NEW RELEASES
One, One famous astronaut
Two heroes of mine passed away this weekend. Both sad and radically different but no less influential. 
Sesame Street and I were born the same year and I can remember us growing up together. My favorite Sesame Street character has always been loveable, furry old Grover, but my brother was a huge fan of the Count. He would go around counting everything just like the character.
“One, two, three. Three fabulous toys! Bwahahahahahahaha.”
Rest in peace, Jerry Nelson.
Then on Sunday I read that Neil Armstrong had gone. The moon walk also occurred the same year I was born. 1969 was a very good year. Neil and I also shared a birthday, although he was 39 the year I was born.
The first man to walk on the moon. Isn’t that astounding? Even after all these 43 years, that’s still an amazing thing. A heroic undertaking from a very quiet man.
So there you go. Two less heroes and educators in the world. It’s a quieter planet. A lot less counting going on.
August 24
We are so ready for this summer to be over. We’re tired of complaining about the heat. We’ve used all our good jokes to death. We’d really like to start complaining about being cold now. The heat makes us irritable but, to be fair, the cold makes us crabby so really there’s no win/win out there. With the attitudes we’re sporting these days and with the way things are looking at Bank of No Forks, we’re considering taking up a life of crime. We know that we’ll eventually get caught. Still the lure of living high on the hog seems like it might be worth it. Besides, when we get sent to jail we’ll get two hots and a cot so that seems acceptable. We’re going to petition for solitary confinement right away. Actually, 
that sounds too good to be true. Wanna form a gang? Here are our five things this week.
- Phyllis Diller. No, no, no. We don’t mean that we’re happy she’s dead. Quite the contrary. We’re sorry to see her go. As ladies who are also quick with a quip, we do recognize that she’s practically a mother to us. Besides, some of her one liners we consider gospel. For
clearly NOT a herd of naked republicans
example, “Housework can’t kill you, but why take the chance?” That’s what we keep saying.
- Skinny Dipping. The politicians have been really busy embarrassing themselves all week. We are only going to bring up this one, because it’s funny not un-freaking-believably asinine. The esteemed freshman republican congressman from Kansas, Kevin Yoder, has had to publicly apologize for skinny dipping in the Sea of Galilee. Supposedly he was in Israel on a “fact finding mission.” The fact is that very few republicans should be without clothes – swimming or not. That’s just our humble opinion. Never fear, the FBI is investigating. They’ll get to the bottom of this. HA! See
what we did there? - Penguins – Part 2. We brought this to your attention once before but we’re darned if we can remember when. Back in May-ish (?) a Humbolt penquin escaped from the Tokyo Aquarium and lived large for 83 days. Now the Sazaka Zoo, also in Japan, is struggling to keep four 3-month old penguins in their enclosure. One of our favorite blogs, Shoebox, said it best, “These penguins have escaped their Japanese zoo three times now, showing that apparently no one at the zoo has seen Madagascar.” Perhaps we should stop sending penguins to Japan? Clearly they are
not happy there. They’d be much happier over at our house. - Prince Harry. By now you’ve certainly heard that the bonny prince is running amok in Las Vegas. Apparently, not everything that happens there stays there. Not only was he playing strip billiards, but he also good naturedly challenged Ryan Lochte to a race in the casino pool. We suspect Ryan won because, as far as we know, the English Monarchy no longer beheads people anymore. We know that this may shock you, but we have no problem with Harry’s amokness. Isn’t what he’s doing in his job description? He’s the second son with no wife, no real responsibilities and he’s darn cute. We say you cavort away, young man. In fact, we’re hosting a welcome party for some penguins next week and you’re more than welcome to come to our party nude as well.
- Hippos. You know how the penguins don’t seem to like Japan? Apparently the hippos aren’t that crazy about South Africa either. There have been a couple of reports that hippos are wandering around neighborhoods over there and crawling in people’s gardens and swimming pools. The authorities are hoping the most recent “rogue” hippo will wander back home. We suspect that she wants to get some shopping in. Perhaps she’s on a quest for a swimming suit that doesn’t make her look fat. Good luck, pumpkin. If you find anything, let us know. We’re going to be over that way picking up some penguins, and we’re happy to bring you home, too.
