NEW RELEASES
November 16
This was quite a week. Ava and I threatened to quit our jobs more times in the last seven days then ever in recorded history and that’s saying something because we’re always threatening to quit our jobs. We figure we only need one resignation letter – short and sweet. Something along the lines of, “You people suck, we’re outta here” then we’ll both just
Imagine him holding a baby kangaroo and red velvet cheesecake.
sign it and shove it in the mail slot as we leave. Then we’re getting drunk. Or maybe we’ll get drunk first and then write the letter. That might be very interesting. We’ll have to give that
some thought. While that happens, here are five things to amuse you.
1. Channing Tatum. Isn’t he adorable. Well, not adorable like a puppy or a certain kitty cat we know, but still, he ‘s awful cute. We feel a little dirty thinking about him like that since he’s really just a baby. For God’s sake, some of us were in high school when he was born. Still, we did go see Magic Mike (it 
was one of our favorite things a while ago) and GI Joe. Amylynn refuses to watch the tear jerkers he’s in, but Ava says he’s adorable in them, too. He’s front and center right now since People magazine decided he was the Sexiest Man Alive this year. Who are we to argue with the professionals?
2. Joey. This little dude was discovered via a Tweet from Amylynn’s uncle. The headline read, “Definitely the Cutest Baby Kangaroo Wearing Undies You’ll See All Day. Doesn’t your heart melt for this guy? Holy moly, now we need a kangaroo. Who knew they were this cute? Is it the adorable kangaroo underpants or the super long feet or those ears? We have no idea. Damn it. We really want a kangaroo. We’re going to name him Marvin.
3. Election Coverage.It’s over. It’s over. Regardless of who you voted for, or didn’t vote for (shame on you), we’re just happy it’s over. No more non-stop commercials interrupting every thirty seconds. Yea! Unless you live in AZ. Jeez, we can’t get anything done quickly around here.
They’re still counting the freaking ballots. The reality is, it may never end. We say, lock them in a warehouse and fill ’em full of coffee and refuse to let them out until we know the winners. It’s not that damn hard. Calm down and pet the kangaroo.4. Red Velvet Cheesecake. We can’t remember if we ever had this as a favorite thing, but we don’t care. It’s so damn
They’re still counting the freaking ballots. The reality is, it may never end. We say, lock them in a warehouse and fill ’em full of coffee and refuse to let them out until we know the winners. It’s not that damn hard. Calm down and pet the kangaroo.4. Red Velvet Cheesecake. We can’t remember if we ever had this as a favorite thing, but we don’t care. It’s so damn
The one we’re reading right now
good it’s worth repeating. If you like cheesecake or red velvet cake or the color red, then get yourself a piece from the Cheesecake Factory. Oh my God! It might actually be better than sex with Channing Tatum. Not that we’ve thought
about that or anything..
5. Susan Elizabeth Phillips. We found SEP late in our romance reading careers and we regret every minute we wasted not reading her books the minute they came out. Seriously – Susan is a master of character development. She’s so good she makes Amylynn want to cry because she’s certain she’ll never, ever be able to write that well. And funny! SEP is a genius with dialogue. We had the chance to meet her at the National Convention we went to in July and we seriously considered tucking her in our pocket and bringing her home with us. If you enjoy contemporary romance, pick up one of hers. Any one will do. There’s scads of them. You won’t be sorry.
Famous last words . . .
Amylynn entitled yesterday’s blog post “We had all better hope something funny happens“. And wouldn’t you know it – it did . . . to her.
I’m sitting in my office without a fork and I see Amylynn come up the sidewalk. Oddly, it’s just Amylynn. No purse, lunch bag or most importantly – no bag containing our breakfast burritos. I hear her ring our security door bell and then someone buzz her in. I dash right to the inner locked door and open it to allow her passage into the private inner sanctum of our space.
“Whatcha doin’?” I say.
“I locked my keys in the car.”
I do not heckle her, after all, I’m the person who locked my keys in the trunk and had to be rescued from the grocery store.
Back to our story.
She calls her husband to report that she is an idiot and to get help. The whole plan comes down to her lovely mother-in-law bringing her the house keys and taking her home to get the spare car keys. That seems fairly simple right?
