We went out to dinner last night. Nowhere special, just the world’s loudest restaurant. You know the kind – there’s sixty-five television screens AND piped in music AND five thousand people all talking at once. I like those places when you’re with your kids cause no one can hear you beating them in the booth.

I must have been in a bit of a mood – although I hadn’t felt that way before I walked into the place. The hostess however made me want to beat her down. I don’t know when customer service went out the window, but some bitches need slapping.

We were finally shown to a table and our waiter showed up promptly. He seemed a perfectly nice fellow when he introduced himself and took our drink orders with a soft Southern accent.

Our drinks came quickly as did salads and mozzarella sticks. Oddly, there seemed to be less of a Southern accent and more of a mid-Western one. I looked to My Honey, but he didn’t seem to notice anything odd.

Then came our dinners. Our waiter dropped them off and chatted us up – with an outrageous Australian accent.

Later, when Sassy sent her ranch dressing back due to a stray hair, he was very clearly unaccented in any way.

WTF? I pointed this out to my family who joined forces with me to see how many reasons we could make him come talk to us. Of course, I could have just asked him what the deal was but what would have been the fun in that? Isn’t is always much more fun to make up a story?

Do waiters get bored?Is he an aspiring actor? Is he able to soup up his tips by adopting accents? I can dig that concept, but it seemed like it would have been easier to keep the same accent per table. Or maybe per night. Like Wednesday could be Australian day. Tuesday could be Tennessee Williams day.

I don’t know. What do you guys think? What’s his deal?

It’s so fabulous to have Jojo Kitty back at the office. While he was gone we all got so desperate we adopted a lizard one of the girls named Henry. Yes, Henry the Lizard. Don’t make fun of us – you don’t know how awful it was without the cat.

Now that Jojo is back, I did express some concern for the health and well being of dear Henry. Even though Jojo is a super-pampered indoor kitty, he’s a vicious hunting machine. His DNA is readily apparent the minute you see him stalking something.

Today it was Henry.

The poor cat was so exhausted he was barely able to beg during dinner. He didn’t nap all day long – he was too busy being obsessed over hunting that poor reptile. I spied Henry several times throughout the day as he darted under filing cabinets and behind desks. I often heard evidence of his movements from the squealing from my officemates.  I’m 100% certain that in the beginning of the day his tail was longer than it was by the end of the day.

I finally couldn’t take the torture. Despite the shrieking from the rest of the ladies of the office, I managed to nab him with a Tupperware bowl and a piece of copier paper. I turned him loose in the sunny gravel of our front landscaping and exhorted him to find a nice girl lizard and heartily reproduce.

I was then glared at by Joe for the rest of the afternoon. It’s a cruel world, cat of mine.

The Tucson Festival of Books was this weekend and we had a wonderful time.

Mostly.

Except for when we were freezing to death and wet and our feet hurt and we were hungry and lonely because our Sister abandoned us for a warm, dry seminar.

The night before we all went out to dinner and had a fabulous time with old friends and introduced a few more the the Amy & Ava Show. That’s really something you need to be prepared for. I’ll tell you one thing that was interesting – this time Ava led the show. I will say it was fun to set back and feed her lines  and be the straight man for a change.

Later that night, I destroyed my closet looking for things to wear since I’d be signing books and participating on a workshop panel about Comedy in Romance. I couldn’t get Ava on the phone so I pestered my friend Theresa. We finally managed to come up with something Theresa thought would be warm enough for me and still be cute and comfortable – jeans, a burgundy tank and a cardigan.

What I should have been dressing for was survival. It was so cold and miserable – I can’t imagine a worse setting for trying to sell books. Every time I got someone in front of me, I was trying to sell them on me and my book through chattering teeth. 90% of the time we were cowering in a huddle for warmth with our books under plastic sheeting. At one point, some Festival support guys came around with chips and water and I asked them if they had any fire wood in their wheelbarrow. We had plenty of water dripping on us from the tent seams. What we didn’t have was warmth.

Still – Sunday was gorgeous. Ava petted every single dog at the Festival – and there were plenty. Some puppies even got kisses on the nose. One guy actually admitted that he was concerned she might try to steal his dog.

