One of the many reasons my grandmother would have thought me a bad parent is because I let my son’s hair get really long and bushy before I take him for a hair cut. This past weekend he insisted it was time. He totally looked like a crazed hippy so I agreed. I had a free haircut coupon for a new place by our house – Sports Cuts. The boy doesn’t care – he’s used to Supercuts. After all he’s a boy.

The place looked cool – everyone is wearing uniforms like referees. There are a a bunch of televisions, all tuned to sports. He went in for his cut and I waited up front where I could watch both the basketball game and my boy. Quickly his hair disappeared and my little boy appeared. The floor looked like he’d been sheared like a sheep.

I thought this was odd, but the lady took him back to wash his hair after the cut. This is when it got really exciting.

While he was leaning back, relaxing, she placed a warm towel on his face and massaged his head during the shampooing.

THEN, when they got back to her chair, she massaged his neck and shoulders. Followed by spiking up his hair.

He came out in a remarkably good mood.

I asked him how he liked it.

“I want to get my hair cut every week!”

And who can blame him? That was awesome.

Happy April, everyone! Kitties are so silly!

The Easter Bunny is coming this weekend. The Sisters have set an elaborate trap for the fellow using a bunch of couch cushions, a bag of Starburst jelly beans, and an old bed sheet. If you live further west than the Sisters, and the bunny doesn’t make it to your house, then you can be assured our plan worked. Our husbands won’t let us go to China or points further to get the animals we want. Instead we have negotiated terms we can work with. Essentially it allows us to keep anything that “follows us home”. We’ve made a very loose interpretation of that agreement as we’re sure you can imagine. We always wanted a bunny and we figure a bunny with easy access to chocolate is the one for us. Wish us luck. Here’s more silly stuff.

1. They only sleep 16 hours a day. Redbox announced a new program called PetBox and it advertised itself as specializing in videos to keep your pet entertained while you are at work. Look, we’ve heard of stupider ways to waste money. The advertising photo included a bevy of adorable fuzzy creatures panting to rent Gone Squirrel and Pig Hero 6 among a bunch of adorably altered titles. If that in any way helps us get an alpaca, then we figured we’re in. Sadly, it turned out to be an April Fools joke. We’ll admit, we were kinda disappointed.

2. Maybe for a white cake square. You’ve probably heard about this already, but it totally cracked us up. There is a 4-year-old girl in Philadelphia who really, really likes Slushies.  She woke up in the middle of the night with a hankering. At 3am she unlocked the back door, walked herself to the bus stop and hopped on. The bus driver thought it was odd, but she seemed determined and well-organized. She chanted, “All I want is a Slushie” while she swung her short little legs in the seat. It didn’t even matter that it was pouring outside. Fortunately, the bus driver is a father of 3 kids, and though he found her excursion scary, it was also an amusing adventure. He called the police and she was reunited with freaked out parents. Unbelievably, there is no answer in the news article if she actually got her Slushie or not.

3. We think it’s brilliant. Some guy in Odessa, Texas outfitted his truck with lights and sirens. He even went so far as to wear a uniform. He is not a member of law enforcement. Not even a volunteer firefighter. Here’s the deal, he wasn’t trying to arrest people, which was poor planning on his part as far as we’re concerned. He used these effects to get through stop lights around town. He got caught when he used the lights and siren

She looks like she means business

to cut in line at a fast food drive through. You can’t mess with people and their value meals. He got nabbed for impersonating an officer. A hungry one obviously. People always get caught when they get greedy.

4. Seems a bit extreme. A woman in Akron, Ohio stabbed her boyfriend because he ate all her salsa. This may have been a bit of an over the top reaction. We mean, really, salsa? We’ve never in our lives ever tasted salsa that was good enough to get that worked up over–not even the mango kind. It’s not like he ate all the chocolate chip ice cream or sampled a bit too much of her Godiva chocolate from Valentine’s Day or something. Still, the more we think about it, the more we can sorta understand where she’s coming from. When you go to the kitchen and you have a deep yen for a specific thing and it’s not there things can go very badly. We suggest this lady come with a warning label for the next guy. You know. In the spirit of full disclosure.

5. Obviously. We did a quick search on this blog and it turns out that Cadbury Eggs were never one of our favorite things. Seriously. We couldn’t believe it either. How could we have been so remiss? We’ll make up for it now. Here is a Cadbury inspired haiku.

