Hey – we work at Bank of No Forks. We can’t be expected to count properly. We’re writers. We’re very creative people.

Just shut up and enjoy it.

We’re Moms. We get blamed for everything. It’s always our fault when the kid gets a D in Algebra, or the basketball pump is missing, or there are only left shoes in the kid’s rooms. We can take the heat – like ducks, we let the criticism roll off our backs.

Now that we’re at the end of yet another year where a lot of things didn’t go as planned we thought we go ahead and fall on that sword for you. It will be our community service for the year 2013.

Here you go –

The following things are all our fault:

Obama Care Website: We don’t know what we were thinking setting that site up like we did. We can barely keep this site going and no one comes here but us and you people. How we thought we could get millions of Americans enrolled in health care was beyond stupid. We’re not even very fluent with our iPhones much less National Heath Care. We’re idiots and we humbly apologize.

Global Warming: This was also our fault. We’re not sure if we were supposed to make it warmer when it’s cold, or colder when it’s warm, but either way, we failed miserably. You can also tack on wild fires, mud slides, hurricanes, tornadoes and swarms of locusts. We lay prostrate before you.

Miley Cyrus: Yeah, we got nothin’. That girl needs some people. She’s not returning our calls anymore so we’re going to have to wash our hands of her. At least she’s flexible. You gotta give her that. We beg your forgiveness.

The Red Wedding: Wow! That was awful. Horribly, wonderfully awful. To be honest, we wish we’d thought of it. If you’re not a reader of the Fire and Ice series by George R. R. Martin you really didn’t see that coming did you? And even if you did read the books, this was just different enough to freak you out. That, our friends, is good damn television. Mind blowing, jaw dropping television. We’re not sorry about this one. If you want, you can transfer your angst to the loss of Khal Drogo. We miss him tremendously.

War on Christmas. Now that the presents have been opened and the new clothes have been worn and the new toys played with, Christmas is dead to us. Take down that damn tree and put that obnoxious crap away.  Don’t listen to JoJo Kitty, he’d leave the tree up all year if we’d let him.  We love Santa and all, but we want our living rooms back. Our self-reproach knows no limits.

If we’ve missing anything, feel free to load up our comments. We’re willing to entertain all requests.

We lived through Christmas. We lived through the sales. We lived through the opening of presents and visits from Santa Claus. Hopefully we live through this Christmas cold that seems to want to settle into our chests and declare formal residency. Like it’s trying to get cheaper college rates for its kids or something. We’ve used the new Keurig machine we got and made lots of coffee. We sat, jittering, on the couch and tried to read our new books. The best thing was all the time away from Bank of No Forks. We hope you had a chuckle filled holiday. Here’s some of what we found.

1. Elves in Iceland. The Icelandic people take their elves very seriously. In the last poll, at least 62% of them believe it was possible they exist. These days they even have political representation. They’re called Huldufolk which means “hidden folk.” That’s cute. Come on, admit it. The latest deal with the Huldufolk is that they’re disrupting a highway project that would cut through a lava field and possibly destroy an elvish church. We were hoping for lively evidence such as elvish sabotage or photographic evidence. Sadly, they don’t have any, well at least any they’re willing to put in the newspaper. It’s disappointing since this is the magical time of year you’d think elves would show up.

2. Dennis got dissed. US resident jackass, Dennis Rodman, went to North Korea again, but this time he didn’t get a chance to see his “friend” Kim Jong Un. Dennis says he’s not disappointed because he didn’t expect to see Kim every time he goes to North Korea. Still, we bet he cried at night in his hotel, clutching a Beanie Baby and watching sappy American movies dubbed into Korean. Dennis claims he understands that Kim has important work to do for his country and it’s OK, but you know that when Kim sent a note over stating he was working late and wouldn’t be able to make it, Dennis was upset. After all, he washed his hair and everything.

3. Australians know how to celebrate. The police in Melbourne gave away scratcher lottery tickets on Christmas instead of speeding tickets this year. How awesome is that? We know how easy it is to speed on Christmas. It’s stressful when you keep getting calls from your sister every five minutes demanding that you hurry up and get over there so that presents can be opened. Sometimes these things are not your fault and if you live in Melbourne the police understand. Way to go, Australia. We’d get on a plane and get right over there if there weren’t so many terrifying things lying in wait to kill us the minute we got off the plane.

