NEW RELEASES
My boy might be the reincarnation of Jimmy Hoffa
Sassy joined the Girl Scouts this year. Do you know what this means?
Girl Scout Cookies!
We picked up a car load of cookies this weekend and Sassy was all gung-ho to sell them. Back in my day of being a Girl Scout I would merrily go house to house selling Thin Mints, but I can’t let Sassy do anything of the sort. I knew I had to accompany her.
Sassy doesn’t believe that her mother should have naps. The child nagged and nagged and nagged and nagged and nagged. I’ll bet you think I’m being repetitive, but I’m not. There is no fishwife in the history of humanity who can nag with more conviction and unrelenting zeal than Sassy.
So Sassy, The Bandit and I grabbed several boxes of cookies and headed down our street. I waited at the curb and my
little cherubs trotted up to the door to knock. Sassy tapped timidly on the door and when no one answered right away she turned as if she was ready to give up.
Bang. Bang. Bang. The Bandit took his knocking seriously. “Open up,” he yelled at the door. “We’ve got cookies.”
Holy Cow! Is my boy practicing to be a member of a SWAT team? I shook my head at them from the curb but they didn’t notice.
The door opened was opened by a very tall gentleman. “Can I help you?” he asked.
Sassy went in to her spiel. The Bandit stood back a step or two behind her. I think he might have been trying to look intimidating – all three and a half feet of him. I watched from the curb and noted that things didn’t appear to be progressing very well.
“What do you mean, ‘You don’t eat this kind of cookie’?” The Bandit yelled. “Dude, they’re Girl Scout Cookies. Everyone likes Girl Scout Cookies.”
The man took The Bandit’s measure. “You’re not even a Girl Scout, little boy.”
“Whatever. You want some cookies or what?”
Even standing at the curb I was startled. The very tall gentleman on the porch looked equally so. “OK,” he said and looked to the case Sassy had in her hands. She smiled at him angelically. “What kind do you have?”
“Thin Mints.” The Bandit took a box from Sassy’s case. “Everyone likes Thin Mints.”
The man handed over his four dollars and retreated to the safety of his house.
I watched with horror as Sassy and The Bandit came down his sidewalk in victory, The Bandit lecturing his sister. “That’s how you sell cookies, Sassy.”
In Our Humble Opinion…well done steak should be a crime.
In Our Humble Opinion…people who don’t eat Girl Scout cookies are suspect.
In Our Humble Opinion…our indian names would be Amylynn, Ava and Kelli PrepareToBeAnnoyed.
Things go amiss at 30,000 feet
Ava and I had to go to Albuquerque again. It’s not that we don’t think Albuquerque is simply a charming place, because we do. We’re certain we’d love it if we weren’t there for work. There is much to recommend the town from it’s 300 year old restaurants and general quaintness to it’s friendly inhabitants. Also, my uncle, Newmexiken.com, lives there. However, when we go there for work it’s generally horrible. Long hours and unhappy clients do not make for a pleasant stay.
We left Kelli at home to hold down the fort. Instead she went to one of our favorite restaurants and teased us about it. Not very nice, eh? We’ll figure out a suitable punishment later. This will take some thought.
Ava and I were to be there from Wednesday until Sunday morning – twelve hours a day. It was dreadful. The only redeeming feature was the beds in the hotel which I swear to Zeus were blessed by fairies or something.
Then on Thursday, My Honey called to say that his favorite aunt died. She was quite elderly but she and her husband were very independent. They’d just sold their three story house on Table Lake a couple of years ago to downsize to a smaller, single story one. Nevertheless, she passed and My Honey and his family were going to the funeral so I had to come home early. I would fly home late Friday night and we’d turn right around and get him to the airport super early Saturday morning. He’s out of town until Wednesday. That’s means I’m home alone with the children. I live in fear. More on that in the coming days.
This meant I had to fly home alone. Sigh. I got to the airport and through security without much difficulty, got myself some dinner and sat down at the gate so that the most people possible could annoy me. God almighty, the most annoying people on the planet converge in airports. I made a concerted effort not to glare at people. You never know who is going to be your seat mate.
Yeah, speaking of seat mates. That did not go well. It was a surprisingly full flight and I was sandwiched in the middle seat. On one side sat a very nice, very young man. I believe he was of Indian or Middle Eastern decent. I am remarkably bad at pegging where people are from. I do know that he had gorgeous skin, a beautiful latte color, and well formed hands. He was also unfailingly polite and quiet. I thought all would be well, but it turned out the older lady on my other side had other plans. Where Young Man and I clearly planned to read quietly to pass the time, she intended to rant.
You’ve all met this woman – she’s Angry Republican Woman. You can tell her on sight because she has a helmet full of hair, sprayed within an inch of its life, and a solid color skirt suit and reasonable, black, one-inch heels.
While we sat there, a captive audience for one hour, she told us how frustrated she was with how the primaries are going. Apparently she was a Santorum-ite which right away proved she was crazy. If not crazy, at least I knew that regardless of any other faults, her belief in Santorum meant she and I would NEVER see eye to eye on any issue. Ever.