The Scorpion King
Last night, I’m minding my own business, in my bathroom and for no reason what-so-ever I look in the master bath tub and see a giant freakin’ scorpion in it. Two other things are going on at that moment, I’m brushing my teeth and my daughter has just come in the room because she likes to talk while I have a mouth full of toothpaste.
I start wildly gesturing at the tub for her to see the danger and she keeps looking at me instead of the tub. Than the cat comes running in – right at the tub.
We live in the desert, for Zeus sake! That scorpion was easily 90 lbs!!!! All three of us were going to die!
Finally, the girl looks at the tub. I was spewing spit and toothpaste all over shouting “Go get your father!”
She runs over to the top of the stairs and starts calling to him to save us.
I kid you not; he takes forever – in scorpion death time – to climb the stairs. He actually moved at a leisurely pace as if there was nothing wrong and there wasn’t a 90 LB EVIL SCORPION threatening his beloved wife and daughter.
“Oh my god, Ed! Could you at least work up to a trot???” I shrieked.
He, calmly and slowly, went to the tub.
“That is what the entire ruckus is about?” He stupidly said.
Photo of Scorpion in my Bathroom
“Listen you; our marriage vows included the fact that you would kill all insects and snakes. It may have not been specified but it was implied that you would do it in a timely fashion and without ridicule.”
This was said over my shoulder as I ran out of the bathroom to save myself . . . our marriage vows also included that in dangerous situations it’s every man for himself.
Inside the writers brain it’s very messy – and kinda loud
You may have noticed we love Pinterest. Follow the link on the right to my boards if you have no idea what Pinterest is.
If you dont’ know what Pinterest is, you should really go check it out. But first, I want to say good-bye. I’ll miss you. When you come back up for air, let us know. Really Pinterest is a bigger time suck than Facebook and Twitter combined.
But, it’s fun.
Also, for a writing tool, it’s great. I’ve started using different boards for different stories. I am very visual and I’ve always cut out pictures and saved electronic pics of my characters, what they wear, where they live. Basically, things that speak to me about my current work in progress.
With Pinterest, you can see them too. It’s like you can stand at my desk and look at my bulletin board collages.
My current WIP is a contemporary that my agent asked me to write. It’s my first full length contemporary and I’m really having fun with it.
I’m researching food and motorcycles and vintage clothing instead of when were stamps invented and what is the proper address of the cousin of a wife of a count in English peerage.
Pop over to my Pinterest Board. Craving is the board for this WIP. I’m adding to it constantly so check back in. Also, there’s a very small board for Lady Belling’s Secret – the first of my series which will be out sometime before Christmas. That board is small because I’ll need to migrate all the pictures from other places and rebuild the board.
The biggest board is my Fun Stuff and it’s really quite a disturbing look inside my sense of humor. Maybe you shouldn’t linger too long over there or you’ll start looking at me differently.
Stay tuned for more stories from me. And while you wait, you can tunnel around inside my characters.
This took me seven hours of Bank of No Forks time to figure out, but I did it!
I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I’m blaming you.
I busted a tail light on my car this morning. I’d like to say I finally said, screw it, and slammed into a tailgater in traffic.
No. Nothing that exciting. Instead, I smashed into our enormous garbage can when I was backing out of the driveway to take the kids to school. It was totally my fault. I admit it. However, I’ll totally be blaming My Honey just like every woman would. After all, he’s the one who took the garbage out to the street and put the can in that precise spot.
Getting out of the house every morning is complicated. I knew the damn can was back there but when I backed up I didn’t see it in the mirror.
BANG!
Oh, son of a b*****! I jumped out of the car and the damn can was laying in the street. These freaking cans are heavy. Really heavy. Like 650 pounds. I had to practically climb under the nasty thing to get enough leverage to push it back upright and up on the curb. Then there was garbage all over the street to get back into the can.
