The Bank of No Forks frequently makes me attend charity events and other assorted boring nonsense that involve chicken for lunch.  This week the event was handled by our local Chamber of Commerce and included a “State of the State” keynote speech by our illustrious governor.

Upon arriving at the hotel, I was promptly frisked and made to profess my undying love for her.  I did, but only because I was afraid to not attend because we get into trouble for that.  If you say you’re going – by God – you go.

Luckily, I’m of the same party as the governor, even though I didn’t vote for her.  I have my reasons and they’re good ones.  Shhhhhh, don’t tell her Secret Service.

All of the people from the opposing party were made to stand outside in the bitter 28 degree cold and eat blue-raspberry Popsicle   I swear.  Good thing I’m not one of them because my new diet doesn’t allow carbs.

Upon arriving at my assigned table, the first thing I noticed was DESSERT.  You know how they will put the dessert on the table before anyone arrives so they don’t have to serve it later.  Normally, I really appreciate this.  I’m an early person and will eat everyone else’s dessert before they get there.  Then, I’ll go find a waiter and tell them they missed a table . . .

I quickly texted Amy:  “How many carbs do you think are in a slice of chocolate cake?”

She sent back: “More than you’re allowed.”

I shot back: “Sometimes, LIKE RIGHT NOW, I hate you.”

Next came some nonsense about her helping me, yea, right, blah blah blah.  Help would be letting me eat some cake. ***Note from Amylynn – this from the person who told me I wasn’t allowed to have a bight of cookie. A bite. But then she tried to bribe me to eat a churro.***

Things got worse, chicken was indeed the entrée.  I hate chicken.  Unless it’s KFC and then I eat the delicious coating off and give the chicken to my pets.

During all of this – the speech started.  There was lots of clapping, (but not from the Popsicle people, their hands were still frozen from being outside), and quoting of Ronald Reagan.  When is the last time you had to survive a Ronald Reagan quote? ***Amylynn again – I’ll bet she would have been happy if there’d been jelly beans though, huh.***

At the end, there was a standing ovation.  I refused to stand because I was too weak from hunger.  Everyone looked at me like an atheist at a revival meeting in the South on a Sunday.

I left with my head held high and a piece of cake in one hand and a Popsicle in the other.  When I got into the hall, I shouted “Long live Martin Luther King, Jr.!” and sprinted down the corridor to safety.

I don’t think I’ll be asked to attend anymore of these functions . . .

Here is the newest cover for something I’ve got going up this week. Once again the lovely Jaycee DeLorenzo over at Sweet & Sassy designs did it for me. She does gorgeous work, wouldn’t you agree?

Release date to come…

I’m particular about the people I want on my covers, so I can’t just give her a vague description and hope to get something that’s going to make me happy. I troll the royalty free stock photo sites for just the right thing. The hero of The Sea Rose is a pirate. Of course he is. Girls love pirates. It’s a known fact. They like their pirates dark and handsome. Try putting in the words “dark-haired pirate” into a photo search engine and you get a bunch of wonky, jacked-up cartoon pirates or a thousand Jack Sparrow wannabes. So I modified it to “dark-haired man” and got 16,340 results. That’s 165 pages of unusable photos. All of the men are wrong. OR you find the right face/hair combination and he’s wearing clothes that are completely unsuitable. Or he’s making a ridiculous expression. Or he’s twelve.

So we narrowed it further and input “handsome dark-haired man” which netted 7,785 results. Ava and I sad on my computer at Bank of No Forks and cackled away at some of the suggestions. Every third one looked like they were trying to channel a vampire. Not just any vampire mind you, but a dark, brooding Anne Rice kind of vampire. ***eye roll***

So it came down to looking at 165 pages of men and ending up with half a pirate.  He’s not exactly right. His hair is off a bit from my mind but at least he doesn’t look like he’s going to exsanguinate you from a major artery.

How do you know it’s too cold? I’m gonna tell you.

It’s way too freaking cold when your best friend (Amy meant “best BOY friend here, not that I’m upset, I’m too cold to be upset – Ava.) texts you from Anchorage: 41 in Anchorage and 27 in Tucson. What the? My response was that I didn’t want to talk about it. Honest to god, we live in the desert for a freaking reason and it’s not to be colder than god damn Alaska.

It’s also too cold when the fountain in front of your office is frozen. That’s just ridiculous. Pretty, but ridiculous.

It’s also too cold when the kitten and the bloodhound have to cuddle together for warmth. Dogs and cats living together! What the hell is the world coming to?

I shall not participate in tomorrow if this nonsense continues. Let this be a warning.

This has been around for a while, but I still thought I’d share. In case you were ever wondering…

In Seattle a 32 year-old, well-dressed man was hit by a bus on his way to the Starbucks. He got up from the street and walked a  block further to get his coffee, even while bleeding from his head. When the fire department arrived apparently he wasn’t making a lot of sense. That seems reasonable. I certainly hope they gave him a free cup of coffee for that kind of loyalty. I mean that man really wanted a Mochaccino or whatever his poison is. They should make him their national spokesman. The Jared of Starbucks.

Ava and I can really understand that kind of single-minded determination.

The diet is moving along at a snails pace – agonizingly slow. We’re damn near desperate for a treat. At the back of our diet bible there are recipes. There are always recipes at the back of diet books. They usually suck, but you’re desperate. You see the word “cookie” or “brownie” and you lose perspective.

Don’t look directly at this cookie. It will steal your soul

You think this is the one. This cookie/brownie/pudding will be wonderful. I’ll be saved. Losing weight will be a piece of cake after this wonderful free cake recipe.

It’s the fat that makes you delusional.