I refused to engage in conversation with her. Unlike Ava, I am completely unable to have a civil conversation about politics. Ava can feed these crazy people a line and gleefully lead them along. If I engaged with this woman the federal marshal would have had to escort me off the plane. I know this about myself so I made a concerted effort to ignore her. Young Man fidgeted painfully. It was awful. At one point, I thought she might make him cry.
The row behind us had two guys trying to one-up each other with terrifying flight stories. That’s super calming when you’re already thinking of jumping.
The stewardess was mean.
None of this beats My Honey’s text from the first leg of his flight to Missouri.
“Just landed in Denver. Some guy two seats behind me won’t wake up so now we have to wait for the EMTs to get his ass off the plane. I better not miss my breakfast. That sounds bad but I’m hungry.”
That seems like a bad omen when you’re flying across the country to go to a funeral, huh? Turns out,
“He wasn’t dead, just high as a kite.”
Or as an airplane.
Just because this makes us laugh and laugh
Source: justcapshunz.icanhascheezburger.com via Amy on Pinterest
From Amylynn’s Pinterest board. You can see more by following the link to the right.
In Our Humble Opinion…2nd place is first loser.
In Our Humble Opinion . . . peep toe boots defeat the purpose of keeping warm and taking a break from pedis for the winter months.
January 20
Amylynn and Ava had to go out of town again for Bank of No Forks. We’ve left Kelli to hold down the fort and we really hope it doesn’t get too windy at home. Amylynn and Ava aren’t sure if it’s windy where they are. They’re not allowed outside – the chains on their leg shackles don’t reach as far as the door. The good news is the hotel has magic beds. Magic beds we say! Usually we don’t sleep well in hotels – strange rooms and being all alone doesn’t make for relaxation. Not this time. All you have to do is look at these beds and you’re asleep. While we were able to keep our eyes opened, these things came to our attention.
sigh
1. Johnny Depp. Stop the presses. The news has leaked out that our dear Johnny is single again. After 14 years he’s split with his long time girlfriend. We feel bad that his misfortune makes us so happy. This is a text book example of schadenfreude. That doesn’t say nice things about us, but if there’s a chance in hell….we gotta go for it. While we were snooping on the Internet it came to our attention that he’s shooting The Lone Ranger down in Mexico. That is remarkably close to our home base. In fact, we’ll have to drive right through there during Operation Prehensile Porcupine Liberation. We might just be able to liberate a little Depp as well. If the authorities give you a call, remember – you know nothing.
Follow up: We were led astray. He’s not in Mexico. It’s New Mexico. That’s a lot easier to get in and out of since you don’t even need ID to get there.
2. Excuses.We’ve been fascinated by the cruise ship debacle in Italy. Amylynn reads
In better days...before the big tilt
every newspaper account, transfixed by the unfolding ineptitude and ghastly behavior of the captain of the ship. The Sisters are all parents of small children and, thus, have heard any number of creative excuses ranging from the utterly lame, “I don’t know” and “It wasn’t me” to the rather more interesting one voiced by The Bandit last week for why his room wasn’t clean, “Blame the Republicans.” However, no one has ever heard an excuse so mind bogglingly awful as the one the captain of the grounded ship gave for the reason he was in a lifeboat while his crew and passengers panicked on the ship. He told them he “tripped and fell into a lifeboat.” Holy crap, Batman. Can you believe he even had the balls to say something so outrageous? Us either.
3. People Watching. The Sisters are card carrying members of the People Watching 
Elite. We’re like people watching ninjas. We’d like to say we went to the Mossad School of People Watching but we are totally not that subtle. Kelli spends a lot of time working in Starbucks – Ava and Amylynn think she does that just to make us jealous. It’s totally working by the way. Anyway, Starbucks has plenty of people worth watching. Amylynn and Ava have been in quite a few airports and hotels lately and, Yowza! – there are some seriously wack-a-loon people out there. Just this morning a shoeless drunkard asked us for directions to the buffet.
4. Misidentification. Congress has come to its senses a bit. All right, let’s not get crazy. When we called our 
Congressperson to voice our wants and needs pertaining to the SOPA/PIPA legislation, the person answering the phone didn’t even know what the legislative was about. That horrified us a bit. When another congressperson suggested that perhaps, as a whole, the legislative branch of government might need some advising on the technical aspects of the internet, he said, “Bring on the nerds.” It was Jon Stewart who set him straight saying, “uh, don’t you mean experts?” We just love Jon Stewart. We love everything about him from his razor sharp wit offset by his silliness to his salt and pepper hair. In fact, the Sisters might have a bit of a crush.
Take two, they're small
Ava would also like to point out that he’s left handed…like that means anything just because she is.
5. Swedish Fish. Did you know that you can buy a giant bag of Swedish Fish at the Costco? We didn’t either. Someone naively suggested that they would go stale before you eat them. Silly Rabbit. There is no way Swedish Fish would go stale in the twenty minutes it would take us to eat them. Amylynn bought some at the Walgreens (there’s one on every corner. It is our theory that they are quietly trying to take over the world. That would actually be fine since they sell Swedish Fish.) while she was out of town. Once the other girls found out she had them, she had to lock them in the room safe.