You ever been in one of those moods?

This is who I feel like today.

I find myself in a bit of a mood. When Lewis Black is in a mood he’s funny. With me, not so much.

I’ll be back tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll feel less like Lewis and more like …

Who am I trying to kid? I always feel quite a bit like Lewis but usually with a real appreciation for the absurd.

I think the genius who draws Simon’s Cat might have been channeling Jojo Kitten.

You know what’s a pain? When you’re too busy working at work to screw around with your blog. Really, what a nuisance. We know the odds aren’t good to win the lottery. In fact, you have a better chance of dying at the hands of a vending machine than winning the lottery. Actually, vending machines don’t have hands so that’s a stupid circumstance to worry about. If vending machines had hands we’d be in a lot more trouble than toiling away at work. None of that matters because we’re going to continue to buy lottery tickets. If we didn’t we’d just spend that two dollars on something stupid anyway so we might as well spend it on something that could potentially make us gazillionaires. If that happens, we’ll have all day to spend screwing around on our blog. These are the things that kept us amused this week.

1. Breve.  Ava has been on a crazy new diet.  No surprise there, right!!!  She can’t have any carbs so she has had to resort to using only cream or half and half in her coffee.  It’s painful to listen to her place her order at Starbucks.  “Hi, I’d like a café latte, decaf (no caffeine either on the diet), cream or H&H and no foam.”  Then she starts to babble about her diet and how the  cream is going to help her lose weight and not get really fat, blah, blah, blah.  Most of the employees just look at her like she’s nuts until one said “Breve.  When you want your drink made with cream, the term is Breve and lots of people order it that way so no need for the long-winded excuse, okay?” Well, okay then. Odds are that won’t stop her anyway.

2. Vanity Fair. We love this magazine. Where else can you read Scientology gossip then learn about all the crazy-ass things people way richer than you are doing to scandalize each other? There’s always fabulous Annie Leibovitz photographs. Until recently there had been fabulously sordid articles by Dominck Dunne and intelligent, thought-provoking columns by Christopher Hitchens. VF is one of those magazines you want to read from cover to cover and look at every single gorgeous color ad. Delicious.

3. Out of office events. We spent the day out of the office yesterday at a local trade event. It may have been boring, but it was a day out of the office and that’s a good thing. Also, it seemed that, between Ava and Amylynn, they knew 75% of the people there. We saw old friends and hid from others. We were sincerely delighted to see a friend who’d nearly died earlier this year – he looked great by the way. We also saw our sworn enemy. Indeed, the Sisters have a sworn enemy. We look for this person in the obituaries every single day and, damn it, he’s never there. Still, it was nine hours of reunions and hugging and laughing or glaring and spitting and snarling. Still better than being in the office.

4. Amazing Bosses. Howard Cooper of Michigan sold the auto company he’s owned for 47 years with the stipulation that all 89 of his employees be retained. That alone is a pretty sweet deal, especially in this financial climate. There are few things more distressing these days than fearing for your job. But Mr. Cooper wasn’t done there. The 83 year old employer then gave each one of his employees $1,000 for every year they’d worked for him. Nice, eh? Even nicer when you know that the bookkeeper was there 46 years and a mechanic for 26. Wow! It wasn’t disclosed exactly how much he gave away, but he was quoted as saying that he wanted to make a difference in their lives just as they had done for him. Talk about being appreciated. Need we remind you, Ava and Amylynn work for a place who won’t buy forks.

5. Zeus. We’re huge fans of huge dogs. Amylynn especially has an affinity for giant canines. We had been quite proud of the fact that, for years, the world’s tallest dog lived in our town. Giant George became quite a celebrity with a book and everything. But then along came Zeus. This great Dane stands 7′ 4″, one inch taller than Giant George. We’ll bet that even as big as he is, he still wants to sit on his owners lap. Speaking from experience, you’re going to need an enormous shovel for the back yard.

