Ava wanted to know if I wanted my own hotel room when we were out of town or if we just wanted to bunk together. “Of course, you can have your own, but just know I’ll be over there all the time anyway.”

Of course, I picked the sleepover. It just seemed stupid not to. We’re compatible roommates.

Ava got to the hotel first on Sunday and she texted me that the room was HUGE. And when I arrived on Wednesday night I agreed. The hotel was lovely and the room was nicely decorated.

There were a few oddities, however.

“What the hell is that?” I asked pointing to the peephole in the middle of the door at about bellybutton level. There was another one at the normal height.

Later, I mentioned that the bed was really, really low to the floor.

“I know!” Ava exclaimed. “That’s what I thought.” So we lay in bed and contemplated the lowness of the bed. We finally came to the conclusion that it must be due to the Contemporary decor.

When we were down in the lobby, Ava mentioned it to the front desk. “Yeah,” the clerk informed her. “You booked a handicapped room.”

Aha!

For the rest of our stay, we kept having those “aha!” moments.

Aha! That explained the bars in the shower and around the toilet.

Aha! That explained the closet – the hanging bar was about three feet off the floor which was a problem if you had a dress.

Honestly, for as long as it took us to figure out the deal, perhaps the handicapped room isn’t really for wheelchairs but for those of us who should ride the little bus to work.

It’s still a million degrees out here in the desert regardless of the date on the calendar. While that was always lovely when Halloween came around and you didn’t have to wear a coat over your costume when you trick-or-treated, it’s not so lovely at noon on a Tuesday when you dehydrate on the way across the parking lot. It also sort of lessens the thrill of hunting for the perfect pumpkin if you get sunburned while you’re wandering around in the patch. And yet, we still found five things to amuse….

1. Yurts. The word yurt conjures up pictures of Mongolians with scraggily beards, running around in the freezing cold, wearing those yak-skin coats. This Yurt defies that stereotype. There are no descendants of Genghis Kahn charging around routing villagers near this yurt. Neiman Marcus won’t stand for that nonsense and neither do the Sisters. This little beauty is from the Neiman’s Christmas catalog and only cost 75,000. It’s filled with one of a kind feather pillows, a handcrafted crystal chandelier, and the walls are linen tapestry. It was designed with I Dream of Jeannie’s bottle in mind. Just think of the wonderful stories we could write in this luxury. When you see Santa…

2. Quitting. Do you remember that Jet Blue airline steward who famously quit his job by cussing out a customer over the PA system, triggering the emergency escape slide, grabbing a beer and leaving the plane on the tarmac? He was our hero for a while there. Well, we have a new front runner in the category of Best Way to Quit Your Job. Joey had had it with his job at a major hotel chain so when he went to quit, he brought a marching band with him. Ladies and gentle,men, that is style. The Sister’s decided when we quit Bank of No Forks, we’re going to bring KISS with us.

3. Hotel rooms. Traveling for work sucks. No doubt about it. The only plus is an expense account and a hotel room. Even though we don’t sleep really great in hotels because it’s not our own bed, there is still something wholly luxurious about sleeping in a hotel room. The sheets are soft, the pillows squishy, the towels freshly laundered. There’s cute soap and stuff in the bathroom. There are no children fighting. No dog hogging all the leg room. You can watch whatever you want on TV. It’s nice – just so long as you don’t have to do it very often. Thank you, Mr. Hyatt.

4. Gadhafi. He’s dead. The Sisters disapprove of dictatorships of any kind, unless we’re the ones doing the dictating. But, now that it’s over, what we find is the most pressing consideration is not the fate of NATO, or the Middle East, or what have you. There’s not a thing we can do about any of that. What we really want to know is, what’s gonna happen to his wardrobe? The man may have been the devil himself, but he knew how to dress. Look at these gorgeous textiles. Call us shallow if you will, and we dare say you won’t be the first, but you have to agree with us when we say – the man had style.

5. Dinner with NewMexiken. As mentioned above, we don’t like business trips, we do like hotel rooms, and we LOVE going to dinner with Amylynn’s Uncle, NewMexiKen and his lady, Donna. They took us to a charming little restaurant in Old Town. Really Old Town. The building that housed the restaurant was 305 years old. There were margaritas and much laughing and we had a fabulous time. If you must go away, make sure you do it to a place where you have charming family.

Thoth

My Agent is in NYC this week. She’s pitching my series to the editors and publishers. I’m sure my project is not the only one she’s trying to drum up interest in while she’s there, but let’s pretend like it is, OK?