4. Darcy the Flying Hedgehog. This Instagram account is so cute we almost hurt ourselves looking at it. We even joined Instagram in order to keep up with her photo shoots. She belongs to a Japanese fellow who is determined to make her the most famous hedgehog in the world. We can’t imagine that’s difficult since we can’t name any other hedgehogs off the tops of our heads. Everyone write your congressmen about making hedgehog ownership legal. It’s just not fair. That’s our mission in 2014. HEDGEHOGS FOR EVERYONE!

5. National Chocolate Day. Is December 28th. That’s tomorrow. Nothing could make us happier. Unless a panda showed up at the house wearing a pair of Prada shoes and carrying a box of Godiva.

Merry Christmas. I got attacked by a Christmas cold. Not feeling very ho ho ho.

The minute we got home from Grandma’s house on Christmas day, I put on my new sweats/jammies and crawled into bed with a fever and a box of Kleenex.

Today, December 26th, there was no shopping. I sat around in said sweat/jammies and moaned a lot. Took a couple of naps. Tried to read my new Bill Bryson book (One Summer America, 1927 – awesome history book) We went to get some dinner and I didn’t even change out of these clothes. I am proud to say that I did manage to put on a bra. That’s really the extent of what I’m capable of at this point. Wearing underwear.

It’s really hard to be funny when the only sounds you can emit are moans and sneezes.

I never really saw Santa as a big fan of bananas, but what do I know?

I’m pretty sure the panda in the bag is for us! We’ve been VERY good this year. Well, at least we’ve not been caught yet.

If this is what you’re wishing for, then we hope you get it.

Three days till Christmas and we have a casualty count.

Number of ornaments sacrificed to Jojo Kitty: 2 – Cinderella’s glass slipper with Gus and Jacque inside, and Tigger.

Number of Gingerbread houses eaten by the dogs: 3 – God damned dogs.

Number of times an orange tabby Godzilla has tromped through the miniature village and stolen the tiny trees: countless

Number of faces burned while baking cookies: 1. Don’t ask. Only I could burn my face while baking. Seriously. It’s ridiculous.

Our local Dillards has re-done its shoe department.  They doubled the size and remodeled the area.  Needless to say, but I will, it’s glorious!!!  Nothing the Sisters like more than shoe shopping.(Amylynn here – ummmm, bakeries?) Like most women, we have no qualms over trying on shoes like we do trying on jeans and bathing suits – yuk!

You’d think this story would have a happy ending with lots of shoes on sale being purchased, but noooooo.  Every shoe we asked to try on was not in stock in our size.  At one point, we started to cry which alarmed the sales staff.  After we requested the last pair, the sales girl was gone forever and ever.  We pictured her in the back either eating lunch or being terrified to come out to let us know that AGAIN they did not have our size.  Probably the latter. (Me again – I think she was trying to cobble shoes.)

She came back eventually and claimed that they didn’t have our requested shoes, and she’d looked EVERYWHERE. Based on how long she was gone it’s possible she walked to the next town to check there, too.

We’d love to give this story a happy ending. We don’t have one. Not a one. We didn’t get new shoes. The whole thing is actually quite sad.  Still, you shouldn’t feel too badly for us. We have to admit this blog is really just an excuse to post pictures of some lovely footwear.

I’ll bet you think we sit around at Bank of No Forks and scour the internet for these ridiculous stories. It’s not true. We also read the paper and listen to the radio.

If you change the person in the next story to two women, this could totally be me and Ava.

A man in Italy was arrested this week when the police found  a tiger cub at his house. He claims he “found” it and thought he could resell it for a lot of money. That’s actually where the things differ from how the story would go if we’d been involved. We would NEVER have tried to sell the animal. In fact, we fully expect to die from the wounds we sustain from “finding” a wild animal and trying to love it.

I thought to look at this story as a training manual. Where does one go to “find” a tiger? Are they wandering around Italy and no one made us aware? What other stuff is roaming about that we’d be interested in? There are many reasons I have for wanting to go to Italy, but I honestly never thought tigers would be a part of it. Is it illegal to keep all exotic animals in Italy or just tigers? If there are tigers wandering around waiting to be found then I think you could argue that they’re domestic cats and no longer exotic.

Another question comes to mind. Are there lawyers who practice just this sort of thing – arguing the cases of lunatics like us who want to keep a camel, tiger, porcupine and a small elephant in the city limits. Google doesn’t come back with anything when I search, but maybe I’m using the wrong search criteria. If there are such people, should we keep one on retainer?

Further down you learn that they also arrested him for drug possession with intent to sell. That’s disappointing. Now his whole “found” story becomes suspect.