We’re pretty sure we’re never getting Dave the Durango back. It’s been two weeks. We’re starting to despair. Amylynn had a conjugal visit last weekend. She left him in the hot parking lot at the mechanic’s. He’s going to cost an outrageous amount. Like maybe selling a kidney will come into play. This makes Amylynn and Her Honey very unhappy. It’s made Ava conflicted. She’s had to cart Amylynn and her kidlets, Sassy and the Bandit, around everywhere they’ve needed to go, BUT Ava’s not actually driven anywhere. She makes

Look! He needs to cuddle.

Amylynn drive (This is true, I get out of the car when I get to her house and make her drive while I ask the children all manner of questions). That’s the part that makes Ava happy. If she won a million dollars the first thing she’d do is hire a chauffeur. Amy just wants Dave back. Here are some things that are funny.

1. Nothing good ever happens to us. We don’t live in Vail, CO. We’ve never visited Antler Lodge, therefore we were not present when the baby moose wandered into the Lodge. He got tired and just lay down on the rug in the lobby. This angers us. Not because there’s a moose in the house. The issue is that NO ONE was brave enough to pet it. NO ONE. The big brave men hid behind the glass and took video. We assure you – if a 1-week-old moose wandered into anywhere we happened to be we’d be touching it. We’d be offering it lettuce and snuggles. We’d be taking him home. What a bunch of pansies.

2. Honeymoon. Surely you’ve heard by now that it’s Friday the 13th, a full moon, and a honey moon. A honey moon is when the Sun is at its highest orbit, thus the moon is at its lowest so it keeps the moon close to the horizon making it appear amber-colored and HUGE. This is really rare. The last time a honey moon happened on a Friday the 13th was 1919 and the next time will be 2098. This calls for celebration. We’re going to rob a bank or something. Don’t tell anyone

3. It’s not our fault. Today is National Blame Someone Else Day. This happens the first Friday the 13th of the year. It’s a free for all! Remember, just because you blame someone doesn’t mean it’s their fault. It’s the bakery’s fault that all those donuts are missing. It’s the mayor’s fault that all those goats got loose.

4. Great lines from movies. We watched the weirdest movie today. You know how you see the cover on a DVD that has a million awards plastered all over the front and you say, “Here’s a good movie!” So you and your friends put it in your office player and all settle around the puzzle table and bring out the Fritos. And then something goes TERRIBLY TERRIBLY WRONG and there’s squealing and you’re watching the movie with your hands over your eyes because an alligator is being gutted and they show you its intestines. The only thing good about this movie was the following line, “I’m sweating like a pregnant nun back here!” That caused a great deal of cackling!

5. Bronzer. The Sisters are white. WHITE GIRLS. We glow. Enough that we could light 3rd world villages. Ava found the perfect bronzer. It’s called Bronze Glow for all you white girls out there and you can get it at Ulta. We bronzed ourselves at work and we’re pretty sure we can now go outside without facing derision.

Okay. I’m going to tell you right now that this blog post is disturbing.

If you’re easily disturbed – Look away LOOK AWAY!

You’ve been warned. Alright, here we go.

Way back in high school Amylynn came up with the diet plan that involved voluntarily getting a tape worm. It all seemed logical–lose all kinds of weight while eating everything you want. WIN!

Then things got even better. Now you can get a simple antibiotic to cure yourself of that nasty parasite as soon as you hit your target weight. What could be more perfect?

The Sisters met with Kelli, the errant Sister, at the Church. She was appalled about a website she discovered–purely on accident–(uh huh) that sold tapeworms. You know I got right on there because I had to know.

This is where things get disturbing. This is your second warning. I’m just saying.

The website, which is mostly in Russian, will sell you a tape worm for $34.25. Here is the description:

All eggs guaranteed and fresh.  Collected at Владивосток Vladivostok Soviet prison camp in one liter slurry of liquid human excrement.  Mature tapeworm grows to up to 10 metres.