Ganesh

Knowing she’s where she is and that she will be presenting my work to the decision makers is filling me with anxiety. I’m so nauseous over the whole thing, sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.

Part of me wants to think positively – to imagine what I’ll do with my advance money.  Another part wants to pretend that nothing unusual is going on as not to jinx it.

I can pretend – but not very well – that it doesn’t matter to me, but it totally does. Just in case my jinx theory isn’t fool proof, I think I should make offerings to all the Patron Gods of writing. I’ve done some research and I have a list.

• Catholcism – The Arch Angel Gabriel – angel of creative writing
• Hindu – Devi Sarswati – Goddess of literature, books, writers, poets, etc
•                  Ganesh – Patron God of Writers
• Byblos – Baalat – the chief deity watched over books, libraries and writers
• Egyptian – Seshat – writers and builders
•                       Thoth – scribes and writing
• Greek – Muses – Erato was the muse of love poetry
•                Hermes – said to be the inventor of the alphabet thus the god of writing as well

Erato

OK – so what does one use to make an offering to the gods? I don’t know any virgins who are willing to be sacrificed, even if I had the stomach for such a thing. I googled it and I got all kinds of ideas for marriage and harvest and that kind of stuff, but nothing about how to make editors offer you a three book deal.

There is all kinds of suggestions on the Internet for offerings of food, but the more I read, the dicier it gets.  The Hindu gods only accept vegetarian offerings, and even then the veggies are sketchy. The Catholics won’t accept an offering if the heathen gods are involved. No one speaks Blybos so who knows what issues they have.  One site suggests that an animal offering is required for the Greek Hermes, uh yeah, so no on that. I don’t even know where to start with the Egyptians.

Gads. When did this get so complicated?

So, just spit balling here, I’m guessing I’ll find some printer paper, a toner cartridge and a cupcake.

I have to fly out of town for work tonight. Kelli will take me to the airport as Ava has been at the off site location since Sunday night. This time, Ava managed to get all the way to the location with no incident which is unusual for her as you can see from here and here.

I have every faith that I can negotiate the security check point without raising any eyebrows. That being said, prepare yourself for a blog explaining how I managed to screw everything up.

I hate traveling. I know a lot of people say this but I really do, but not for the normal reasons. I hate it because I always, always forget something. Something important. The anxiety of waiting to figure out what desperate thing I left at home always drives me crazy.

Thank Zeus we no longer have to keep track of tickets and just boarding passes these days. Carrying a ticket around used to drive my stress levels through the roof.

I have my work laptop and scanner and cords. I have my iPad for blogging and working on my manuscript. I have my iPod. I have my cell phone and charger. I have my Kindle – yes, my Kindle and my iPad. When I review Advance Reader Copies (ARC) of books, I can’t put them on my iPad. I’ve spent a long time with the Kindle folks and I have expressed my displeasure.

Note to Amazon: get on that will you? Seriously. I have WAY TOO MANY electronics to haul through an airport.

I checked on the underwear situation. I packed all my migraine medicine. My work credit card is in my wallet.  HERE IT IS – RIGHT HERE.  THIS PART ABOUT HAVING HER WORK CREDIT CARD.  IT’S A LIE.  HERE’S WHAT SHE FORGOT.  AMYLYNN DOES NOT, I REPEAT, NOT, HAVE HER WORK CREDIT CARD.  THEREFORE, SHE MUST SPEND EVERY WAKING MOMENT WITH AVA BECAUSE AVA REMEMBERED HER WORK CREDIT CARD AND IT’S THE WAY THAT AMYLYNN IS GOING TO BE ABLE TO EAT. 

On my honeymoon I forgot my blow dryer and thus in every single picture my hair is in a bun. I double checked my blow dryer this time.

I have no idea what it is, but it’s something. I’m certain of it.

Arg!

So much crying at dinner. It was tragic. Unbelievably, it wasn’t coming from the girl. Usually if there is hysteria and tears you can be assured the girl is in the center of it.

This time is was the boy. There didn’t seem to be an reason for his misery, either. No one was teasing him or yelling at him or even giving him a hard time about anything. Nevertheless, he just sat there, tears welled up in his eyes and poked at his dinner. He took a bite of a soft, fresh croissant and started to cry in earnest.

His father and I looked at each other quizzically, but neither of us had an answer.

