July 5

Happy birthday, America! We sincerely hope there will be cake. A nice red velvet with cream cheese frosting and blueberries, perhaps? We trust that we’ll not be disappointed. Ava is off on her vacation this time, leaving Amylynn to pester other people in her stead. The real innocent party in this deal is the World’s Greatest Receptionist because she’s now on week two as a QuillSister substitute. That can’t be easy, but it will be funny. There were funny things this week. Are you ready? Of course you are. Grab a snack and buckle up. Here we go.

1. Political Aspirations. We always considered that the Sisters are not appropriate for political service. Especially Amylynn as she’s not good at hiding her feelings–especially irritated ones over stupid people. Ava is a master manipulator so she’d have some minor success but then things would inevitably go horribly, horribly wrong and there’d be issues. Therefore, we’ve never even considered the idea–until now. Up to this point, none of our plans for getting various desperately desired animals into our possession has come to fruition. We have a new plan.  The U.N. Secretary General and his wife have just adopted a lion named Tumaini. Adopted. A lion. So now we’re looking for political donations. And some people who’ll stand up and say nice things about us. We’re willing to pay handsomely.

2. She doesn’t need more incentive. It seems President Obama likes to get out of the White House to get yummy nibbles. Imagine how excited Ava was to learn that one of his favorite places is Chipolte. Now, imagine Amylynn’s eyeroll. Ava does not need further incentive to force us to eat there. POTUS even eats Burrito Bowls. Sigh. There was a dust up in the aftermath of the Chipolte escapade wherein Obama reached over the sneeze guard to point and ask questions about the ingredients. Everyone at Fox News lost their shit. If Amylynn thought that reaching over the sneeze guard would get her ousted from Chipolte, she’d do it in a heartbeat. Sadly, Amylynn is too short to reach over ANY sneeze guard.  Obama also enjoys the Shake Shack and Starbucks where he got a green tea. Green tea? He escaped the White House and all the reporters for a Starbucks run for green tea? Seriously? Next time, he really should let Amylynn order for him. And there’s no sneeze guard at Starbucks.

3. Snow? What? This actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but we’re still astonished. On a day that it was 98 degrees where we live, it snowed five inches in Montana. We find it really difficult to reconcile this. In the previous two days it had snowed 14 inches, and they were expecting 4-8 inches more. We want to remind you, it was 98 at home and the very next day it rose to 102. By the 19th, we’d already had 19 days over 100 degrees. Montana and Arizona share a time zone, so it’s not like we’re that far apart. This is crazy shit, right? Still, we’d like you to know that it’s still better than the 5,000% humidity we had in Florida.

4. COOKIES! There has been a chain of sandwich shops that we’ve been monitoring for the last couple of months. The sign has been up forever, but there was always the codicil attached saying “Coming soon!” We really weren’t sure what the hell their definition of “soon” was, but we don’t share the same outlook. Eventually, The Potbelly Sandwich Company opened as we went in this week. The sandwiches were just alright–nothing wrong with them, but nothing to get excited about either. But they completely sold us on one specific service. This was how our smoothies and milkshakes arrived. WITH TWO COOKIES CIRCLING

3 little roses on Amylynn’s ring finger

THE STRAW! It’s like they dug into the deepest trenches of our brains and extracted the one thing that would make us the most excited. LONG LIVE THE COOKIE STRAW!

5. Cheapest nail salon on the planet. You know we’re bored at Bank of No Forks. Nine hours a day is a long time to do nothing. We’re always searching for the next way to pass the time. Doing our nails is a fairly extensive past time. We have probably 100 different nail polishes and every gadget you can imagine to make them pretty. But the best thing of all is that the World’s Greatest Receptionist is ever expanding her skills. She has long been the Queen of Polka Dots and now she can paint roses. Gorgeous, adorable, roses of any color. If you’re near us and you have boring nails, you have no one to blame but yourself.