July 12

It’s hot here. Oddly, there is a bizarre group of the earth’s population who engage in Heat Traveling. They go to Death Valley so they can stand next to the sign that shows 130 degrees so they can have a picture. They call it Death Valley for a reason, people. Still, hot is hot. It’s not like we expected anything different. It is summer after all.  But it’s not just hot. It’s also humid. The Southwest desert is world renown for its “dry heat”. Usually we’d say that’s a load of crap. We don’t care what you think – once it’s over 110 degrees it doesn’t matter if it’s dry or not. That was until this week. As we write this it’s 43% humidity.  This seems excessive,

don’t you think? The lizards are drowning.  Ava and Amylynn are going to Atlanta, GA next week. Today it’s 84 degrees and 92% humidity over there. Seriously, how do people
breathe? Do they get fungus like sloths? We would love to see some of beautiful Atlanta, but frankly we’re not that strong of swimmers. These things amused us this week.

1. A wee summer rental. This is where we want to go after the RWA National convention to decompress. It’s a 17th century lovely little pile of rocks located outside the English village of Haltwhistle. How adorable is that name? That’s gotta be one of the best things about England – the name of the villages. The castle has seven bedrooms so there’s room for us all. The piece de resistance – it’s said to be haunted by the Grey Man, a minstrel who was “savaged to death by hounds”. Whaaaat? Are you kidding? What about that makes him
“Grey”? We definitely need to spend some time over there to investigate this business. It’s available for a 1o year lease. That ought to do it.

2. HUMP DAY! Have you people seen this commercial? We defy you not to laugh. The really bad thing, of course, is now we want a camel. A camel – with a hump, hump day.  Blahahahahahahahaha.  It’s entirely possible that there is something very wrong with us.

3. Unicorns and Scotland.  The National animal of Scotland is the UNICORN.  Yup. The unicorn.  We are not making that up.  The Sisters immediately jumped on the internet to find out why they have unicorns and we don’t.  We searched the Scottish zoos and came up with nothing.  We went on the Scottish State Department website and found nothing there as well.  WTF?  Where are the unicorns?  We refuse to believe that its the country’s animal and they don’t have at least one.  We’re going over there to investigate check it out.  We’ll report back – or watch the news, you’re sure to see us in a row boat with a HORSE wearing a birthday party hat . . . wink, wink.

4. Lizard Ladies. In the winter we’d be referring to ourselves and our dry desert skin. In this particular instance, however, we’re referring to actual lizard ladies. There we were innocently making a nuisance of ourselves in the Hobby Lobby. We were probably arguing. We do that a lot. It means nothing. Mostly we’re just debating things – loudly. Anyway, we were minding our own business when Amylynn suddenly shrieked, “Oh. My. God. There are lizards!” There were two women in the Hobby Lobby wearing lizards. Not belts or shoes or even carrying gorgeous Michael Kors lizard skinned purses. No, they had big-ass lizards draped across their shoulders. Ava pretended like that wasn’t at all the weirdest thing we’d seen all week and inquired as to the breed and some other such nonsense (Ava – it was weird but they were adorable, the lizards not the ladies.) while Amylynn whipped out her phone because we need a picture of that shit. Can you believe those crazy women actually thought we’d be willing to hold one of the lizards? Only if it’s a purse. Seriously.

5. An unconventional plan. You know how we’re always trying to figure out how to get a panda or a sloth or a prehensile porcupine or a  white tiger or a bear or a semi full of puppies? Surely there are other animals we’ve mentioned – honestly we lose track. We just saw this video and we had an unusual reaction. As you can see when you follow the jump, the video shows a herd of impala racing across a highway between cars closely followed by two cheetahs. In a brilliant maneuver, one of the impalas jumps into one of the idling vehicles to evade the cheetah hot on its heels. OK – what if we just sit in that highway with our doors open and see what hops in? Now, we’d prefer the cheetah – obviously – because we’re big fans of kitties, but we seriously doubt that should an impala find its way into the back seat that we’d have a serious problem with it. We haven’t worked all the kinks out of the plan yet.