“Dude, what’s wrong?” I asked as gently as possible. I didn’t want to push him any further over the edge.

He mumbled something, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying with the napkin shoved in his mouth. He withdrew the napkin and there were several dots of blood on the napkin. Apparently, he had another loose tooth. That boy is missing so many teeth at this point, I feel like serving corn on the cob just for the amusement value.

I tried to help him out with dinner, advised him how to eat without hurting the latest wobbly tooth. Nothing helped. He kept crawling in my lap and crying miserably. I didn’t think it was just the tooth. He finally just took himself away from the table in watery misery.

“What’s his deal?” I asked My Honey who’d been with him several hours longer this afternoon than I had been.

“I don’t know. He’s been like that all afternoon.”

“My God, he’s been an emotional wreck lately.” I observed completely unnecessarily.

“At this point,” his father admitted, “I’m just hoping he doesn’t climb up on the roof with his Nerf rifle.”

While I’m slaving away at the Bank of No Forks, I listen to satellite radio in my office. I love it because I don’t have to listen to stupid DJ’s prattle on or hideous local commercials. The plus, of course, is that there are a million music choices depending on my mood. There is a station completely dedicated to Bruce Springsteen, another for Jimmy Buffett. I can dial in a death metal channel when I’m feeling especially picked upon, or a nice, light jazz station if I’m serene. You can imagine how often I end up listening to Kenny G. If there’s one descriptor people always chose to describe me “serene” would be the one. (I can hear Kurt snorting all the way from Anchorage.)

Anyway, out of the blue today, the radio stopped working in the middle of a song. I was busy at the moment so I gave it a while to relocate the signal or whatever. When the dust and pencil shavings settled down around my desk and the music still wasn’t back, I called tech support. The gentleman who answered was from India. I wasn’t even a little surprised. He called me “dear” throughout our conversation, an odd thing to call a total stranger half a world away, but I didn’t think it was too outer limits.

Yet.

Mr. Tech Support had some difficulty with my situation – another event that I didn’t find too unlikely. My tech issues are never simple, run-of-the-mill problems. He ran through his entire gamut of trouble shooting hints. We checked that it was plugged in. We unplugged and replugged. We tried different channels. We jiggled the wires. He resent the signal no less than five times. I whacked it with my shoe – that was not on the officially sanctioned Trouble Shooting Guide, but sometimes I like to free lance. I often find that if you scare the “inanimate” objects they will behave themselves. You have to show them who’s boss. It almost always works with the copier. It did not work with the radio.

 My intrepid tech guy was just about to utter the words “escalate the ticket” which we all know is code for “I have no freaking idea and no one else will either, just go buy a new radio”, when all of a sudden it started working.

“Hey,” I said, “it’s working again.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s working.” I repeated.

“Really,” he said, his voice full of skepticism. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. It must have finally received your signal.”

“But, are you certain its working?” This guy was like a broken record.

“YES.” I used emphasis this time. “There is music coming out of the box, and I can see the display again.”

“I have to be absolutely, 100% certain it’s working. Are you sure it’s working?”

Oh my God. Someone over there needed to flip the card on his trouble shooting handout. Clearly he was in some sort of infinite loop. “Dude, its working.” I leaned in to the amazing, magical music box so he could hear. “Do you hear the music?”

“No, I don’t hear anything. Are you sure the music is coming from the radio and not from somewhere else?”

I pulled my phone away from my face and looked at the receiver quizzically. I turned the volume knob up to 17. “There do you hear it now?”

“Yes, I do. Thank you.” Finally! He started rambling that nonsense they are all trained to say, “Blah, blah, blah, is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Nope, thank you.”

Then he ended the call with a final line I have been pondering all morning.

“You’re very welcome, Your Majesty.”

Sassy danced out of her bedroom this morning. That should have been the first red alert.

“Guess what, Bandit,” she called out from the hall in a sing-song voice.

“Huh?” the boy grunted back at her. The boy is not a morning person, even more so than me and that’s saying something.

I turned down my bathroom music so I could hear and intervene if necessary. Anytime she’s so solicitous of her brother I get concerned.

“I broke two fingernails and put them under my pillow last night. Let’s see if anything happened, shall we?” Her brother joins her in her bedroom, his interest piqued.

I hear a squeal of delight from the girl and a gasp of amazement from the boy. “Oh my God! The Fingernail Fairy left me five dollars!”

Oh crap. I can see where this is going. Left unchecked The Bandit will have twenty bleeding stumps where his finger and toenails used to be.

