The Sisters love Chinese food. We eat what’s considered Chinese food in the desert where we live, all the while knowing that real Chinese food is made elsewhere like New York City or San Francisco.

Nevertheless, I might be the only person in the entire world who actually likes to eat the cookies. I have no problem at all with eating Ava’s or My Honey’s cookies after they’ve extracted their fortunes.

That’s what brings me to the point of this blog.

I collect the good fortunes and keep them in my wallet. I use them to cover the hideous picture on my driver’s license. I’ve actually had them laminated to protect them from curling and abuse.

Here’s my favorite: Three times a week, treat yourself to dessert.

Isn’t that brilliant? You’d have to be a fool not to follow that advice.

So today at lunch I was all excited to get to my fortune. You never know, this one might tell me that I need to go adopt a kitten or something RIGHT NOW.

Here’s what it said: Visit a park, enjoy what nature has to offer.

What the hell is that crap? Anyone who knows me know I don’t do nature. Nature is something to endure on the way from the house to the car to the mall. I don’t want you to think I’m a complete clod. I appreciate nature – from a window. I adore rain – while I’m inside the house. Snow is great – on a mountain far, far away. I love pictures of nature. I’m happy to watch a movie or television show about nature – especially if there is a fuzzy animal starring in it.

But every time I venture out into real nature I encounter bugs and sunburn and weather. There’s dirt out there. Ick.

No thanks. That must have been your cookie. Give me another one.

My dad needed help from me this weekend. He wanted to shop for a new camera, buy himself some root beer, and other random stuff that was equally odd. The Bright’s piled into the car and headed out to my brother’s house to see about Pop.

One of the big things I needed to help with was helping him get replacement Medicare and Social Security cards. Lord only knows where he lost his – mostly likely a doctor’s office, but they could be just as likely in his bedroom somewhere.

I went on the Social Security website  to help him out one evening, but that site is scary! There were all kinds of threatening statements made about falsifying documents and identity theft. I took heed and told Dad I’d bring my computer out to him and we’d do it together.

Step One was creating a social security account online. He couldn’t remember his email address, but he insisted it wasn’t a dot com. Because of course it isn’t. In fact he couldn’t remember any of the answers to my questions, so he yelled at me instead.

His favorite reply was, “God dammit, I don’t know!”

That is why, when asked to create a user name, and my husband whispered the following to me, I considered it an excellent suggestion.

Sadly, Grumpyoldman was already taken.

Can you believe that? I suspect I was beat out by other similarly frustrated daughters who thought they’d passively aggressively tell their parent to shut the hell up.

Also already taken was Grumpyoldman1938.

It’s a bit alarming, don’t you think? I suspect the people who work at the Social Security office don’t get paid enough if they routinely have to deal with all the Grumpyoldmen out there. Possibly there are at least 1938 of them.

Ultimately, I did manage to assign him a user name: GrumpyoldERman. A nice distinction, eh?

Sociopath noun A person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience. Of course the Sisters aren’t sociopaths. We fully admit that we are crazy but in a fun way that calls for cake and a great deal of sarcasm. We do happen to know several people who seem to fit into that first category alarmingly well. This makes us unhappy. And confused. There isn’t much to do about it but eat the aforementioned cake and do a lot of whining. We’re sure you can imagine the pitch and shrill nature of this whining. To be truthful, it’s probably closer to the definition of shrieking. Anyway, to the uninitiated this is probably quite comical. Here’s some stuff that’s perplexing and also funny.

1. сыр. That’s a word. You’d know that if you spoke Russian. We know this to be true because we Googled it. The word is cheese. The reason we bring all this up is because Russian authorities have arrested six people for producing contraband cheese. GASP! The cheese bandits were importing forbidden Western cheese and changing the labels to make them saleable in Russian markets. We wonder what this tells us about Russian cheese. Are we talking brie? Camembert? We figure there are plenty of reasons for the Russians to hate America, but if they want to really find something to despise, then American Cheese – those nasty little cellophaned squares – surely fit the bill, icky little things.

2. Wallaroos! There are two missing beasties in our town that have the Sisters all a buzz. Two wallaroos named Bouncy and Bumper. A walleroo, for those who have no idea, is a cross between a kangaroo and a wallaby. They got out of their yard and have been running amok for the last several days. Ava called Amylynn a liar when she alerted her of this fact. It seemed too good to be true. We assure you this is not a practical joke. We’re dying to grab ourselves some shopping bags and go Roo hunting. It turns out Arizona allows us to have kangaroos if we get the proper permits. We can find anything on the internet, so we’re not worried. Honest to Zeus, we promise if someone will let us have a walleroo we will stop fantasizing about prehensile porcupines and wee mountain goats.