You know how there’s certain ways you eat certain foods? There are some foods that matter so much. Corn on the cob. I don’t really have any firm opinion on corn – around in a circle or like a typewriter (or a dot matrix printer – see how old I am) I don’t really care. Pizza is another one that I don’t feel compelled to intervene with. You can fold it or not – personal preference.

I may be the only person in the world who doesn’t take an Oreo apart to eat the filling separately. I put the entire Oreo in my mouth at once. It’s the same principle with a Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup. The whole thing in at once. You’re mouth is totally overwhelmed with chocolate and peanut butter – really ups the experience. 

This is a free country, however I think we should all agree, there are some foods you just don’t mess with.

This Kit Kat has been all over Pinterst and we’ve talked previously about how Ava and I each have to eat M&Ms in a certain order.

Tonight it was My Honey eating a rocket pop all wrong. Everyone knows you slurp a rocket pop just enough to loosen each layer of flavor to reveal the one underneath.

HE WAS BITING IT!

Biting. Who bites a popsicle? People who are wrong, that’s who.

What’s your opinion? Is there something you think should only be eaten a certain way, no exceptions? Or are you one of those crazy rebels who flaunts the wrong of your wrongness?

Here’s a bunch of ’em, completely unsupervised, begging to be stolen

Do you want to come with us? Except for that hiking business. We’re totally not doing that – unless there’s a panda bear at the top of that mountain and the mountain is in China. We’ll be completely honest with you. We could use the extra help on the heist thing. We’ll even let you keep one if we get away with extras.

I think I’ve mentioned this before but, let’s be honest, I babble a lot so maybe it’s a blog I wrote in my head and never actually communicated to you. I’ll start with a confession. I am morbidly fascinated by icky stuff. My mother often wondered what could be wrong with me while I was growing up. I read every true crime book I could get my hands on – the grislier the better. I’m drawn to serial killers like nobody’s business. I seriously considered going to school to be a Medicolegal death investigator. They’re the people who determine the cause and manner of unexplained and unnatural deaths. Doesn’t that sound fascinating, albeit a bit macabre? I even took some of the classes.  I’m guessing laziness was the reason I didn’t finish. Going to med school was too much work.

I write romance now, but my imagination could easily go the way of horror.

Not what you expected? Bwa-ha-ha-ha. The goofy blogger has a dark side.

The reason I told you all this is because I found a new outlet for my ghastly curiosity. Hoarders on the A&E network. These people are jaw-hanging-open, mind-bogglingly disturbed and I can’t turn it off.

The episode on last night was about a couple who collected somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 books.  Really. You’ve never seen so many books in your whole life. You can’t imagine what that looked like inside the house. There were paths like eighteen inches wide throughout the entire two-story house. It was a death and fire trap. One toppled stack would bring certain death. Nine foot stacks of books stretched the whole length of the house, all 26 rooms. Clearing a space to walk in the living room and another in the kitchen to find the appliances, they removed 20,000 books. The show didn’t even have time to get to a third room.

The mind boggled.

The hoarders themselves struggled with all the psychological implications involved with the systematic destruction of their lives. It was heartbreaking and horrifying all at once.

And I couldn’t help wishing I’d been there. I wonder how many books I’d have smuggled out of there in my own car.

Sassy has been campaigning for a cell phone. My response to that is not only no, but hell no.

Whhhhhhhyyyyyyy, she whines. Well, that’s one of the reasons right there. Whining. Owners of cell phones don’t whine about it.

Alright, I whine all the time, but then I pay the cell phone bill so I get a free pass.

Also, if she gets a cell phone, I’ll never have a moment’s peace. She gets home from school at 3:30. I’m at work at Bank of No Forks until 6:00. That’s two and a half hours that she can use to tattle via the home phone.

She calls me to inform me of everything. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. Why do I answer the phone, you ask? It’s sick of me, I know. I’m totally enabling her. All the time, Ava’s chastises me not to answer. The problem is, it’s a train wreck I can’t not look at. Know what I mean?

“Mom, guess what The Bandits doing NOW,” she’ll say with her best newscaster voice.

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Not to be deterred, “Well, the cat threw up on the rug and then the dog went pee.” 

