We’re not laboring today – unless you count laundry, cleaning the bathroom, and grocery shopping.

We’re NOT writing a blog.

However tomorrow, we’ve got a great recap of us causing mischief at a blues concert.

August comes to a close. That means the end of the Amylynn Birthday Month Celebration. Really, that’s alright. By the end of the month everyone is tired of hearing about it anyway.  It’s all good because Christmas is around the corner. Can you believe that? Christmas?! Where does the time go? We’re pretty sure that Bank of No Forks has been putting something in the water to keep us sedated. Or it’s the asbestos. Is that a side effect of asbestos? Conditioning you to think time is passing too fast? Now we’re

Teddy!

all suspicious. This is alarming. Thank God there’s a long weekend for us to get our senses back.

1. Ain’t no mountain high enough. An angel was driving down a long stretch of highway and stopped because he thought he saw a dead dog on the side. But NO! It was a baby bear! He rescued the little dude because he couldn’t find his momma. He called every single rescue company in his area and they were all too full. He ended up driving pretty far to get him to a safe home. It turns out the little dude had a broken leg but was otherwise healthy. We’re very impressed at his dedication. You know if that was us, we’d have jumped up and down on the highway because now we owned a baby bear. A bear with a limp. Whom we would name Ted and call him Theodore when he gets in trouble.

2. No Gnomes Known. We can’t explain why they use garden gnomes but the Socialist Party placed about 400 gnomes about 3 yards off the ground on lamp posts in Vienna.  Unfortunately for them, they were stolen.  Blame has been placed on the People’s Party who deny all involvement.  We don’t really care about the theft beyond wondering what the criminals are planning on doing with those gnomes.  Will they replace them all over Vienna?  Will all 400 be placed together like the terra cotta warriors?  Terra cotta is used to make flower pots, right?  So garden gnomes are almost exactly like, but different than, the terra cotta warriors, right?

3. Am I Blue?   A father daughter duo in Maine caught a super rare blue lobster.  We don’t normally think of lobsters as cute but this one looks like a Webkins.  You,ve all heard a one carat diamond is one in a million but it seems blue lobsters are one in two million!  We smell a new engagement trend.

4. Thank Zeus it’s not carbonated. So you know there was that earthquake in the San Francisco area. Actually, it seems that it was more centered in the Napa Valley area. This is troublesome because the wine was jiggled about. Look at this picture! Look at it! Oh the humanity! We’re putting together a very specialized disaster aid group. We’re looking for donations of drinking straws and crackers. Don’t worry, Napa, we’re coming!

5. The Office. We’ve been watching The Office while we wait for more Dexters to come from Netflix. Some of the girls did not know of the glories of Michael and Dwight Shrute. They didn’t know they needed to be rooting for Jim. The episode where Michael burns his foot on his George Foreman Grill and Dwight races over to get him, crashing his car into a pole and giving himself a concussion is one of the funniest episodes ever. We laughed until we couldn’t breath anymore. Also–best theme song ever. Except for Rockford Files. That’s the best theme song, but The Office music is pretty good.

The Sisters have a recurring nightmare. It involves weight gain, vomiting and sleeplessness. Every time we hear about someone getting knocked up–especially a woman older than say 35–we look to the heavens and thank Zeus and Odin and Mother Earth that it isn’t us. We can’t think of anything worse than being pregnant.

Holy mother of pearl!

And then we found our hero.

In the form of a giant  panda. How unbelievably perfect is that?

Ai Hin is a 6-year-old giant panda living in Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Center in China. She has been faking a pregnancy in order to get better food, an air-conditioned suite, and round-the-clock care. She’s been stuffing her face with fresh bamboo, buns and fruit. We don’t think she’s experienced even one second of guilt about it either. Can you blame her?

This bear is a genius. A GENIUS, we say.

Yesterday was National Dog Day. It really pissed me off that I missed it. I don’t know how that happened.

To make up for it, I will give you a picture of Roscoe P. Coltrane with the blues.

Maybe he’s down because his food bowl is empty.

Or perhaps it’s because he’s outside while the damn cat is inside.

Or because I won’t let him eat out of the garbage or drink from the toilet.

Who knows that this hound dog’s problem is. He is full of woe.

I’ll give him tons of smooches and he’ll still look like this.

Honestly, I should quit worrying about him–at least he’s not howling.

The Sisters and the World’s Greatest Receptionist had PEI WEI for lunch today.  This occurred after the usual whining from Amylynn about Chipotle.  It occurred as we drove past the restaurant and Amy cutoff the driver next to us and made an illegal left to get there.  Here’s what she said “We’re having Pei Wei instead of Chipotle and I don’t want to hear a word about it or you can just walk back to the office.”  No one walked back but it was touchy there for a few minutes.  After we ate, it was fortune cookie time!

Amy’s fortune cookie said “Listen these next few days to your friends to get answers you seek.”

Ava’s fortune

That ought to be interesting because Amy doesn’t listen to anyone.  Aside from that being one pushy fortune cookie with the demanding “Listen” and all, Ava and TWGR decided to randomly give her answers on all sorts of things without any questions being asked, you know, just trying to be helpful and all.

Amy didn’t seem to appreciate knowing the following: respect your elders (Ava being the elder), never question the receptionist (TWGR being the receptionist), the boss is always right even when she’s not (Ava being the boss), etc.

