went our separate ways, where I was laughing so hard that it was impossible to answer my kids’ repeated demands of what is so freaking funny???

Joe said I should have just played along and given him the Zestra to “help him sleep” on the plane. This is, of course, but one of the many reasons why I love my husband.

* THIS POST HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SPORTS

Yesterday my almost seven-year-old (tomorrow! OMG!) came home from school and announced that she was going to make a leprechaun trap. I vaguely recalled making one with her when she was in preschool, but this is by no means an annual activity around here so of course I turned to the internet.

It turns out when you Google “leprechaun” you get fourteen million results. But when you add “trap” it goes down to a million, which makes no sense at all because what on earth is there to say about leprechauns besides how to trap those wily little SOBs?

Anyway, in case you needed proof that the world is full of really fucking weird people with way too much time on their hands, allow me to introduce you to Exhibit A:

Yeah, that wasn’t gonna happen.

I Googled some more.

This one was more my speed, but it turns out we didn’t have any green construction paper.

(It’s worth noting here that while most of the homemade traps I found were shoebox size or smaller, this site explains that a leprechaun is “a small old man–about two feet tall–dressed like a shoemaker”. He *may or may not* get in through the chimney.)

I mumbled something about reading in the news that leprechauns had gotten wise to the ways of their trappers, and maybe the best trap would be something simple that wouldn’t arouse any suspicions. Even though the kid is off-the-charts-brilliant, she bought it. In the end, our trap looked like a cardboard version of this (because yes, I was too lazy to get the camera and honestly, there wasn’t too much to see), minus the hay and the giant projection screen in the back:

I was anxious all night that I was going to forget to spring the trap, and even sent myself several reminder emails and text messages (“LEPTRAP!”). Finally the girls fell asleep, at which point I realized I had no idea what leprechauns were supposed to do. Did they take something? Leave something? Make a mess? Clean up a mess? I knew that pots of gold were involved, but as it happens, I didn’t have one of those handy. Google, Facebook and Twitter were all useless. Exhausted, I placed two old, stale Hershey’s Kisses under the box, kicked the stick out of the way and called it a night.

At five o’clock this morning, the kid was standing four inches from my ear and bellowing into it.

“Mom, he came! The leprechaun came! I didn’t catch him but he left me two chocolate kisses! I’m kinda freaked out right now.”

“That’s awesome, honey,” I mumbled into my pillow.

“Was it you?” she asked. “Was it, mom? Do you swear it wasn’t you?”

“I swear it wasn’t me,” her dad replied helpfully.

“Me too,” I added, clearly swearing that her dad had had nothing to do with it.

It’s totally going to suck when she finds out we are both full of shit.

Yesterday I thought I’d conduct a little experiment I like to call “let’s see if back-to-back kids’ activities will actually kill me or just put me in a shit-ass mood for a few days“. After a lovely hike where everyone only whined for a collective 150 minutes, we got ready to go to the Kids’ Expo at our nearby outdoor mall (from which we would then rush home to change for a birthday party, from whence we would race–only slightly late–to the highly-anticipated TEEN STAR competition, but I’m getting ahead of myself here). Let me add that we hit up the Expo every year, and one of my very dear friends is the brains and brawn behind it, and it’s always fun (in that day-at-Disney sort of way that makes me want to pound tequila shots the second I get home).

So. We’re at the Expo and you honestly can’t believe the scene. There’s a stage with singers and dancers and some crazy-awesome drum circle and there are speakers everyfuckingwhere so you might as well be wearing headphones. My kids are running from table to table scoping out the free schwag and I’m scrambling behind them quizzing them on the if-we-get-separated plan, but they are totally ignoring me since they can’t read lips and all.

It wasn’t long before they spotted the table of their little dreams.

“MAKE A CIRCLE OF LIFE BRACELET!” the poster shouted, so loudly that I could even hear it over the music.

“Can we mom? Can we make a circle of life bracelet?” they bellowed.

“Well of course you can!” I said, picturing The Lion King and Broadway and mentally downing another shot.