Nope. We mess that up by my telling Amylynn to just take “Carly” (I name all of my cars so they’re nice to me) to her mother-in-law’s to 
get the key instead of making her drive to our office and then to Amy’s house. We feel this is an excellent idea and call m-in-l with the change.
To protect the innocent, I’m going to leave the next part vague. It results in Amylynn coming back to the office with hangers, our security guard, a blade of grass, a paper clip, and Amy’s spouse calling to find out how the hell we messed up such a simple solution to the crisis.
In the end, the vehicle gets open but not with the key which is obtained after a second trip in Carly, a trip to the bathroom and more keys being locked in Amylynn’s house.
It will take Amylynn the better part of the day to get over this event but I’m quite happily sitting here eating my still-warm burrito and telling you this tale.
You’re welcome.
***Comments by Amylynn***
I have no intention of trying to defend myself. In fact, let me just add a few more details. Yes indeedy, I did lock my keys in the car with my purse, cell phone, security badge and breakfast burritos for the office on the passenger seat. I knew it almost the instant it happened. Our receptionist suggested that we call AAA and have them come open the car.
“But who knows how long that will take,” I said, “And I want my burrito. I’m very hungry.”
“Tell then you left your baby in the car. That’ll get them here right quick. Then when they open the car say, ‘Oh did I say baby? I meant burrito.’ That’s how everyone does it.” I seriously think our receptionist has missed her calling in crime.
Then all the manic driving around happened because I got flustered and couldn’t think things through. I’m excellent during other people’s crises but, with my own, clearly I’m a moron. By the time I finally got a hold of the house keys I had to pee so desperately I was doing that stupid wiggle dance. I burst into my house and trotted down the hall, grabbed the spare car keys and ran into the bathroom. Then, because I’d already been racing around for over an hour with this nonsense, I sped out the front door locking the hasp as I slammed the door. Once again I realized almost immediately that I’d managed to lock the house keys inside the house and consequently I couldn’t lock the deadbolts. That gave me pause. I stood in my front yard laughing hysterically because, really, what else could I do?
I’d also like to mention that when I got back, Ava informed me that My Honey had called to yell at her in my stead and “I let him because you’re dumb.” When he said, “she (meaning me) and my mom can’t manage to get this coordinated, but if it had something to do with shopping you better believe there wouldn’t be any problems”, Ava admitted that she agreed with him, “Cause that’s totally true.”
So, to sum up, I locked the car keys in the car and the house keys in the house AND managed to screw up the easiest plan in the world.
Sigh.
We had all better hope something funny happens
So on Monday I got sick. Then on Tuesday I had a nervous breakdown. All of this has been chronicled here ’cause nothing – well almost nothing – is sacred.
I’m a whole lot less hysterical today. Hysterical like crying-jag hysterical, not funny haha hysterical. I’d like to think I’m always capable of funny haha hysterical. We’ll chalk the early part of this week up to getting sick and high hormones. That and Bank of No Forks sucks.
It’s a really good thing all that happened before today though, because today a whole bunch of corporate people were in the office. That
Here he is doing his Hugh Hefner impersonation
means we couldn’t bring Jojo Kitty to work and he was greatly missed. It also meant all of us ladies at the office slunk around and tried to be invisible. I had the plan that involved me asking no questions and exhibiting no personality whatsoever.
Turns out none of our plans were necessary since, even though the guys were there, for the amount of time they actually spent with us, I could have brought the cat in and they’d have never noticed. Especially since, 90% of the time, the cat sleeps on my desk and doesn’t move for nine hours. If one of them noticed, Ava and I could look at them with a completely straight face and say, “What cat?”
They’ll be there again tomorrow – all day. Sigh.
Another nine hours with no cat and no personality.
Guess how it went today
Achooo!
I have no idea what happened at 4:30 but it was bad. My noes is already sore and I’ve been through 693 Kleenix. Since that time this afternoon, I’ve sneezed approximately 3,556,259 times.
On that note:
I feel for the little dude.
It was a dark and stormy night – 2012 edition
Every year when we read the winning entry of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest we think we’ll remember to enter the next year, but we always forget. I’ve talked about this contest before.
To remind you, the point of the contest is to “honor” the author of the original worst opening line in publishing history.
