NEW RELEASES
Zombies R Us
Ava is a diet Nazi. Granted, we all want to lose weight and her methods are effective, but I strongly dislike feeling deprived.
On Friday, Ava and I went to lunch at a national chain restaurant. We figured we get a crappy salad from somewhere new. Remember a couple of weeks ago when the whole zombie apocalypse was supposed to arrive just after the Rapture? Obviously, the Rapture never happened, but I’m not so sure about the zombie part.
We walked into the establishment and were sort of greeted by a host in the reception area. This young man looked like the walking dead. He looked at the two of us overlong, as if he was counting us over and over just to verify how many of us there were. Finally, he asked, “Two?”
Because I’m hungry and surly, I looked at Ava and then at myself before I confirmed. “Yes, two.”
He bid us to follow him as he grabbed menus and headed off into the dining room. I’ll estimate we walked fifteen yards or less to our table, but I swear to Zeus it took us thirty seconds to get that far. If you don’t think that is a long time, I dare you to get up and try it. Go ahead, I’ll wait. I almost ran the boy over he walked so slowly. I may have been stampeding to a table, I was that hungry, but still, he was ridiculously slow. Slow enough to have been leading a wedding march – if Zombies were allowed to get married in the state of Arizona.
By the time we sat down in our booth, Ava and I were wide eyed with unshared mirth.
“Sweet mother Danae of Perseus.” I shook my head
“It’s like he’s been wandering in the desert for forty years,” Ava said.
Every time he came in to the room where we were seated, he looked more vacuous if that was possible. You could almost hear him saying, “brrrrrraaaaaaaaiins.”
Then this evening, the Bright Family Four decided to eat dinner there, primarily because it was close and we were starving. This time there was a young lady acting as hostess. I suspect she and the guy from before are somehow related. At least I hope they’re related, otherwise it’s too terrible to think about.
If you know of anyone like I describe: someone who walks as if they are actively dying, has visible trouble counting as high as four, and gets lost on the way to the bathroom. Might I suggest they complete an application at this restaurant. Apparently, their hiring practices are very liberal.
Jello is not a Dessert
I do not like jello. I have never liked jello. Jello is not a dessert. Even if you have very low dessert standards – it is not a dessert. It’s not even a food.
Jello was invented in 1845 by Dow Chemical in order to make a profit off of their waste products. Some scientist came up with this brilliant marketing idea and Eureka! – Jell-O was born. Actually, I made that up. Gelatin is a protein produced from collagen extracted from boiled bones, connective tissues, and the intestines of animals. Hahahaha! Admit it, you’d rather the Dow story was the truth! But no – the boiled bone fact is true!
Right about now, you’re wondering why I bring this up and have ruined your jello eating ways. In the past week, the Louis’ have been offered jello – twice. Stop it. Ed does not like jello either. (We might be the only two people in the world who will not eat jello, thank the gods we found each other. I believe it’s one of the pillars of our 23+ years of marriage.) I don’t want to be offered jello ever again. Ed shares this sentiment. We both felt everyone needed this information ASAP because summer is high jello-making season. The temperature rises, the bugs come out and jello is made.
The following are discontinued jello flavors: Celery, Italian salad, Mixed vegetable, Seasoned tomato, Dead weasel. Okay, I made the last one up.
Don’t be fooled by the 1964 jello slogan – “There’s always room for Jell-O” There is never room for jello – anywhere or anytime. Ever.
Speaking of dead weasels, because we were, a man in Hoquiam, WA, carried a dead weasel into an apartment and assaulted a man. The victim asked “Why are you carrying a weasel?” The attacker said, “It’s not a weasel; it’s a marten.” I did not make that up.
Hahahahahhaaaaaaaaaaa! Have a fabulous weekend.
And now for a word from our sponsor…
I’m still shaking my head with a boggled mind
That brilliant, perceptive quote is from one of the eighty gazillion posts out in the Internet universe about the whole Weiner debacle.
The Sisters were discussing men, a frequent subject of our conversation as we are all married to men and some of us even made little men. We love our men, big and small, but sometimes the species as a whole is very stupid.
I won’t say anything new or brilliant in this post that hasn’t already been said by smarter, wittier writers than I am, but still, since the world can’t seem to let this go neither can I.
I honestly don’t know one single woman, not one, who would welcome such a picture. I understand that men in general, I don’t know if crave is the right word but it seems to fit, crave such a picture from a woman. The male fantasy pictures could come from their own women or one they’ve never met – it wouldn’t matter. But if I should open my phone to see a text message with a picture of THAT, I would have a heart attack.
Let this be said as an open letter to men everywhere:
Women don’t want pictures of your junk. Not blurry ones, not close-ups, not video. We don’t. Ever. Do not send one unless the planets have aligned and there is an unlikely solar and lunar eclipse signifying the end of the world because that is the only plausible excuse for why a woman would purposefully request such a picture.
It’s a common joke – how complicated women are. It’s a fact. We know. There is no great, deep secret here. And sex to women is one of the most complicated parts. There are many, many considerations for women on whether or not sex will happen. How fat does she feel that day? Is there water retention? Did she fit into the skinny jeans or the fat jeans that day? Has she spoken with her mother at any point during the day? Does she have on good underwear or was it a wash day and she’s sporting granny panties? Has the man in question done anything particularly “male” that day which should require any level of grudge holding? Are the children SOUNDLY asleep? Is the dog watching? How long is this going to take ’cause there’s stuff to do?