“Sassy,” I say sternly. “Please stop messing with your brother.”

“What?” Her voice is clear and honest. Her face is completely void of artifice. Wow, she must have been practicing this look in the mirror.

“There is no such thing as the Fingernail Fairy.”

Her eyebrows are all the way to her hair line. “Yeah huh.”

The boy pipes up. “Let me see the five dollars.” He inspects the money front and back, as if the money can be verified so can this bizarre new fairy.

“Sassy,” I say a little bit sterner this time.

“What are you saying, Mom?” she asks. She’s really working this innocence angle.

“I think you stuck five dollars under your pillow and now you’re messing with your brother.”

“Nu-huh.”

“There is no such thing as the Fingernail Fairy, Sassy.” I lay my tube of mascara on the counter and walk across the hall to stand in her doorway. “And even if there was, she wouldn’t leave five dollars. The tooth fairy doesn’t leave five dollars and she takes actual teeth.”

“I don’t know, Mom,” the boy says, transfixed by the portrait of Abraham Lincoln in his hand. “The money seems like proof to me.”

“Bandit, there is no such thing as the Fingernail Fairy. I swear.” I take the money from him and give it back to his sister. “Quit messing with your brother.”

She held firm to her story about this ridiculous fairy. She kept insisting that I couldn’t know for sure that she didn’t exist. Of course, I know for sure she isn’t real. I know the Tooth Fairy very intimately, but I couldn’t very well use that evidence to make my point. God only knows what she’ll come up with next. The Booger Fairy? The Hair Ball Fairy?

Oh, Sweet Perseus, help me.

For years, I’ve really, really wanted to be Cinderella for Halloween. I wanted the huge, blue ball gown with clear shoes and the blond wig with the black ribbon choker. Where I got hung up was the huge, blue ball gown. I have some issues with an undiagnosed obsessive disorder.  If I decide something has to be a certain way, then I will not rest happy until I get it EXACTLY the way I want it. It’s really very annoying.

The problem with this disorder and my desire to be Cinderella is that any ball gown I find that is acceptable costs a gazillion dollars and I can’t conceive of spending that kind of money on a costume. It’s ridiculous. I wish I didn’t have such high standards.

This year, Ava and I even managed to convince our non-girly Sister to be the princesses. Of course, we had to make a major concession and we finally got her to agree if we were the Zombie Princesses. Yes, you read that right – Zombie Princesses. I was going to be Cinderella, Ava as Belle and Kelli as Snow White  – but in full zombie make-up. We were trying to convince the husbands to be the Prince Charmings as zombie hunters but they told no and assured us we were idiots.

So the quest began for the dress and I finally had to admit that I couldn’t spend 100+ dollars on a Halloween costume. I’d either need to come to grips with a lesser costume or forego the idea completely. I really really really wanted to be Cinderella. I also really really really didn’t want to spend that kind of money.

Guess what I decided.

Yeah. My Honey and I are going to be pirates. Let us send up a prayer that I can find the pirate hat I have made up in my head for a reasonable amount of money. So long as it’s huge, and piratey with a giant feather everything will be fine.

I was dozing on the couch. We’d spent a long morning at the zoo and I was tuckered out. We’d gone to see the lion cubs born at the end of July. As soon as we passed through the entrance, we made a bee-line for the lion enclosure.

Nothing. There were no bouncy little cubs frolicking in the grass or climbing the tree. Bah! Apparently, they’d been out earlier and some heathen of a child had banged on the glass scaring the babies who’d run right back inside their den.

They won’t let the daddy lion out with the cubs. In fact, the zoo keepers say that he’ll probably never meet his triplets because they don’t want him to hurt them. When you finally get to the zoo and some wretched kid scares the piss out of the babies, you can understand why some animals eat their young.

Just as we were about to leave, we went back to the lions and LO! the babies were back. The cubs were very bouncy and adorable. One cub was especially full of vinegar. He kept stalking his mother and attacking her. Honestly, he was almost nausea inducing, he was so cute. His brother and sister were concentrating on gnawing on bones and he crawled all over them, too. You can tell he’s the sibling who causes all the trouble.

Mama lioness was on high alert. In fact, she was so on guard that I immediately withdrew my idea for cub napping. Ava, Kelli and I will have to come up with a completely different idea – one that doesn’t involve the Mama in anyway. Possibly, we might find that crappy little kid and use him as bait.