Please allow 12 weeks for delivery.  Use promply on arrival by applying to salad or uncooked food.  Do not refrigerate.  Contact Col. Dimiti Pushkin for delivery.  Please to accept cash only Euros or American Dollars.  No returns.

Now, if you didn’t read that well enough, I’d like to point out a few highlights. Let’s start with “one liter slurry of liquid human excrement.” What. The. F? Can this really go through the mail? What if it breaks open? All the Lands End catalogues would be ruined! How are you going to explain that to your postal professional?

Also, “Collected at Владивосток Vladivostok Soviet prison camp” gives me pause. Surely this has to be against the Geneva convention. Or any convention. I’m saying with absolute certainty that I have NO wish to be in any prison, but DEFINITELY NOT in a Russian prison camp if this is what’s going on over there.

Also, be aware–“No returns.” Seriously, no returns. WHO THE HELL WOULD TRY TO RETURN THIS? WHO? People are so disturbing.

They have no restrictions on exactly what you can use this tape worm for. They suggest: “Play pretty good joke on friends!” Which frankly sounds Chinese not Russian.

Well, honestly, that is one hell of a joke, don’t you think?

So my father’s been with us for a week now. It’s going pretty well. He’s been sleeping in The Bandit’s bottom bunk. My Honey is pretty sure our hound dog, Roscoe, is going to miss him terribly when he goes home.

I am having one distinct problem though.

I’m turning into Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory.

My father keeps sitting in my spot.

I sit at the far right end of the sofa next to the end table and the lamp. I can use the rolled arm of the couch as a nice spot for my laptop. The end table is piled with my stuff – research books, pens, pencils, notebooks, sticky notes, my broken iPad – the flotsam and jetsam of a writer. I can plug in my laptop and the cord isn’t in anyone’s way.

Apparently, he’s decided he likes it there.

I just got the developmental edits for my second Carina Press book and I need my spot back. I’m going to have a nervous breakdown. I can feel it in my nuggets.

Holy crap on a cracker! It is so hot already and it’s only June.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to stay here if it’s going to be this hot.

We were at the Costco today buying all the bulk items a family of four needs to make it through the week – you know 55 gallons of milk, a side of beef, and 72 pounds of spaghetti.

We decided that the Costco might be the perfect place to live. Every single thing you need is there. A bed, television, books, and all the food in the world.

And the number one reason to live at the Costco is the living room sized walk-in refrigerator. Is it just Arizona where that room is the most

“Embossed” does NOT equal soft. Do not be fooled.

crowded place at the store? All the sweaty desert dwellers are pitching tents in there.

So there we were making our new home in the furniture department. We’d selected a nice, cushy sofa. We moved a mattress over to the frame and made the bed with some lovely damask sheets. We’d made some guacamole and gathered chips and beer. Jeez it was so much better than home.

And then everything was ruined.

They didn’t have any more Charmin, only that crappy Kirkland brand toilet paper. Our tushies deserve soft t.p. so we said forget and just came home.

Ava and I are always teasing the World’s Greatest Receptionist. She could have been separated from us at birth. She’s very smart, very funny, and cuttingly snarky. We have many similar opinions about a myriad collection of topics. One specific thing that I’d like to note is that she is equally as unromantic as we are (which is hysterical that we write romance novels, eh?).

Not too long ago, she brought up the phrase “Soulmate”. She has a particular animosity towards it. She and her husband even use it as a code word to get out of bad situations.

On Tuesday, Ava and I went to her house during lunch because she’s determined that Ava will help her redecorate her house. I went along for the ride. Any opportunity to get out of the office, you know. They discussed color schemes and sizes of tile and granite and a bunch of crap I don’t care about. My house is a disaster and I’m too tired to care. I wondered around, paused at the refrigerator. and read the things stuck up there.

“What the hell is this crap?” I cackled away in derision and pointed to a the following quote typed up nice and neat and taped to the door.

“My dearest. You are the sun and the moon. You are everything lovely.”

“Why don’t you just add soulmate to it?” I asked and continued laughing. “Where the hell did you get that?”

WGR stopped talking and gave me a deadpan stare. “I got it from you, you idiot. It’s from your book.”

