The book is out! Oh. Sweet. Lord. We can’t believe it. And wait till you see the cover for the second book – Miss Goldsleigh’s Secret. Exquisite. Also, we’d like to mention in passing that the diet continues on. Some of us have had more success than others. Some of us are NOT happy about that and have become obsessed with the internet over it. Yes, obsessed. We know the definition of obsessed and this definitely qualifies as a clinical diagnosis. Also, we’d like to know if anyone out there is a doctor who will write us a prescription for a therapy cat? Anyone? Your rewards could be more compelling than we’re willing to list out in public. Think about it. While you’re musing that over…

When they brought it back they wrapped it and tied it to this horse. Odd, indeed

1. Giant Thievery. There are a lot of things to like about Germany. Strudel for instance. Lederhosen on the right fellow can be quite fetching. Perhaps his name is Gunter and he has thick blond hair that curls around his ears and collar. Maybe you met Gunter on the autobahn when your Porsche  got a flat and he stopped to assist. It’s possible that he was so smitten with you he offered to give you a ride in his white Mercedes Van and when you looked in the back you saw a giant cookie sculpture. That would explain who stole the one from in front of a German bakery in Hanover. But who cares because it’s Gunter and he’s adorable and, honestly, if the Sisters had seen the cookie sculpture first, we’d have stolen it too. Nevertheless, the cookie is back and all is well in the world.

2. Exciting jury duty. There was an assault trial in Philadelphia that centered around a bar fight that caused one of the combatants to lose an eye. That’s awful and we’re sorry that happened, but if it hadn’t happened we wouldn’t have this unfortunate incident to be amused by. During the victims testimony on the stand apparently he cried so hard his prosthetic eye popped out – in the middle of testimony. Are they supposed to do that? We don’t think that sounds right. Thank God he has good reflexes and caught the thing otherwise the jury could have been even more traumatized than they already were. The whole event ended in a mistrial, which is probably better than ending in everyone crawling around on the floor looking for an eye.

3. Richard III. Has been found. Damn good thing because the milk carton he was on was getting pretty ripe after 500 years. What the hell he was doing dying in a grocery store parking lot is beyond us, but that’s where they found him. We understand they’re going to change the Shakespeare play to read, “My kingdom for a shopping cart that doesn’t pull to the left!”

4. Action Figures. Apparently every one has an action figure except the Quill Sisters. Ours is going to come with two plump women reading on a park bench in front of a bakery. We figure if Barack Obama gets one we should too. The president’s is titled Obama Skeet Shooting President Action Figure from a company named HeroBuilders.com. Based on the title, we imagine you can deduce the accessories that come with the doll. This company has already issued the Anthony Weiner, Bernie Madoff and Balloon Boy’s Dad dolls. We SERIOUSLY hope the Anthony Weiner doll is not anatomically correct. We’ve already seen enough of that for a life time. Anthony Weiner is no Gunter, that’s all we can say.

5. Cafe Francais. We found a new bakery. A French one. We maxed out our credit cards over there at lunch today. Tomorrow is cheat day on the diet and we take our cheating very seriously. Everything in the case looked really lovely. It’s a damn good thing because the girl helping us behind the counter was dumber than fondant. She claimed it was her first day hoping that would give her a pass on our ire. Not so much. Amylynn was going to offer her a tutorial on the usage of tongs in case that would move her training along at a reasonable rate. The owner was a plumb, thickly accented French women. That’s a sure sign of a good bakery by the way. Don’t buy bakery goods from skinny people. It’s just not worth it.  Anyway, because the brain trust behind the counter was such a disaster there was a pile up at the cash register. This caused a very old, crabby person to get angry and storm out. We’re here to tell you that it would take a hell of a lot more than that to cause us to leave a French bakery without our little white boxes. We talked it over in the car afterwards and we think someone might have to actually hit us to make us leave and even then we’re not completely sure we’d leave right away.

Bill Watterson

You know when you’re in a really awful mood and all you want to do is bite someone? And that whole if-you-can’t-say-something-nice- bullshit completely hobbles you and you can’t talk to anyone cause you’re so foul.

I don’t want to diagnose it or tell you the minutiae of my day. That’s just too excruciating.

I’m gonna control/alt/delete this day and start over.

I love this video

MINIONS!

