January 4

We are so excited about Amylynn’s book coming out this month we can hardly stand it. We still don’t have a date yet, but we will very soon. You’d better believe that you’ll be among the first to know. Besides the book, we’re just super excited to be putting away the Christmas decorations. Well, some of us are. Ava will leave that crap up forever. Granted, her stuff is pretty and Amylynn’s is child-centric. Still, Amylynn hates how nothing fits in the house with that stupid tree. Like everyone else, we had New Year’s resolutions. We told you about the diet one but there was another one, too. We vowed to stop complaining about Bank of No Forks. That lasted about ten minutes. Failure never felt so satisfying. We’ll never give up the option to giggle, though. Here’s what we found for this week.

1. Tanning Lady. This lady’s story has been around for a couple of months, but Ava just became aware of it. If you don’t know, this woman was charged with putting her 6 year old child in a tanning booth. She was arrested and went to court for child endangerment. The story faded away, but Time Magazine mentioned it in a year-end retrospective and that’s when Ava saw it. The reason we think it’s so funny is that the woman is really, really, REALLY tan. And also from New Jersey. Ava is from New Jersey too and we love to tease about the NJ stereotypes. Just to be clear, Ava is ghostly white with

Le pomme shoppe

lovely flat hair and conservative fingernails. She doesn’t fit the stereotype at all. Except for that fascination with fire. We don’t know what we’re going to do about that.

2. Apple Store a la Paris. Armed thieves stole $1.25 million dollars of Apple products on New Years Eve from the Apple store behind the Paris Opera House. They broke in and stole laptops and iPhones and iPads then loaded them into – and here’s our favorite part – a Mercedes van. If this happened in the States, you can be assured it would have been a Ford Econoline. How very classy to

rob a Paris store with a Mercedes, don’t you think. We mean really, how gauche to use a Chevy or a Dodge. Hey, if anyone knows anything about this, we would love a couple extra iPads and a few iPhone 5s.

3. Way worse than a speeding ticket. Our town uses radar vans to catch speeders. The police park them all around town and you have to keep your eyes sharp or you’re screwed. Apparently one local fellow wasn’t keeping his eyes open and ran right into the parked van. Was he playing with the radio? Was he texting? Was he practicing a especially damaging version of civil disobedience? We don’t know for sure except that he was arrested for suspicion of drunk driving. We don’t want you to worry. He, his passenger and the guy sitting in the van were not harmed. Neither was the radar equipment. Thank God for that, huh?

4. Hillary’s out. We love Hillary Clinton with a bi-partison sort of girl love. Many people don’t and you certainly have the right as an American to be wrong about that. Still, we love her and were very concerned about her care while in the hospital the last week for a blood clot in her head. Hospitals are where people go to die and we thought she should

hurry up and get out of there. We tried to call the nurses station to check on her, but the Secret Service asked us very nicely to stop that. Then several fellows in Foster Grant sunglasses and dark suits stopped by the office and made their position quite clear. We did make them promise to tell her we cared and are worried about her. Get well, Hil. Did you get the chocolates we sent?

5. White trash crushes. We have no idea how this happened. We were raised right – well mostly, and normally we have very high standards. It seems that we have developed serious crushes on several outstanding examples of white trash men and we don’t know what to do about it. Ava didn’t really want you all to know. She’s embarrassed, but Amylynn insisted that we confess all kinds of nonsense on this blog and we’re not going to shy away from telling you about this little quirk. Odds are, if you use estrogen, you agree with us anyway. We’ve asked a lot of our friends and they have all concurred. Maybe this is our weird version of a mid-life crises. So we bet you’re wondering who these guys are. Don’t judge. Alright, here goes: Jax Teller from Sons of Anarchy, Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead, and Jace Robertson from Duck Dynasty. It’s

inexplicable. What’s really weird is that we’d never talk to them in real life. Jax might make us ogle but we’d never chat up an unwashed biker. We’re not completely sure that Daryl can string six sentences together to form a conversation, and Jace has a beard to rival ZZ Top. But holy cow – Jax is an over-the-top hot Alpha male. Daryl runs around on a motorcycle  with a crossbow saving everyone’s life and crooning to babies until our ovaries cramp up. And Jace is adorable under all that hair and blows you away with his college educated use of the English language, outrageous sense of humor and ninja level grasp of irony. We are complicated ladies, indeed.