The Jesus-looking dude behind the table handed them each a string and bent down so his beard was inches from their faces.

“So, are you ladies Christian?” he asked them. Of course he did. How fucking stupid am I, anyway?

They looked at me. I shrugged. Mall Jesus looked at me.

“No, actually we’re not,” I told him. “But we embrace freedom of choice and we respect all beliefs.” And we really just wanted to make ourselves some free bracelets so we could take them home and let them settle to the bottom of the toy box, so if you could just give us our pretty beads and get this party started, that’d be great.

Mall Jesus turned back to my daughters and handed them each a gold bead. I stood there willing my cell phone to ring so I could cry “EMERGENCY!”

God apparently was very busy working miracles elsewhere.

“This gold bead symbolizes heaven, because God tells us right here in the Bible [holds up a shiny black bible] that the streets of heaven are paved with gold,” he informed my dumbstruck children. They slipped the heavenly beads onto their strings and waited for the lecture/bead-distribution to continue.

“Now let me ask you a question,” MJ went on. “Did you girls ever commit a sin?”

Blank stares. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Can I get a lifeline over here? Some invisible spray? A coherent string of words to come out of my mouth that would get me away from this table?

“A mistake. Do you guys ever make any mistakes? Like, maybe you lied to your mom or you took something that wasn’t yours from a friend. Did you ever make any of those kinds of mistakes?

“We all make mistakes all the time,” I interrupted. “Of course we do! I like to say, if you’re not making mistakes you’re not trying hard enough.” Why was I still at this table? Why, God, why? YOU GAVE ME FREE WILL AND I AM STILL STANDING HERE. Damn you to hell, Mall Jesus, and your fucking table of temptations.

“Well that’s okay, because the next bead, that one’s red,” he stated. “Do you know what is inside of your bodies that’s red?”

“Blood!” they shouted. Well, they like getting a right answer, even if it’s to a creepy Mall Jesus’s obscure question.

Did I mention that we were at a fucking mall kids’ expo?

“That’s right,” he said solemnly. “This red bead is a symbol of the blood of our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s only son, who he sent to earth to die on a cross for our sins–for your sins too–because he loves us that much.”

The girls took his pretty red beads of death.

“The last bead is green and that stands for growth,” said the man I very much wanted to karate-chop in the esophagus. “Because even though we make mistakes, God gave us free will. That means we get to choose whether we go to heaven. God says [holds up the Bible-prop again] that if we choose to believe in him and that he sent his son to earth to die for our sins, we will never die. Ever! We’ll live forever with God in heaven, on streets paved in gold.”

My kids turned to me. Mall Jesus turned to me.

“What do you think about that, mom?”

I think I deserve a fucking medal for not running, screaming obscenities or running and screaming obscenities simultaneously.

“I think it’s not what we believe, but like I said, to each his own,” I replied calmly.

“So you’re saying the truth is subjective?” he asked, raising his unruly brows.

“Look,” I said, hitting my boiling point. “We stopped here to make a bracelet. The first words out of my mouth to you were that we accept and respect religious diversity. I find it funny that you’re the one standing here preaching “God’s word” [yes, I used air quotes here], when only one of us is acting even remotely God-like. And I’ll give you a hint: It’s not you.”

I grabbed both of my girls and pulled them from the table. I realize it was about fifteen minutes too late, but at least I got the last word.

In the car I did my best to deprogram my daughters by explaining–for the eleventy billionth time–about religion. I talked about how lots of different people believe wildly different things and that they can’t all be right, even though they all absolutely believe that they are.

“I didn’t like the way that man was talking to you at all,” my eight-year-old said.

“Oh honey, that’s sweet but it’s okay,” I told her. “He’s entitled to his opinion.”

“No, I’m not kidding. I actually wanted to punch him in the face. In fact, in my head, I did punch him in the face.”

“Did it feel good?” her six-year-old sister wanted to know.

“Totally,” she replied.

It’s appalling how satisfying it was to know that my oldest child imaginary-clocked Mall Jesus on my behalf.

I wonder what Mall Jesus’s blog post would look like.