The Bandit came home from school and was angry because he was the last kid to be picked for Red Rover.

“What do you mean you were the last one picked?” I asked. This is one of my nightmares – trying to make my kids OK about not always fitting in.

by www.demotivationalblog.com

“Last one, Mom.”

“You mean for teams or what?”

“No,” he said, as exasperated as ever with my constant questions. “The didn’t call me over until very last.”

I reviewed the rules of Red Rover that I remembered from elementary school. In case you’ve forgotten, there are two teams who line up across from each other on a field and link arms. They call names opposing team members one at a time by saying “Red Rover, Red Rover send Bandit on over.” Then Bandit has to run at the other team, looking for a weak link in the human chain. If he’s able to break through the linked hands, he gets to take a member of that team back to his own team. If he fails, the opposing team gets to keep him. the winning team ultimately absorbs the losing team.

Oh! I felt better. “That means they’re scared of you doing too well.” I get that look that informs me I have no idea what I’m talking about. “No really. They didn’t call you over because they knew you’d bust through and steal a person back.”

“OK, Mom, if you say so.”

I do do say so. I’m the Mom. I know this stuff.

Of course this conversation made me think of lots of weird games we played when we were kids. Dodge Ball is a particularly violent game when you think about it. I remember coming home with welts from those damn red rubber balls. Those boys were vicious. Now that I think of it, I wonder how many of those mean boys have gone to prison.

Ava had an eye appointment today. I suspect hers was less traumatic than mine was the other day or I would have heard about it already. That made me consider…

I’m not sure if it’s all the meat Ava and I are eating these days on our low-carb diet, or if it’s from continued exposure to Bank of No Forks, or if it’s just our generally piss poor attitudes, but we seem to be scaring people.

I really think it’s the meat. All that chewing and chewing and endless chewing. Our red blood is all feverish from it.

The reason I bring this up is that if you’re our waitperson at a restaurant, I suggest you get Ava what she asks for as quickly as possible. On Friday, she

pic from TheRoadToLessCake.com

was down right vicious. If I hadn’t thought the idiot waiter deserved it, I would have endeavored to calm her down. As it was, sadly that waiter deserved every bit of grief she could give him. The man was an idiot.

This coming week doesn’t bode well, either. Not only will we still be masticating meat (and masticating and masticating and masticating – it’s true, one can get sick of bacon) but I have just had to come to grips with the fact that I’m old.

O. L. D.

I went to get my eyes checked and learned I need reading glasses. Oh the horror. I absolutely refused to get bifocals.

So now – just to recap – I’m dangerously mean, hungry for cake, and old. I’d steer clear if I were you.

Boy, getting Amylynn to concentrate on anything these day’s is a struggle. What she’d really like is to hole herself up in a hotel somewhere to get all her immediate writing done, but that’s not in the cards. Not only will her family and Sisters not allow her to hide out like that, she can’t focus since her novella, The Sea Rose, went up for sale on Amazon this week. Her first novel goes up next week and we’ll have to keep a close eye on her or she’s liable to wander off in a daze into traffic or something. If you find her roaming loose and babbling excitedly, point her in the direction of home. And for Zeus’s sake, don’t let her have any cake no matter how nicely she asks. She is NOT allowed cake. NOT. It’s a good thing Ava is a stalwart

He looks a bit worried.

dieter …hahahahaha – we can’t even finish that sentence. Here’s some funny stuff.

1. Prince Charles on public transportation. Prince Charles and Camilla took the London ‘tube’ on Wednesday for the first time in twenty-five years. The best part was they only rode the length of one stop. What was that – nineteen seconds? We wonder how that went. Did he touch the handrails? Do you supposed he sat on the bench seat with the rest of the rabble or did he hang on to the pole? Did Camilla wear one of those ridiculous hats? If so, we hope it had ostrich feathers because nothing screams I Ride the Tube like a Commoner like ostrich feathers. 

2. Zimbabwe. The African country is in serious financial jeopardy. Do you remember a while back we were considering buying Greece? We never managed to get around to that because we’re very busy planning animal smuggling and trying to get Hillary Clinton on the phone. It’s probably good because now there’s Zimbabwe. The country has $216.00 in the bank. If we have 217.00 in hard cash, we’ll bet we could own that place by noon tomorrow. Amylynn is a notary and everything. We’ll put Ed in as the Minister of Finance and he’ll have that

place whipped into shape in no time. My Honey will be in charge of air conditioning because we suspect we’re
going to need a LOT of that over in Africa. When we have the coronation, we’re going to invite China and strongly suggest if they want good foreign relations they ought to bring a panda or six with him.