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
-by Edward George Bulwer-Lytto
This year’s winner is delightfully, outrageously awful.
As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.
-by Cathy Bryant of Manchester, England
You’ll have to agree, that’s pretty bad. I think this one is actually better, though it was the winner of the crime category.
She slinked through my door wearing a dress that looked like it had been painted on … not with good paint, like Behr or Sherwin-Williams, but with that watered-down stuff that bubbles up right away if you don’t prime the surface before you slap it on, and – just like that cheap paint – the dress needed two more coats to cover her.
— Sue Fondrie, Appleton, WI
There are so many guffaw inducing winners here. Hop over there and read them all. You’ll laugh. I promise.
Maybe next year we’ll all remember to enter.
November 9
This was a rough week for the Sisters. We didn’t really laugh much. One can’t really laugh when one is being re-trained for the 9th time in one year. And in the middle of the re-training, we stopped to be re-trained again. Arrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh. And may we add – Waaaaaaaaaaaa.
Just so you know, we tried to find some fun. There was a brief moment when we almost laughed over the legalization of marijuana in Colorado but it didn’t last because we don’t live in Colorado and can’t take up smoking pot to make re-training better and that made us sad again. For a second, we almost smiled when we found out that the Republican’s had a “get out the vote” party on a gun range in Alabama – that’s funny, unless you wish you were with a bunch of Republicans on a gun range instead of at work, that’s not funny.
Deep sigh.
And so dear reader, we do not have five things this week. We can only promise to bounce back next week. Ava has a dentist appointment so there’s always hope . . .
How do you entice an elephant into a Durango?
Let me tell you about my dream last night. Isn’t that a cringe worthy statement? I know but I’m the blogger and you’re the reader. Either hang with me on this or not.
There is a park in our neighborhood that we all played in as kids. In the dream, I drive by the park and there are all kinds of animals playing in the grass. There were orangutans, lions, huge brown bears and elephants. Across the street where there is a church in real life a gypsy camp had been set up. On the third corner, a pair of giant mountain gorillas sat in a person’s yard. A baby elephant walked down the street.
Understandably, I got very excited in my dream. My first thought was that I needed pictures for this blog. So I turned the car around and got out the camera phone.
My favorite thing about recalling dreams are the thought processes you have in the dreams. I did have the presence of mind to wonder why
Heeeeeere little elephant
there was a gypsy camp in the middle of town. The southwest desert is not a high gypsy occupation area. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen gypsies here. Also, I wondered if they had a circus or something and then it occurred to me that they were certainly going to get in big trouble for letting all these animals play loose in mid-town.
Certainly the cops were going to show up at any moment. This was very important in the dream. My very next thought was that I needed to get a hold of Ava right away. When else were we going to have the opportunity to snatch a baby elephant?
I do love a dream that is most certainly going to end in an arrest.
With all that giggling, we’re never going to have new careers as conwomen
I have a fascination with aliases and pseudonyms. When I was dating eight million years ago, I used to tell guys whom I wasn’t really interested in that my name was Linda. That’s super funny now. Ava claims she never used a fake name in a bar, but surely she’s lying.
Anyway, we’ve come up with our new fake names. I’m going to use Babs Hightower and Ava’s gonna be Tina Tipple. The only problem I see is that, when I Googled mine, it turns out there is a real Babs Hightower.
Obviously, we don’t plan to start dating anytime in the future. Ever actually. We can’t think of anything worse than that prospect. Ick. So then I thought we could be Babs and Tina at Starbucks. Ava thinks we’ll never pull it off because one of us will start giggling.
She’s totally right but I’m gonna give it a try.
Dear real Ms. Hightower,
I promise never to order anything embarrassing with your name attached. Really. I hope you’re alright with an iced, Venti, non-fat Chai with light ice. It’s quite tasty.
You can use my name at Starbucks if you want to.
Best
Amylynn
By the way, we stopped off at Starbucks during lunch today. Unfortunately, my epiphany about our new names came after. Never mind. That’s not the point.
Santa Claus and Salvatore Dali were having coffee! True story!
This is exactly like Winnie the Wonder Mutt and Geddy the Old Man
Only Geddy would have been even less amused.
The fabulous genius of Simon’s Cat.