3. Chipotle King. So there’s this scientist who loves Chipotle almost as much as Ava does. Frankly, it’s unfathomable, but there you have it. He decided he needed to decipher how to get the biggest possible burrito for his money so he set about it scientifically. Over the course of a week or so he bought like 30 burritos all with different ingredient combinations and dissected each one to determine the perfect ratio. He managed to make a burrito that had double the contents for no more money. This seems like such an incredible waste of time and effort for a bunch of nasty Chipotle. Dammit, Amylynn gets quite enough Chipotle already. Why, oh why, won’t this man use his powers for good? Send him to Dairy Queen and perform of the righteous and work all that out for a Blizzard.

4. Heidi. Amylynn has long said she wants to be Heidi Klum when she grows up, now more than ever. You know Donald Trump has been in the news lately. He can’t seem to stop saying stupid things. The latest was most heinously directed toward the fabulous Ms. Heidi. He had the balls to say that she isn’t a 10 anymore. Can you imagine the hubris of a man with that hair saying such a thing about Heidi effing Klum? Us either. That’s why her response is so outrageously perfect. Heidi is brilliant, gorgeous, and FUNNY. Take that Donald.

5. Jared and Tom update. Ava still has her thing for Jared Leto, although she does disapprove most of his film choices. Why, she wants to know, can’t he pick a nice romantic comedy where he can just be pretty instead of all these weird films? Take for instance Suicide Squad. We can’t tell you how excited we were when it was originally announced that Tom Hardy and Jared Leto were going to be in a movie together. We nearly peed with excitement, but then Tom backed out and much of our excitement waned. Jared is still running around acting all Joker-y, sending his cast mates weird presents like live rats and bullets. Tom on the other hand is going to be in a film coming out later this year where he plays twins! AND he manages to do this without wearing bizarro makeup, bejeweled teeth and prancing around like a lunatic. Tom’s team totally wins!

You know what I need.

This.

It’s been a long, long week.

The Sisters work in an industry where people spend a great deal of the time in a panic. Understand that this is self-induced panic, not related in any way to any real life or death situation. This does not stop people in my industry and its periphery from FREAKING THE HELL OUT!

Sadly, we can be the most competent people in the world and when we sense someone’s freak out coming, and we know it’s gonna be bad, we turn into a complete jelly fish with a heart condition. It can’t be healthy. We’re 100% certain we’re damaged in the head for going back into this industry. There are days we’d consider doing almost ANYTHING if someone offered us a job doing it and we could get the hell out of where we are.

We’ve long had this fantasy of owning a book store. A lovely little shop with lots of windows, tables to sit at for hours, lots of outlets for your laptop. We’d have a shop cat, of course. Maybe a dog. Who knows. The place would smell of paper, bindings, coffee and pastries.

And you know what? We can’t imagine anything that would happen in a book store that would put someone in a panic. Except maybe a fire. There is nothing that occurs in a bookstore that anyone would freak out over. It’s a wonderful place. A womb with things to read and maybe a nibble. A place to be content.

Sounds like heaven.

I love tests, especially ones that don’t mean anything. I’m hyper competitive about things, especially stupid things. I just can’t help myself.

Here’s a test we can all pass. I think. I don’t know, maybe you don’t do these things. If so, I doubt we can be friends.

I know you think we’re crazy over here at the Quill Sisters. We are, but not for the reasons you think. The reason I mention this is because I’m going to bring up something that makes me sound a bit like an alarmist. Maybe I am, but this is some alarming stuff.

The Sisters have long had the opinion that going outside is bad news. Everything out there is trying to kill you. I have more proof.

Outside is where squirrels are. Sure, squirrels seem awfully cute with that fluffy tail and quick, smart eyes but things aren’t all as innocent and adorable as they seem. Don’t be drawn in by that tail.

Several — meaning two — squirrels have died in Yosemite National Park from PLAGUE. We brought this up just last week and there was some disbelief out of some of you. It’s true. The plague

That is a magnificent tail, but NO!

is still alive and taking down rodents. We’re very happy to tell you that the campground has been closed to spray for fleas, but not before a child was hospitalized with the plague. The kid lived — which of course is very good — but still.

PLAGUE.

If that wasn’t enough to convince you not to go outside, I want to tell you about another alarming trend at Yosemite.

A large limb fell off a tree crushing a tent and killing two youngsters inside. The people at Yosemite admit that falling limbs happen all the time, even giving a list of incidents. They’re probably being bounced on by plague-y squirrels.

If this isn’t reason enough to stay indoors, well then, we don’t know what is.