Even when I’d scavenged as much stuff as I was going to pick up there were still approximately 957 used Q-Tips scattered in the street in front of my house. Who the hell uses this many Q-Tips? Drop everything right now and move your 401K to Johnson and Johnson stock.
Do you know how much the Dodge dealer wants to charge for a new tail light? $168.00.
Sweet Zeus in Olympus.
Stupid $*&@# garbage can.
When’s the last time you blamed someone else for your own stupidity? Or wrecked your car?
I’d have rather been buying tampons
My Pop came and spent the weekend. He’s always fun to have around and the kids dig him. As you may recall, he had a stroke a couple of years ago and it left him very changed, though he’s just as goofy as he always was.
You want an example of goofy?
We had to run a couple of quick errands on Sunday and he didn’t want to go out in the heat, so he stayed at the house with the dogs. I called him after a bit to see if he needed anything from the store before we came home.
“Hi,” I said into the phone. “It’s me.”
“Hello,” he said into the phone.
“You want anything from the store?”
“Hello,” he repeated.
“Hi. Can you hear me?”
“Hello,” he said for the third time. “Are you there?”
“HI,” I yelled this time. “Can you hear me?”
“I can’t hear you,” he informed me needlessly.
“Hel-lo” I said it this time like the Queen of England because he can’t hear me so why the hell not?
“Oh, wait.” Shuffle shuffle shuffle. “I had the phone upside down.”
I love these phone conversations. The really hysterical thing is though, this conversation could have just as easily happened twenty years ago.
So on his way home, he asked me to stop at Walgreens. He’d had some complications from prostrate cancer from several years ago and recently underwent another surgery. Everything is good now, but he uses catheters and he needed some lubricant. Walgreens and the accompanying pharmacist seemed like just what we needed.
We wandered to the back of the store to the very back where they hide the pharmacy – always in the waaaaaay back. The pharmacist on duty was a teeny tiny little old lady with big spectacles. My father is loud. He’s always been loud.
He announced to the lady what he was looking for only he had no name of any product. She looked to me for help but I was less than useless and shook my head. My father rambled on and I quickly assessed that the two of them weren’t getting anywhere.
I got my brother on the phone. “Hey, what’s the name of the lubricant Pop uses for the catheters?……oh……thanks.” I turned and grabbed my father by the arm. “Come on. I know what we need.”
I got what he needed off the shelf, on sale I might add, and led him to the front of the store. The freaking line was enormous don’t you know. Still, we waited and waited and waited.
Finally it was our turn and my 74-year-old father plopped his bottle of KY Jelly and a Snickers bar right on the counter.
Come on, I believe we all have a story like this. If that’s not true and I’m the only one with these stories, I don’t know if I can go on. Tell me yours. Did your kid embarass you or are the the one embarassing your children. Of course, his was totally unintentional and that’s what makes it so much funnier. Tell me your clueless story.
August 17
We’re bored and this Friday at work is like twelve hours long. Seriously, it’s like we entered a time warp or something. Kelli is so happy with her new job; we almost can’t listen to her anymore. Ava’s husband has also applied over there. Swear to Zeus, if he gets the job and starts spouting off all that happy unicorn and rainbow shit, we’re killing them both. Another friend just got back from her three week honeymoon in Switzerland and now we can barely talk to her, either. We’re seriously starting to run out of friends. Are we bitter? YES, we’re bitter. You would be too if you spent thirty-seven hours a day at Bank of No Forks with no pancakes or lovely Swiss people. It’s a good thing we have these five
things to carry us through.
- 1. To-go cups. When it’s 200 degrees outside and you’re not even sure you’re going to make it across the parking lot to your destination without spontaneously combusting, it’s nice to have a to go cup sweating rivulets down the outside. We especially love restaurants that offer this option without us having to look pitifully at them and act thirsty. In some places, you can even get a to-go cup in a bar. Now that’s too much for our state to permit – being we have those lax gun laws here. Fortunately, we’re quite content with our iced
tea, thank you very much.