“What do you expect me to do with this information while I’m at work?”

“I don’t know. I just thought you’d like to know.”

Believe me, I don’t want to know. If she gets a cell phone, she’ll be able to do this all day, from everywhere. I suppose I should be happy she still wants to speak with me. I know that in a few short years, she’ll want nothing to do with me and I’ll look back fondly on these stupid phone conversations.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I tried to remind myself of that this afternoon when she called up and the first thing out of her mouth was, “Wanna talk to the dog?”

I spent all day Saturday trying to hide from My Honey. It wasn’t easy and I had to be creative.

Once upon a time, this was the pantry

When I got home on Friday, My Brother the Plumber and My Honey had installed all the new plumbing which I thought was astounding.

 Only now, my house is filled with more holes than I could imagine and the hallways and rooms with no plumbing were stacked ceiling high

with the contents of the other rooms. The kitchen pantry was relocated to the family room as was all the nonsense from Sassy’s closet. The Laundry room was split between the diningroom table and the

The big cat loves being on top

livingroom. Everything from the master closet was stacked on the top bunk of The Bandit’s bunk bed. Everything from the front bathroom was lined down the hall. The kitchen was simply scattered around the kitchen like a very confusing earthquake happened.

It was like a DMZ. No joke.

Saturday rolled around and the drywall and texturing began. Sadly, the years of forced employment for my father means that not only can I fix your basic plumbing problem, but I can also hang drywall and texture – mostly. I curse the day my father made me so capable. Fortunately, there were errands

What the kitchen looked like when I got home on Friday

that had to be done outside the house and I thrust myself out the door in an effort not to get dragged into the construction.  Also, the fact that the areas were generally too small for two bodies helped.

On Sunday, I totally made up for my lack of participation on Saturday. While My Honey finished the drywall, put in the hot water heater, and reinstalled the pantry, Sassy and I spent eight hours re-assembling her bedroom. We’ve been meaning to do some updating of her room so this was timely. Also, I took the opportunity to convince  her to get rid of a bunch of her little girl toys – eight garbage bags worth.

I am exhausted. My Honey is wiped out. There is still have a laundry room to drywall, texture and reassemble. Then all the week’s laundry to do. The air conditioning unit is on order so that’s in the next week or so.

I’m too tired to get drunk and way too exhausted to kill myself. Crying is about all I’ve got left.

I’m really aghast at the national media. I realize that we have a lot going on in the news right now especially with the political conventions. The republicans and the democrats are in a major sandbox argument and, understandably, that takes up most of the media’s attention but I still think they are very remiss in burying this story.

this is probably $75,000

That’s the only explanation I can come up with for why it’s being swept under the carpet. The powers that be don’t want you to know. Fortunately, I’m all over it. I will not be bought off by villains who don’t want you to know the truth.

First of all, until I read about this story, I had no idea it was even a thing. Are you aware that Quebec has warehouses full of maple syrup? That they are stock piling it? It’s shockingly true. Quebec has 80% of the worlds maple syrup and this is big business, people. Huge.

How huge? Let me tell you. Hold on to your pancakes cause this will blow your mind.

There was a heist of maple syrup in one Quebec facility. Some sticky (ha!) thieves absconded with 30 million dollars in syrup.

$30,000,000.00.

The thing is, these warehouses are apparently so big that 30M in missing syrup wasn’t even noticed right away.

That, my friends, is one hell of a lot of syrup. Did you know this was a thing? Ava had an inkling. I was totally unaware that syrup was a dynasty like freaking oil in Texas. I guess I thought that there were groves of maple trees with faucets jammed in the trunk with buckets hanging down and that was the sum of syrup. I never pictured that one country was controlling the entire world with syrup.

This heist smacks of some wacky Dr. Evil plan to rule the world. Mark my words – this will come back to haunt us all.

In your opinion, what would be the best use of $30,000,000 of maple syrup? Create really elaborate but sticky practical joke? Make pancakes and waffles until you literally explode? That’s a few ideas. Whatcha got?