Ava found a diet recipe for Almond Cookies. “Oh yea!” we shouted. “We love almond cookies.”

Sadly, we don’t love these almond cookies. They were bad. Really bad. I’m not saying bad with any implied irony here. BAD. AWFUL. Then you eat another one a couple hours later because surely it wasn’t as bad as you remember. It is a cookie, after all. Oh, but you were wrong. Dreadfully wrong. So, so wrong. This isn’t a cookie, it’s a cruel Nazi experiment. The real tragedy is that the next day you’re so desperate for some relief you’re willing to try that dastardly cookie again.

Don’t let the cookie win!

Ava summed it up best. “That cookie was so bad, I only ate five.”

I got Ava and family hooked on Justified on FX. I’ve been a huge fan since the debut of the series. I was drawn in because I’ve read a lot of Elmore Leonard and he was the creator of the character. The series really nails the Elmore Leonard feel, too. I’ve been pestering her for three seasons to watch the show and they finally started in on season 1 last week.

Once again Ava wandered over to my office. “You don’t think Raylan Givens is white trash, do you?”

I knew what she was getting at. She was referring to the main character on Justified played by Timothy Olyphant.

“Well…” I hemmed and hawed. Raylon isn’t white trash, per se. He’s risen above his birth to become a venerated, but frequently in trouble, US Marshall. “He is from the holler.” Raylon returns to the town he grew up in – the hollers of Kentucky where there’s moonshine and pot farms and every other thing you can associate with that stereotype.

“Damn it.” Ava snorted. “I was afraid of that.”

You can add one more to our list of Mid-Life Crises Crushes.

We had a new security guard at work today. He let me in the door because I was carrying my giant purse, my extra bag with my laptop and other necessary stuff, my lunch bag and Jojo Kitty in his traveling case. “You guys have a cat?” he said with surprise in his voice.

“No.”

“Isn’t that a cat?” He pointed directly to Joe’s pink canvas case.

“No.” Joe helpfully meowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“In that bag. That’s a cat.”

I just shook my head and walked into my office with the cat.

That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Ava came into my office later and plunked down into the chair on the opposite side of my desk and stuck her face in the kitty’s belly. She gave him a good nuzzle before coming up for air. “How much trouble – really – do you think we’d get into if we stole a panda?”

Oh come on! He can’t even be real.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. If we get caught in China we’ll probably go to prison forever. But if we’re here, probably not much. You know how those kind of crimes go.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” she said. “I mean really, what would they do to us?”

“I suspect we’d get a book deal out of it and go on Letterman.” I stared at my coffee cup and wondered if I wanted more. “You know all the husbands in the country would be watching the news reports and saying, ‘Oh my God. Look at those crazy women’ and their wives would be gasping and wondering how we did it.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “And even if they took it away in the end, we’d still have had a baby panda for a couple of weeks.”

We’ve really got to stop writing about this on the internet. Eventually the FBI is going to get wise.

I sort of played hookey from work today.  It was officially sanctioned but it had a real hookey feel to it that amped up the pleasure of a weekday off. I did lots of errands – but not awful ones, and I really enjoyed my day.  Like all days off by myself, I went to the movies. I didn’t see The Hobbit like I’m dying to

Do not be fooled into thinking this is popcorn.

because I was afraid My Honey would kill me. Instead I took myself to see Jack Reacher. Personally, I can’t believe it. I have a real aversion to Tom Cruise but nevertheless the movie intrigued me. I’ve heard of Lee Child’s books and the Jack Reacher series so that overrode the obnoxiousness of Mr. Cruise.

I liked the movie. What I didn’t like was foregoing the popcorn. This stupid diet doesn’t allow for a bucket of popcorn to be consumed by oneself. I “enjoyed” my movie with 30 almonds. What kind of crap is that, I ask you?

Crap crap crappity crap – that’s what kind.

This morning I’m down 3.5 pounds so almonds it is. I’m keeping an extensive internal list of all the foods I’m going to chow down on my official cheat day.

It’s going to be epic.

Do you have any idea how many feathers are in a feather throw pillow? I do. A lot. Somewhere in the neighborhood of a zillion.

Once upon a time, I had a pretty embroidered feather throw pillow on my couch. It was super comfortable for napping and settling your laptop on when it needs to be a little higher. Then a bored or frustrated dog decided that it had lived long enough and now must die. In a violent fashion.

When I got up this morning and wandered, bleary eyed and still in my Mickey Mouse jammies, into the living room I found the crime scene. Instead of blood there were feathers everywhere. At least two inches thick around the sofa, feathers also clung from the curtains and the lamp shades. It almost looked like it snowed in the living room.

The Bandit and I grabbed garbage bags and started stuffing handfuls of feathers inside. I had no idea ducks were so static cling-y but once those feathers touch you,  you can’t get them off. So soon the kid and I were both covered with ’em, too. We managed to fill two small garbage bags and it didn’t even look like we’d made a dent. 

We thought the vacuum was the thing. You’d think so, right? Not so much. The feathers simply clung to the sides. Some got sucked up and swirled around the Dyson, but they really didn’t get sucked up until I tried the hose attachment. That did the trick so long as you moved in a zone defense. I mentally placed a grid over the living room and sucked up two square feet at a time. I thought everything was moving along perfectly, until I turned around. 5,000 feathers had resettled over the clean grid.

We emptied the vacuum twice and threw away three bags of feathers. There was still a quarter of the feathers left in the pillowcase. I keep finding them everywhere.

Jojo Kitty helped, as I’m sure you can imagine. He kept liberating the feathers from the bags by making nifty gashes in the sides. I’m not sure he’s had as much fun since the Christmas wrapping. And you know the dogs had the time of their lives making the mess in the first place.