Oh.

Honest to god I had no idea. I don’t even remember which book. Now that I read it again, it’s actually not that mushy and really quite pretty.

I’m such a dork–I’ve been laughing about this for days.

By the time we got home from Arizona Dreamin’ on Sunday, I was EXHAUSTED. Being “on” for that long is really tiring. All I wanted to do was nap. I tried–a little cat nap here, a small doze there, but no real sleep that afternoon. By 8:30 I desperately wanted put on my jammies and vegetate. Sadly I had blogs that were due for other people. People I couldn’t let down.

When the call came I was watching game seven of the Western division Stanley Cup Finals between the Blackhawks and the Kings. It was in overtime and I had a vested interest in the outcome.

When the phone rang I answered it. ‘Cause that’s what you do, right? I don’t know. Ava’s always telling me I don’t have to answer it, but I feel compelled. Especially since it was my brother.

I don’t remember the exact words he used to convey his problem, but it was urgent and it went something like, “You need to come get Dad because my house just burned down.” I don’t even know if the fire was officially out when he called.

WHAT? you’re saying? Burned down? What the hell does that mean? That’s exactly what I wanted to know. I managed to determine there was

The light is from where the firemen chopped holes in the roof

a fire – a large one – and my brother, his wife, two kids, my father, five dogs, and a turtle were displaced. No one seemed to care about the chickens ’cause they were in the back of the yard. We immediately got in the only car we had left, my husband’s giant Ford diesel, and went out there.

There were still eight emergency vehicles in the street, lights a twirling, and a whole branch of my family standing by the curb. My sister-in-law was understandably upset. The kids were wired from the adrenaline. My brother may or may not have gotten himself drunk. All three of these reactions seemed reasonable to me.

Sadly, it seems the fire may have been my father’s fault. He had a stroke several years ago, so things sometimes go wrong there. Eventually we came home with all the kids, my dad, and the turtle. I still had blogs to write, because I’m crazy. As exhausted as I was, I went to bed at 2am. Then the kids woke me up at 6:15 the next morning jumping on the trampoline outside my bedroom window and squealing, the dogs barking up a gleeful chorus. Sigh. I wanted to whine about that at great length but that would make me the worst sister in the universe.

Here’s the good news. The house was not totaled. The bad news is the addition was a complete loss. My niece told me with a great deal of excitement that the windows exploded. The disaster was on the news. My father is staying at my house until the all clear is given to go back home. He’s bored. I can’t blame him.

On Tuesday I used my mother’s stolen car to pick her up from the airport. In the continuing saga of Shit That Can Go Wrong With My Family, she got food poisoning on the airplane from Hong Kong to LA. The woman looked like she was going to die. I think she was actually hoping for it. Seriously, I’ve never seen a human look sicker than that who wasn’t actively dying. I flung her into bed and fetched soup, crackers and ginger ale. I hoped she would live because she had an entire suitcase of presents she brought from Indonesia and I’d like mine. Besides, I was still too tired from the previous festivities to have to plan a funeral. (Just kidding. I’m not that horrible. I do, however, want my present.)

This has to be everything, right? Nothing else can go wrong, can it? I’m supposed to get Dave the Bastard Durango back Thursday or Friday and we’re already in over a thousand dollars for repairs. My brother’s trying to get back into his house. My Mom is trying to keep food down. My father is trying to keep himself occupied.

Sheeeeeze. I think it’s time to exorcise the bad juju. What do you do? Dance naked under the full moon? Burn sage? Kill a virgin?

I’m willing to take suggestions.

Eventually we made it to the hotel, got everything out of the car and into the room, and stopped my minor hemorrhage. In all reality, the hotel we stayed in was lovely, our room was a really nice size, and the hotel staff was really great with few exceptions. (We made that hotel room look like a bomb went off in it within minutes of our arrival.  We should have taken a picture of it but we didn’t want you to see our underwear.)