2. Thunder/Lightning. We’ve had some really excellent storms this monsoon. We love the rain – all desert dwellers are obsessed with rain, well water of any kind, actually – but the best part of the storms are the thunder and lightning. We love the loud cracks of thunder when the lightning is so close you can almost smell the ozone burning in the air and your arm hairs stand up. But we especially love the thunder that starts far away and rolls and rolls across the sky. The kind of thunder that happens when you can count to almost twenty
Oh yea! This is an epic turban
after the lightning strike before you hear it start up. There is nothing more relaxing than laying in bed in the darkness hearing the rain pound the earth in a steady staccato and the thunder bounce off the mountains all around you. Bliss.
3. Sikh turbans. The Sikh’s are in the news quite a bit lately. Unfortunately, none of it good. But, since they’re prominent right now, it’s given us an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the religion. Up to now, we were regrettably ignorant on Sikhism in general and understood a bunch of misinformation. The Sisters are fascinated by religions – especially the more obscure and ritualized ones. You can recognize the Sikhs by the turbans they wear. We also understand they get to carry ceremonial daggers, but the real bonus is the turbans. They can be all kinds of colors, not just boring ole white, and some of these people are really rocking the turban. In fact, if we 
convert, we’re getting out our Bedazzler and going to town.
4. Scrabble Cheating Part 2. We’ve written about Scrabble cheaters before. Apparently this guy didn’t learn anything from the misfortune of the previous guy. The Sisters have mixed feelings about Scrabble. On one hand, we like the idea of Scrabble but Amylynn really hates losing and she does that a lot in Scrabble. Ava cheats. Also she’s mean when she plays. The cheating incident last October was funnier than this most recent one because it was really over the top. This story was a bit sad, however, Amylynn has read all about it, not as a news story, but as a primer for cheating. Really, she needs all the help she can get. 
5. Reincarnation. Again with the religion this week. We don’t know how the Sikhs feel about reincarnation but if it happens, this is what we want to come back as.
This is why I never bother with an umbrella
More hysterical brilliance from Birdboxstudios.
If only I could tune out the people who live at my house this well
I have a weird super power that I‘d like to share – it has to do with commercials. Generally, I have several books going at once, plus several magazines and some newspapers to read during the unasked for overly loud advertisements that intrude into your home from the television. Occasionally, which will be nearly impossible for those of you who know me well to believe, I don’t feel like reading. So when a commercial interruption occurs, I will jump right up and perform some needed chore that belongs to my kids but they haven’t done it so I have to go do it. There are times when I’m very tired after a long day at Bank of No Forks that even a commercial will not drive me from my chair and that’s when the super power begins . . .
I can sit in front of the TV and transport my mind to another place and time and not hear one word of commercial. Not one word I tell you. Nada. Not whom the advertiser was, not what they were selling, nothing.
This upsets the boy who lives at my house like you would not believe. For some absurd reason, he wants to talk about the commercials. He wants to talk about them like they are a small movie that he was privileged enough to see. I can’t talk about something I’ve never actually seen – I wish all commercials would go away and have told him this.
He told me, like only a fourteen year old can when addressing his elderly, out-of-the-loop mother that commercials are there so that the advertisers can sell things and I’m SUPPOSED to watch them. Honest to Zeus, he said this to me as if I didn’t get the point.
Me: We didn’t have commercials when I was a kid.
Boy: Really? How did you know what you wanted to buy?
Me: We didn’t. We went around not buying things. You really need to try that.
Boy: Are you messing with me?
Me: Nope, now be quiet, the shows coming back on.
Now when one of his favorite interruptions comes on, he tells me to watch and pay attention. But I can’t. My mind immediately begins to wander to important stuff, like what snacks might be in the kitchen that my children haven’t gobbled up yet.
I try, I really do, but one cannot deny one’s super powers.
We’ve discussed super powers before. The one’s we actually have, not the ones we’re too immature to use responsibly. Amylynn can sleep anywhere, at any time. Ava can ignore obnoxious television. Kelli can name bugs. What you got going on?