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.

The Sisters had nothing but trouble out here in the world for the last couple of days, especially today. All the people are annoying, and stupid, and dumb.

And then, in one sparkling moment of clarity, we considered that it might actually be us.

To be clear, we are not annoying, stupid, or dumb. What we are is tired, cranky, and difficult.

We felt very hateful to the man at the Hobby Lobby because he had the audacity to work there.  So you understand, he was just working there. Like they pay him to do.  We didn’t like the cashier either.  Same crime.

The next trouble came in the form of the cashier at the Pei Wei.  Ava hated her eye lashes.  No reason for that.  She also didn’t like the way she asked to put the Sisters lunches in one bag.  What was she doing – trying to single-handedly save the world?

The girl in the Staples needed a beating because she didn’t know her inventory.  Or what a chalk marker was.  She works in an office supply store.  Even if they don’t carry chalk markers she should know what the hell chalk markers are.  Then, she can confidently say “No, ladies, we do not have chalk markers.  Take your bad attitudes somewhere else.”

We’re taking our attitudes everywhere, thank you very much, and you other people should just ignore us. There’s nothing you did wrong. Maybe.

Or maybe you’re parting your hair weird. Or we don’t like your shoes. Or we’re angry because a song we don’t like was on the radio and that’s your fault because it’s windy.

The Bandit does this thing that’s driving me crazy.

C.R.A.Z.Y.

Anything that he doesn’t want to do, he simply says, “No thank you.”

For example. “Bandit, take your shoes to your room.”

“No thank you.”

Or, “Bandit, go let the dogs in.”

“No thank you.”

Or, “Bandit, do your homework.”

“No thank you.”

It’s a quandary. You want to smack him but he’s so darn polite about it.

The worlds most polite pain in the ass.

I cannot tell you how disappointed I am that International Tiara Day fell on a Sunday. That’s not really the kind of holiday you can celebrate on

I really like this one with the fuzzy comfort band inside to help me avoid the headache the cheap tiaras give me.

your own. I don’t know about you, but my family doesn’t give one rat’s ass if I’m wearing a tiara or not, they don’t listen to anything I say.

However, you show up at Target wearing a tiara, people notice. Oh, yes. They notice. Especially if you give them an imperious look.

That’s a look you need to practice – imperiousness.

Still, the whole thing would have been a whole lot more fun if I’d had Ava with me wearing her tiara, too. Instead I had my family walking fifteen paces behind me and rolling their eyes. It really lessens the impact, ya know?

Thank you to all the service men and woman. We appreciate everything you’ve done and still do.

The handsome young man on the right is Amylynn’s Grandfather at about 18-years-old. Waiting for his orders during World War II

Here he is again in a better picture. Handsome, huh?

No wonder my grandma married him before he left.

The Sisters are working their fingers to the bone. The bone! We’re weary. It’s possible we might be a little insane and this is self-imposed stress. Here’s the deal. All three of the Sisters are going to be at the Arizona Dreamin’ event next weekend (There’s still tickets available to the weekend long event! Contact us!). There will be speed dating an author, a cocktail party with auction items (two of which we’re providing), we’re hosting a table at the banquet, and I will be holding four reader salons. That’s a LOT of stuff we have to come up with. Gift baskets and give aways galore. We might have insane, unreachable standards. It’s possible we’re a little bit crazy. It doesn’t matter. We’ll get it all done. There’s funny stuff that kept us going this week.

1. Stinky jeans. For years they’ve been telling us that we don’t need to wash denim. As in never. They want us to spot clean them with a toothbrush. Ewwwwwwww! Tommy Hilfiger says never to put them in a washing machine. Clearly, Tommy doesn’t have a husband that works construction. If we didn’t wash our husband’s jeans we’d have to move out of our houses, the stink would be so bad. And perhaps Anderson Cooper, who also never washes his jeans, doesn’t have a little boy in his life who attracts dirt like it’s oxygen. Whatever. We’re washing our jeans.  You should too.

2. Sadly this only gives us ideas. A 39-year-old Czech man was arrested in Sydney airport trying to smuggle 16 wild bird eggs out of the country in his underpants. We don’t know what kind of birds these eggs would have eventually become, but apparently they’re worth enough money to risk smuggling. This gives us pause. We only need to smuggle one panda at a time. If we get big pants… (ummmmm, actually, we might have that already covered). We’re going to start practicing walking with a waddle. We suspect that’s how that guy in Australia got caught. Bad waddle.

3. We’d get divorced for a hell of a lot less. A Russian couple are getting divorced in Switzerland. The judge has ordered the husband to pay the wife 4,020,555,987.80 in Swiss francs. That’s $4,509,375,194.80 American. 4.5 BILLION dollars. Plus property worth 146 million and a bunch of other stuff. When we divorce our husbands (probably over stupid comments like ‘It’s only cake’ or ‘Are you going to sit there all day and read?’) we’re hoping to get 3 nickels, custody of the cats, and the Keurig.

4. A hunting we will go. A large corporation has been trying to put a copper mine in our area for a long time but there is a LOT of opposition from environmental people and such. We bring this up because negotiations have come to a screeching halt again over an ocelot. Everyone should just stop worrying because the Sisters have figured out how to solve everything. We’re gonna hop right in the car with our kitty carrier and pick that little ocelot up and let him come live with us. We’ve named him Alfred. Now everyone can be happy. We’ll have a kitty. The environmental people can know he’s safe. And the copper people can copper on! We’re geniuses.

5. Oooooh! We found a new bauble. This one is from the new Cher Dior Collection. Of all the gorgeous pieces of breathlessness inducing jewelry, this is our favorite. We both wear a size 6. When we remarry for 4.5 billion dollars, we’ll expect these from our trophy husbands – who will be very old, very wealthy, and very deaf.