3. Si’s Wife. We’ve talked quite a bit about Duck Dynasty and our crushes on Jase – the middle brother. We haven’t mentioned Si before. We love Si – NOT in the same way we love Jase. That’s simply not happening. Si is an old, skinny guy with a streak of buffoonery and a truly hysterical sense of humor. The stuff that comes out of his mouth is outrageous, but he is not handsome. At all. We’ve seen photographic proof that he was once quite cute, but not these days. So how surprised were we when we found out he’s married. To a woman. We’re seriously dying to see her. We want to know what kind of a woman puts up with his ridiculousness. She’s probably a saint.

4. Dear Abby. The other day a woman wrote in to ask if it’s OK for your husband to have sex with you when you’re sleeping or if that’s abuse. After we dried the tears from our eyes and were able to talk about this, we came up with quite a litany of things to consider. Just exactly how hard are you sleeping? If you’re sleeping through it, perhaps he’s not doing it right. Or perhaps he’s so small you just don’t notice and in that case, he needs a nice pat on the head and a cookie or something. All we know for sure is that if that happened at the Louis/Bright house it would only happen once.

5. Tiffany. The Tiffany Valentines catalog came out. We found a couple of things we’d like. Ed and My Honey weren’t really receptive to our suggestions. Please go buy Amylynn’s books so we can use the royalties to buy this. We’ll share custody.

You know, insurance companies suck. We were royally screwed by our car insurance company. I know that probably shocks you. I have no idea why it should shock me. I should be immune to horrible customer service, but I’m clearly naive.

Normally, I don’t give the names of the companies I’m frustrated with. As you know, usually I just write a humorous blog about it. This time it cost us a lot of money and I’ll happily tell you it’s Progressive’s fault. I wrote a scathing review on their Facebook page (see below) and plan to Tweet it as well. If this isn’t what social media is for, then it’s as useless as Progressive is.

The jackass adjuster actually had the nerve and balls to talk down to me when I questioned his appraisal and adjustments. FOOL. I am one woman who knows her cars, can give a tutorial about how combustible engines work, and knows appraisals like nobody’s business. I wanted to go through the phone and choke him out. I did use all the big words at my disposal. I know a lot of words.

I’m not funny today. Sorry.

Tomorrow is the Five Things. I’ll be funny then.

For now, fight the man!

The Sea Rose has gone live.  It’s so exciting to see my name and my novella on Amazon. Its a whopping 99 cents so you can get your electronic copy by clicking this picture or the one on the right.

Lady Belling’s Secret will be up next week.

Stay tuned.

I am offering up household hints today.

I have learned things over the years that I am happy to pass along to you dear readers. Important things. Life and death things. Like how to get crayon out of every single piece of clothing in the house. I have this down to a science. I blame cargo pants and restaurants. I know that seems a bit disjointed but it’ll all make sense when I explain. There is no way to effectively check every single pocket in a seven-year old boy’s cargo pants without putting your hand in there which is something I do NOT recommend without chain mail gloves and even then you’re taking your chances. The restaurants are a problem because they insist on giving your child crappy fake crayons upon seating. No matter how many times you tell your children not to take them from the table when you leave, and how carefully you frisk them before you depart the premises, the damn things show up anyway – either covering your clean clothes or melted into the interior handles of your car in the summer heat.

If you need a sure-fire, but tragically time-consuming, way to get the crayon off, give me a shout out. I’ll divulge the secret.

Another thing that crops up around the house that people want to find a fix for is how to quickly defrost a chest freezer. The most effective way I’ve found is to get yourself a mischievous orange kitten and allow him play around cabinets in the laundry room where the appliance is plugged in.  Before you know it, the freezer is completely defrosted and all you have to do is throw away all your meat. No fuss, no muss – no hairdryer or chipping away at frost. Couldn’t be easier. Who wants $250 worth of Costco meat junking up your freezer anyway?

You know, come to think of it, both of these incidents happen in the laundry room. I don’t think I should go back there.