To describe the weekend we must start with the beginning; let Amylynn’s nervous breakdown begin. Her appearances on Saturday from 7:30 in the morning to 10:30 that night were orchestrated like the US invasion on the beach in Normandy. Starting first, we went down to breakfast in our pajamas–yes we did.

Note the shiny tea set

Then there were six changes of clothing before Amylynn could get back into her pajamas. Never did there seem to be more than 20 minutes between things to allow for a desperately needed nap.

There were male models around to compete for the Man of Our Dreams pageant. Here is one dressed in period costume who crashed one of her book clubs.

Amylynn’s voice was scratchy from doing readings and was EXHAUSTED from being funny all day. (Many people commented that Amy should do stand-up comedy – see Ava for bookings.)

Kelli threw herself on the grenade and ate six melted cake pops. It didn’t matter–they were DELICIOUS.

Ava was strung out after the table decorations came together gorgeously. Each spot had a martini glass with cute stuff in it and one of the least melted cake pops. The flowers were exquisite on the table with all their glued on sparkles. You can’t really see here in this picture but there were assorted “diamonds” and glitter on the table. It was a sea of beautiful brown and blue. And then they served us nasty banquet chicken. (Nasty.)

One bright moment occurred at the end when we were given tiramisu with edible orchids. No one ate the orchid. Does anyone? Exactly how vegetarian do you have to be to eat the flower on your plate? It’s pretty but weird.

Everything wound up on Sunday morning. We were so exhausted we were even too tired to go to the outlet malls on the way out of town. That means that we were SERIOUSLY tired. (Ava was out voted on this decision.  Ava has never been too tired in her whole life to shop.)

When we got back home, Amylynn went over and stole her mother’s car since Dave the Bastard Durango was still in the shop. Fortunately, her mom was still in Bali, so no one really cared. (Except the cat.  The cat cared and Ava is fairly sure she called the police.)

Things really started to heat up on Sunday night…

More about that tomorrow.

We were so psyched to go to the Arizona Dreamin’ Reader event in Phoenix this past weekend. As you know from last week’s Five Favorite Things we’d spent a lot of time in the past month building stuff and bossing people around. We were seriously invested in the whole thing.

We got more and more excited as we got closer and closer to noon on Friday–the appointed time of our departure. We had all the girls in the office load up the car with the silver tea service I made them spend seven hour polishing, and the flower arrangements we made them glue sparkles to, and the cake pops we made and decorated in the office but wouldn’t let them taste, and the favors we assembled after they cut the ribbons to the required exact 8 inch length. Dave the Durango was packed to the gills. I left to go get our third sister and Ava went home where we were going to collect her.

We headed off to the freeway–as excited as could be, singing and dancing in our seats.

Doesn’t this look HOT?

Then Dave over heated. “Crap,” we all said in chorus, and pulled into the nearest gas station. Charles the attendant was super helpful. We filled the radiator and the reserve and got advice from husband #1. Filled with confidence, we piled back into Dave and went through the McDonald’s drive through for small buckets of iced tea.

Mere moments after we hit the freeway, Dave over heated again. Not like, “Hey, I’m a bit warm. Could you turn up the air?” No, this was more like, “Mother F*****R! I’m hot and I’m not going anywhere.” We were forced to pull off the freeway and call a tow truck.

Thank the old gods and the new for the iced tea from McDonalds. They seemed inordinately concerned about our hydration level at the AAA emergency line. She asked no less than twelve times if we had water. We waited AN HOUR IN THE 103 DEGREE HEAT, GETTING SUNBURNED AND ATTACKED BY BEES AND SNEAKY STICKER

Just before Kelli went Lord of the Flies

BUSHES for Warren, the world’s oldest tow truck driver, to arrive and at the same time Husband #2 showed up, ready to unload Dave the Bastard Durango into his Surburban and drive us back to pick up Ava’s Cadillac where in he managed to shove all the crap into her. Kelli sat in the back seat with seventy-five boxes and sweated. Those cheap cars don’t have vents in the back.

We went back to the drive thru at McDonalds for more tea, where upon we complained about sloshing for the next two hours and 125 miles.