Like much of the world, the Sisters have had a great big crush on Daenerys Targaryn. We’ve narrowed it down to the fact that she has dragons. Dragons she can sic on people she doesn’t like. How freaking fantastic would that be? So then we started wondering, since apparently dragons aren’t real, maybe we could train our cats to do our bidding instead. That’s what we really, really need–someone to do our bidding, we don’t care if they’re scaly with wings or fuzzy with sharp nails. Since our bidding is evil, cats should fit well into those plans. You know how cats are. We may need more cats. This is

This is the road to the grocery store.

where we run into trouble with our plan. You read this while we keep working out the kinks.

1. Phoenix is sinking. That’s what the scientists say, anyway. It seems it’s going down three-quarters of an inch a year. They say this is the result of ground water pumping decades ago, but we know better. This is all evidence that Phoenix is getting closer and closer to Hell. You don’t think so? Clearly you don’t live here. Now we’re not in Phoenix — thank Zeus — but we’re nearish and we are able to confirm to you that it is HOT AS HELL THERE. See, 3/4 of an inch closer every year. If you don’t believe in Hell, then the scientific reason is that magma is HOT and we’re getting closer to it. Either way, these are perfect conditions for a dragon.

2. More interesting than seaweed. Some teenager from Berlin was swimming in a lake in the German Alps when she found a 17.6 ounce bar of gold in the water about six feet under. Like all honest idiots who find good stuff like bars of gold and bags of money that fell off an armored truck, she turned it into the police. They have no idea where it came from or what the heck it was doing in the lake. They promptly dove into the water, but they didn’t find anything else under there. We never get lucky and find good stuff in lakes. We don’t even find ducks. We’re clearly going to the wrong lakes. (Okay, let’s be honest. We don’t really go to lakes.  Lakes are kept outside. We’re opposed to the outside unless some promises us a gold bar.)

3. Do you suppose she used wrapping paper? A baby baboon was missing from the Skopje zoo. Skopje is in Macedonia, in case you didn’t know. We didn’t know. In fact, we’re not ashamed to tell you that we’re not entirely sure we can tell you where Macedonia is with any real clarity. It was discovered that a woman stole the baby monkey as a birthday present for her son because he was in love with it. Because of course she did. We’re rather depressed to discover that no one loves us enough to steal us a monkey. It’s a good thing we don’t really want a monkey, but there are plenty of other animals we do want. Dear Macedonians, the Quill Sisters are available for adoption. Do you have any lion cubs?

4. It’s the Boston accent. This Sister firmly believe that we don’t need any new shows. We don’t want you to tell us about some great show you’re watching. We don’t want to watch just one episode to see if we like it. We will and that causes us trouble. Our list of must see TV is way too long as it is. Imagine how annoying it was when Ava accidentally found Ray Donovan on Showtime. She wouldn’t shut up about it and now Amylynn is nearly done with the 1st season. It’s a very good show. Liev Schreiber is great. Jon Voigt is better. The cast is excellent. And Liev takes his shirt off at least once an episode. Great show, shirt off – double win! If you have a hole in your television schedule…

5. This kid should get the latest bus pass. Did you hear about that kid in Switzerland who wanted the latest model Ferrari, but he was afraid to ask his dad for a new one, so he set the old Ferrari on fire to collect on the insurance money to buy it? We’d like to point out that this car was only one of twenty luxury cars this kid owns. Seriously. If we thought we wouldn’t go to prison, we’d consider setting things on fire in order to get replacements. Sadly, the person we want to engulf in flames won’t burn, being the Devil and all. We really, really need a dragon or two. (Truthfully – this kid should get a beating not a bus pass.  Nitwit.)

I’m going to tell you a tragic story.

The Bandit has a cell phone. That’s not the tragedy – it’s wonderful because now we have something to threaten him with.

The Tragedy in this story is the invention of Caller ID. Now you might have thought that was a good thing, but not when you’re a ten-year-old boy.

Don’t you remember how fun it was making crank phone calls? Today’s children will never really know this childish joy because your phone number – and usually your name – comes up when you call someone.

No one is fooled when this picture comes up, compounded by his special ringer, and his name plastered across the screen.

I doubt I would have been fooled anyway when I answered the phone and a poorly accented voice informed me that he was calling from Tony’s Pizza and someone had ordered 20 pizzas to come to my house and he was demanding payment.

Possibly the giggling gave him away as well. I wasn’t ever able to pull off a good crank call without giggling either.

My brother had me sneak into The Bandit’s phone and change his ID to read Ronald McDonald. He promised to terrorize the kid with crank calls. Sadly, nothing yet but I remain hopeful.