Note from Amylynn: It was only really annoying when they started shouting random numbers at me. Honest to Zeus, these people don’t have enough work to do.

We actually can’t wait to go to work tomorrow to provide Amy with more answers.

Note from Amylynn again: Yay! (note sarcastic tone)

Mostly, I’m done with the Ice Bucket Challenge videos. Obviously, we’d love a cure for ALS, and we totally support the push for contributions.

Still, we’re tired of watching people poor buckets of water on their heads.

Still, we love the Old Spice Man.

Sometimes finding 5 Favorite Things over a week is hard. Really hard. We’ll desperately search the newspapers, the internet, our interactions over the last seven days and still come up with squat crap by Friday.  Sometimes there just aren’t any favorite things to be had. It couldn’t possibly be our moods. Perhaps we’re extra dark and moody this week. Come to think of it, we’ve been feeling more Dorothy Parker and less Mark Twain lately. The only people that causes trouble for are the people at the end of our snark, but we assure you they all deserved it. Here are a few things we managed to rustle up.

1. Thank you, Netflix. We’ve watched some phenomenal television series while “working” at Bank of No Forks. We saw all of Breaking Bad and we’ve been on top of Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, and Orphan Black. Right now we’re embroiled in Dexter. We’re four seasons in and HOLY CRAP!!! There’s a lot of squealing andfreaking out while we watch. Wow, this was a great show. If you didn’t watch it in the beginning, you should watch it now. You won’t be sorry.

2. Azalea. That’s what we’ve decided to name the sweet little elephant baby who was born at our zoo on Wednesday. Her keepers haven’t named her yet, so we thought we’d help them out. There’s a tendency to name the elephants after words in Swahili, but we think she needs a cutsie, girlie name. We mulled over Posey and Poppy, but they’ve been over-used. She’s an elephant, so we thought we should name her something a little heartier. We like Azalea.

3. We wouldn’t let him in either. Perhaps we’re judging a book by its cover, but we’ll be honest and tell you we’re freaked out by this. The World’s Most Pierced Man–a German fellow with horn implants and over 100 piercings in his face alone–was denied entry into Dubai. He was headed there to appear at a circus-themed venue. Because of course he was. Dubai officials cited “security reasons” for refusing to allow him to enter. Rumors suggest there was concern that he was a practitioner of black magic. We don’t know about that, but we definitely think he’s a practitioner of bad judgement.

4. Electrolysis. Ava and the World’s Greatest Receptionist will endure all manner of pain for beauty. This past month they ordered up an electrolysis machine to remove unwanted facial hair. If you stop by the office in the afternoon, you can hear “Ouch” or “Ow” or “Holy Cow Balls!”. It hurts a little. Amy just rolls her eyes.  Amy is the least girly person we know when it comes to pain for beauty’s sake, but that doesn’t stop Ava and TWGR – they’ve starting growing their own botox. We’ll keep you posted. Or you’ll hear about it on the news.

5. Bad Words. We rented this movie from RedBox this week when we didn’t have a copy of Dexter to watch. It stars and is directed by the delightful and hysterical Jason Bateman. The movie is very funny in an “Oh my god, we’re going to hell for laughing at this” sort of way. If you haven’t seen it, you should. Jason is a delight. His character is awful. Really, really awful. Still, you’re sorta rooting for him even though you understand why most people  in the film want to kick his ass. A side benefit is learning new words. We like tmesis. Abso-freakin’-lutely.

The baby elephant arrived at our zoo! We’ve been waiting with much anticipation. Amylynn has a thing for elephants.

Anyway, she’s here!

I had to stay home with a sick kid today who acted remarkably healthy all day. Just imagine my dubious expression. If I hadn’t been with her during the night when things were bad, I’d have believed she just wanted to play hooky.

Not that I can blame the kid. Not really.

I remember when I was a kid, my mom would wake my brother and I up in the morning and say, “Get dressed. We’re going to the zoo.”

My mom firmly believed in mental health days.

So, I wore my pajamas to drive The Bandit to school (no, I am not ashamed of that) and went back home to Sassy who was still sound asleep in my bed. I turned on Hell Boy because I freaking love that movie, grabbed a cat and forced it to cuddle with me, and went back to sleep.

Sadly, this means I wasted an entire day watching silly movies with the girl and playing video games with my boy when he came home. Sassy and I made duct tape bows for the dogs. I actually made dinner–sour cream and chicken enchiladas–YUM! I read half a book that I’m pretty sure I’ve read before, but I continued on anyway. It’s a pretty good book.

I didn’t get any writing done on my current book, and I got the final edits back on the book releasing in December.

All in all, it was a good day.

What the hell is going on in Alabama? Did you see the picture of the monstrous alligator that was captured there? Gargantuan. Abso-freaking-monstrous.

It weighed 1,011.5 pounds and broke the first scale they tried to put it on. Instead they used a backhoe to weigh it.

We’d like to mention that it was a woman who finally killed it with a shotgun blast to the head.

We’re not sure that we’re happy about the whole story. We’re not sure anything that magnificent, such a perfect example of its species, should be killed for sport–even though it’s not fuzzy. Also, we want it eating us, mind you. For this reason, we’ve cancelled all planned trips to Alabama.

The alligator put up a hell of a fight. At one point it towed the boat with five people in it “at a startling speed” across the creek until the boat hit a stump sending all the people tumbling. Doesn’t that sound exciting?

What some people do for fun. I just don’t get it.