The minute we got to the hotel and all that stuff was unloaded off the bell cart, Amylynn got into an ice-cold shower because she was pretty sure her core body temperature was somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 degrees. The tepid water felt great until she opened her eyes and discovered an epic nosebleed on par with that of the prom scene in Carrie. Not to get too icky – too late? – it was everywhere in that bathtub. Eventually, it stopped and, clearly, Amylynn didn’t die. We can only assume she had too much awesomeness inside and some had to get out.

Be sure to come back to tomorrow to find out the rest!  As a teaser, there’s a fire involved on Sunday . . .

And it’s available from all the places you buy your books AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE, KOBO, or directly from CARINA PRESS.

All three of the Sisters are going out of town together. Alert the authorities. We’re not going to tell you what vehicle we’ll be driving. All of you on the internet and the FBI can just wonder about that. The good news is that we’ll be together so the destruction will be contained. The bad news is that we’ll be together to egg each other on. Probably the people at the Embassy Suites should prepare themselves. We’ll have requirements while we’re there. Not your garden variety requirements either. We’re going to need our own concierge, a maid or two, and the undivided attention of the hotel manager. Just our usual. So long as no one rolls they’re eyes at us, everyone should live through it. We’ve spent the week preparing for this major event (we’ll tell more next week) and these were the comedic events of their preparations.

1. Sulfur stinks. Amylynn decided that at one of her sponsored events this week, she’d serve tea. That meant her grandmother’s tea service needed to be polished. Why not do it at Bank of No Forks? It’d be great. We could sit in front of the television and polish away. She could make the World’s Greatest Receptionist help. What could go wrong? The smell of Tarn-X, that’s what. Wow. No one remembers that stuff smelling like Hell farted. Also, just in case you insist on trying this at your own office, don’t light a candle to get rid of the odor. Then you have to deal with the smell of sulfur and paradise flower candle and, that my friends, does not go together.

2. Bad basket juju. Amylynn doesn’t want to tell this story because it makes her look bad. Ava says that it makes her look way worse. Here’s the story. You judge. Ava said she’d set aside her perfectionism and allow Amylynn to assemble her own gift basket. Amy scoffed saying that there was no way in stinky sulfur Hell Ava would allow that to happen and she refused to do it.  Mean words were spoken. Later in the day, Amylynn said, “screw it” and put together the basket. When she left to pick up lunch she literally forbid Ava from touching the finished basket. How well do you think that went? Yup. Hangry words were spoken. Eventually, everyone calmed down and ate lunch and the basket is now beautiful. (Ava here – For the record, I did not redo the basket until Amy said I could.)

3. The table decoration Olympics. Also, a centerpiece had to be created for the table Amylynn is hosting for dinner. More craziness ensued. We found the most beautiful flowers. The trouble started when the parts needed to be assembled. There needed to be colored rocks for the vase. Blue ones. No, not those blue ones. Not those blue ones either. Or those. Eventually we settled on blue-ish and clear ones. Then we needed tall sticks. But not those cause they’re too expensive. Those are too short. Those are ugly. We bullied the manager at the Cost Plus to give us some old ones for A DOLLAR! Our centerpiece is gorgeous and the flowers are exactly 2/3 the height of the sticks. We’re totally sane.

4. Cake pops. Are adorable. ADORABLE in their imperfections. We made those at work, too. That’s not true. WE didn’t make anything, Ava wouldn’t let anyone help. What actually happened is that we all stood around watching her make cake pops and eating the mistakes. Then she frosted them, but we couldn’t help with that either. Nor could we help decorate. Needless to say, they are adorable and it’s all her doing.

5. Sneaky co-workers. So we put all the girls to work this week, glueing sparkles onto flowers, measuring sticks, and tying bows, and polishing silver. Except one. Missy popped out of her office to nibble cake and make compliments, but otherwise made herself scarce. The implication was that she wasn’t crafty. We left her alone. Turns out she’s totally crafty, as in arty, and crafty, as in sly. Sneaky, sneaky girl got out of all the work.