Chocolate egg, my love; At only Easter. My love; my egg, till next year.

This is our new cover. We’re super excited.

We’ll bet she even has amnesia.

My laptop is dead. This is bad. A writer needs a computer. There are some people like Ava who prefer handwriting their manuscripts, but not me. If I handwrite anything there’s so many cross outs and arrows moving things around you can’t even read it.

But alas, the laptop is giving up the ghost. It’s a disaster. I won’t go into its symptoms but they’re not pretty. If my computer could manifest snot, it would have a lot of it.

So I took it to the computer hospital. When I walked it I saw two likely computer doctors inside the door.

“We’re going to need and old priest and a young priest,” I said in all seriousness.

The guy started laughing. “Having some trouble with your computer?”

“That’s putting it mildly.” I followed him to the back counter.

I described my issues and he made appropriate faces of horror and pity. He told me he thought it might be my hard drive. I suspect he is right. He started typing into his system.

“Are we going to have to euthanize it?” I’m actually not thinking of putting it out of its misery. I don’t care if it suffers. It’s making me suffer. An eye for an eye is my way of thinking.

“No, I doubt it.” He tapped some more stuff into his computer.

“Maybe it’s just all the cat hair?” I suggested hopefully.

He laughed and then realized I wasn’t kidding. There was more tapping. “Oh, it could be. Is there a lot of cat hair?”

“Well, it depends.” I thought of Jojo Kitty and his prodigious shedding.

“The diagnostics should take 2 to 4 days, but at least it will tell us what’s wrong.”

“I know what’s wrong. It hates me.”

He laughed but it didn’t sound exactly mirthful. What does scared laughter sound like. “It’s an inanimate object. It doesn’t hate you.”

“You don’t know.”

I left my traitorous computer with him. As I left, I told him to keep an eye on it. It was known to be shifty.

As the door was closing, I could hear his computer keys tapping away. I’d really like to get a look at those notes. I’ll bet they have me pegged as a complete whack-a-doodle.

On Friday night The Bandit and I went to the school Mother Son Dance. Every time we attend this function — our second year in a row — I feel like Jane Goodall watching the chimps. That phenomenon not exclusive to this event. It can happen at soccer games or birthday parties, really anyplace a group of boy will gather. This event just happens to be the best for anthropological study because there is no other activities for them to be distracted by.

Upon showing our ticket and entering the party (in the decorated cafeteria) we were given a goody bag. There were a few pieces of candy and a large bouncy ball. You know the kind. You can get them for like fifty cents in a gumball machine. These were larger than usual; I couldn’t close my hand around this one. About the size of a small plum.

What do you think happens when you give 40 eight to twelve-year-old boys bouncy balls? I swear I’m just happy no one died.

Then the dancing began. We could have been in a commercial for seizure medication. There is absolutely no room for decorum or sophistication when it comes to how boys dance. As far as I know, no one was hurt by this display either, although it’s a miracle.

Next year, I’m bringing a notebook for observations and protective eye wear. I fully expect to be nominated for an award. Nobel – here I come.

Amylynn got a tetanus and a MMR booster today. The doctor asked her which arm she wanted to hurt. Why does it have to hurt? Why? She picked her left. Since she’s a right-y she rarely uses that left one anyway. Really it’s just there to keep her shirts balanced. She doesn’t even use it to turn on Dave’s blinker. We firmly believe blinkers are for wusses. Unless you’re in Albuquerque. If you’re there please note that they take their turn signals very seriously. Don’t mess around. EVEN if you’re in the lane clearly marked LEFT TURN ONLY you had better have that left blinker blinking its little guts out. Somehow this turned into a rant about New Mexico’s traffic laws and that’s not where we expected it to go. You’d be surprised how many of our actual conversations veer off like this. Actually, you probably wouldn’t. Nevermind. Here’s some funny stuff.

1. Get ready to rumble! The oldest Bright kids are in Denver right now at the First Robotics competition. This year’s robot is named Elio, and he’s a looker! He’s already helped the kids win an award in AZ last weekend, and he’s raring to go in CO. His job is to clean up trash and save the planet. We’ll bet he can do it, too. Go Elio!