Anything was possible.

In the spirit of writing and absurdity – let me share the Google doodle from this weekend. Happy Birthday Douglas Adams – we’ll not panic.

The Sisters have a tale of woe. Before I get in too deep, I want to tell you that it all ends well, but there was a very dark time when we were quite concerned that the end would be dark indeed.

You all know about Joseph T. Kittywiggles, Esq. He is our office kitty. He lives at my house after My Honey found him in our boat when he was only about 4 1/2 weeks old. He was an orange ball of angry for about two hours and then he decided he loved me as much as I loved him and he was ruined as a vicious stray ever since. He’s been coming to work with me at Bank of No Forks everyday since. The Aunties in the office adore him. He’s often the only thing that keeps us sane. What we do for the bank is very stressful and everything they say about having a pet in the workplace is true. After a particularly bad customer conversation, there is nothing better than rubbing a kitty belly. Honest to Zeus.

So when when all the tenants got a letter from the property management forbidding pets in the building, we were crushed. C.R.U.S.H.E.D.

The man who runs our building stopped by the first Joe-Free day to make sure we weren’t angry. That’s when we got the whole story. No one was really concerned with our little cat, but there had been issues because the people in the office next door had been bringing in their dog – a German Shepard named Duchess. She’s a very sweet dog and I would often stop in and give her a snuggle, but they were really pushing the envelope with a big dog in there.  When the Management told them they couldn’t have the dog, the bastards narked us out. They literally pointed at our office and said, “They have a cat!” so it had to be acknowledged.

Who does that? People who want to get their ass kicked in the parking lot, that’s who.

Ava asked the landlord if we had a letter from the ADA could we keep the cat? Ava pointed to me in my office and whispered that I was very unstable and needed the cat for psychological reasons. He said if we had a letter he’d be happy to present that to the owners and see what happened. I was instructed to twitch if I saw him in the lobby. I don’t know why I always have to act like the crazy one.

Immediately, Ava got on the internet to find out what the rules are for the American Disabilities Act and service/support animals. We decided that was our solution. We needed to get Joe designated as a service animal. And we needed a prescription for him.

This seemed super easy at the onset. We got the verbiage needed for the letter and we set out to find ourselves a doctor.

Easier said then done. My doctor rolled her eyes at me. Ava’s doctor accused her of using him for Retin A and bullshit and declined to acquiesce. We started to fret. I called my mom to see if any of her docs would do it and she said, “Amy, most people don’t get to take their cat to work.” You understand that I don’t care about those people and their lack of cat. I’m only worried about mine. So she was out. All of the security guards scoffed at our troubles and assured us they could take care of it. NOPE. None of their leads panned out either.

We couldn’t understand it. For crying out loud we weren’t asking for a prescription for morphine. All we wanted was a freaking CAT.

My Honey suggested we find a Pot Doctor and as him to substitute “cat” for “pot”. Brilliant. Our state just voted in medical marijuana so this should be a breeze. Nope. I couldn’t find a pot doctor at all.

One guard spent a tour in Iraq and was fairly certain he could get a PTSD letter from the VA, but we still haven’t seen it.

Leslie – a poor substitue

It had been a month with no cat and we were beginning to despair. Sassy sent me to work with a funky unicorn as a substitute. We named it Leslie and tried petting it like we did Joe, but it didn’t purr and we realized that this was proof that we really and truly are insane.

We found a place on line we could pay $150.00 for a letter and we were afraid that was what we were going to have to do.

Then, completely out of the blue, my mom says, “I can write that letter from you.” She’s a certified counselor and she has like fifteen letters after the R.N. in her name. I have no idea why she waited a month. Torture? Possibly. She did write a hell of a letter – sounded completely official. Technically it was official since she wrote it in an official capacity.

We held our breath and gave it to the manager. It took them a week to decide, but we finally got our cat back. We have to be discreet – which isn’t a problem since we’re no longer speaking with our neighbors.

THE CAT IS BACK!

Today is OREO Cookie Day.

Thank you, Debby!

This time the lovely Sallie Lundy-Frommer is hosting me on her site. She came up with a fun series of questions for me. Head over there and find what was my favorite part of Lady Belling’s Secret.