2. Have you seen the traffic? A guy got a ticket in Fife, Washington this week for Driving With Cardboard. It’s possible that wasn’t the reason stated on the ticket. Point in fact, he was driving with a cardboard cut out of the Dos Equis beer guy – you know the one – The Most Interesting Man in the World – in the passenger seat in the HOV lane. We looked that up once cause we didn’t think Hippos On Viagra was what the Department of Transportation was actually thinking when they printed up the signs. It means High Occupancy Vehicle. Thank God for Google. Anyway, the dude was stopped by a motorcycle cop because apparently it’s not legal to be interesting. Or something like that. We’ll bet the driver thought it was interesting when he got a $126 ticket, and we’ll bet his boss also thought it was interesting when he was late for work.

3. Space age La Di Da! Have you seen the new Mercedes luxury car? The F015 Luxury in Motion is very aptly named.  It’s a self-driving, hydrogen-electric automobile with 4 swiveling seats, 6 digital touch screens, 2 LED displays, and a laser projection system. Did you catch that part in the beginning where we said “self-driving”? That means you could read or sleep or whatever the hell you want while cruising down the road in luxury. Except have sex. The seat configuration doesn’t really scream, “sex me up!”. Although it’s certainly possible. We’re not advocating that, you understand. We think the whole idea predicts one hell of a case of motion sickness and you definitely shouldn’t throw up in a F015 Luxury in Motion we don’t care how good the sex is.

4. Mmmmm, pizza. The Brights were on a quest for dinner the other night. We’d stood around in the kitchen and stared in the refrigerator and pondered the pantry and came up with nothing. It wasn’t that there wasn’t food. On the contrary, it was just one of those nights when nothing appealed. So we went out into the world to forage. We ended up at the new Pizza Studio. The idea is that each personal pizza is made to order – every thing from toppings, to sauce, to the type of crust. With the exception that they were out of mushrooms – !!! – we give it a thumbs up. Make sure you try the rosemary herb crust. Delicioso!

5. The sisters were nowhere near Missouri. We’re just putting that out there first before someone casually mentions it. Two camels and 2 steers were stolen from a Missouri farm this week. First of all, the Sisters have absolutely no use for steers. There’s no way we’re going to get permission to put their horns on the front of Ava’s Jaguar anyway. The camels however gave us pause. We’ll admit that, while we didn’t do any camel-napping, we are kinda fascinated with the beasts. They’re very pretty with those long eyelashes. Our favorite part of the news story was when it was pointed out that the thieves probably used a trailer to steal the 9 foot camels and their bovine friends. You think? It would have been a much better story if they had just climbed on board their humps and ridden them away on the freeway. That’s how you know we weren’t involved. Absolutely no style was used in this crime. We’ll probably be caught, but at least the story will be stylish and funny – what with the low speed camel chase on the freeway and all.

Against all odds, I have written yet another book. I KNOW! It’s crazy! Ava keeps saying she knew I had it in me, but every time I’m amazed.

This one is called Miss Sinclair’s Secret. It’s #4 in the trilogy. HA – I couldn’t resist a little Douglas Adams there. But seriously, it’s #4 in the Secrets Series.

It will be out mid-April.

Wanna see the cover?

Now that you’ve seen that intriguing cover, wanna know what it’s about?

Anna Sinclair is an English lady who refuses to settle—not if all her friends have love matches. When she receives notification that her father, General Sinclair, is missing and presumed dead in America shortly after the War of 1812, she knows she has nothing to lose by going to find him. In an untamed country, she’ll need to navigate the Mississippi River, miles of wilderness, earthquakes, Indians, and one absurdly attractive American sea captain.

Nathaniel Johnson is an American patriot whose only goal is to return to the country he loves with his recently located brother, a sailor impressed by the British. The money offered to escort a young English woman to the United States is too much to pass up when he’s desperately trying to save his family’s shipping empire. The beautiful lady spins a ridiculous tale about looking for her father, but Nate has powerful reasons to believe she’s a spy for the Crown. He’ll help her on her quest, at least until he can prove her villainous intent.

Will Anna’s secret destroy his country and be his undoing?

You may have seen this commercial already. It’s on television every ten minutes, but honestly, I’m so in love with this commercial. This is the full version with all the cuties.

Behold.

Also, it’s got the song from Disney’s Robin Hood WHICH I LOVE!

Today is National Puppy Day.

How fabulous!

Everyone go find a puppy and kiss its little head and massage its ears and rub its belly. You’ll feel better. The puppy will feel better. The world will be a better place because of it.