We understand the ying/yang of the male question: Now?
Somehow children are born all the time so clearly sex is happening somewhere. My bet is the man in question wasn’t stupid enough to send the mother a picture of his precious weiner.
Honestly. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Save yourself and don’t read this post
This is what I needed like a broken hand. I’ve got so much writing to do and Ava and Kelli just helped me sort out the last details to finish up Dalton and Olivia’s story and now I find this.
See that bossy penguin? He's trouble.
This is worse than Spider Solitaire.
It’s worse than Bookworm.
It’s worse than Angry Birds.
It’s much worse than any crossword puzzle I’ve ever met.
It makes cute little popping sounds.
I’m doomed.
I think I need to find a place to hide and write with no Internet access.
This is not a Disney tale regardless of the theme song
The following story was related to me by My Honey this evening in a series of quickly whispered sentences and wild-eyed frantic gestures.
When I went out of town a week or so ago, Sassy caught a grasshopper at her grandmother’s and decided to keep it for a pet. She brought it home in a jar and, later, they transferred it into a bug house. It looks a bit like a bird house but the entire top is covered with a fine wire cage so you can see the bug that lives in there.
The bug became known as Hopper and Sassy went out to the yard every morning and selected choice weeds for him to munch. Hopper was a big, BIG grasshopper and I sort of felt bad for him when I passed by his cage and saw him hanging upside down in there all the time.
Well today, My Honey finally convinced Sassy that two weeks was long enough and Hopper deserved to be set free. The Grand Bug Experiment was concluded. I’m sure Daddy really talked it up about how much happier Hopper would
be once he was free to jump about in the world again. He must have done a great job because Sassy agreed. In fact, when she told me about it later, she made the whole thing sound like her idea.
So My Honey and Sassy took the bug cage with Hopper outside to the flower boxes with a great deal of ceremony. The hatch was opened and Sassy tried to coax Hopper outbut, perhaps he thought it was a trick because he didn’t immediately leap for his freedom. A couple of good shakes to the upside down cage and Hopper popped out.
I imagine the grasshopper must have felt a great deal of joy to be out of the cage and gave a boisterous jump.
Don’t you know a giant bird flew down immediately from the telephone wire and snatched him up mid-hop. My Honey stared up into the sky, glanced back at Sassy and thought only one word: F * * K!
“Daddy, did that bird…..” Sassy began, her hand over her eyes to shield it from the sun.
Her father interrupted her before she could get the thought completed. “Nooooo.” He shook his head vigorously. “No, Hopper got away. He’s very happy hopping along out here in the wilderness. Let’s go back inside. Right now.”
Of course, if I was a good mother I’d sing The Circle of Life or some other bullshit but that’s not my immediate
Happy puppies who are just dying to live at my grasshopper-free home
thought. If My Honey would just let us have a puppy, there wouldn’t be any need to subject innocent bugs to interment camps and desperate freedom runs that end in heartbreak for the bug and a gourmet feast for some damn bird who will then immediately take a crap on my windshield.
No puppy = no one happy.
Puppies almost never get carried off by pigeons. It’s a scientific fact.
4 Right Turns
As you all know, Amylynn and I work for a large company. We are beefing up security at our office and the “Protective Services Manager” stopped by to discuss our new security measures and other security tactics with us. This started out funny because none of the new security equipment has been installed but the poor guy had to come out to talk about it anyway. He kept saying things like “If the cameras were installed …” or “If the buzzer was here …” This left him pantomiming in a hilarious fashion.
Anyway, sometimes someone will say something that I can’t forget and I’ll dwell on it for days. During this meeting, the security guy told us that if you ever think you’re being followed – you should make four consecutive right turns. Several people were nodding their heads as if they knew this fact. Based on the group response, he did not need to elaborate. Well, I have never heard that before.
After the meeting, I asked Amylynn if she knew that fact about the four right turns and she did. So I asked her why that works. She asked if I was joking. I assured her, I was not. She told me that after four right hand turns you end up where you started. Only a person following you would make four right hand turns. Not taking any chances – she stared into my eyes to make sure I understood. I did . . . but . . . than I started to think about it, which is never good.
Me – “Why can’t it be four left turns?”
Amylynn – “It can.”
Me – “Than why did he specify four RIGHT turns?”
Amylynn – “I have work to do.”
Which is an outrageous lie, neither one of us has any work to do.
At home later, I ran this by Ed. He did not want to discuss it either. He felt it was knowledge I did not need since I hardly ever drive. He felt it was information that only he and Amy needed because they are my primary mode of transportation. That’s true enough but I was still concerned.
Me – “What happens if they are not hard right turns? What if the road sort of curves to the right? Does that count? Is that number one?”
Ed – “You need Amy, call Amy. Call her now.”
Me – “She doesn’t want to discuss it either.”
Ed – (thinking he’s mumbling) “Smart girl.”
Me – “I heard that!”
So here’s the funny part. I was still thinking about this on Saturday while the Quill Sisters were shopping. A man got angry at Kelli for not walking fast enough and started following us. He was clearly crazy. I’m from jersey so I can deal with crazy – right there in the middle of mall I made four right turns and the crazy man quickly found a bench to sit on and left us alone.
Those four right turns work!!!!!
Is it famous or notorious?
The Quill Sister weekend was a smashing success! We had the best time. There was shopping and talking about writing and reading and shopping and drinking and shopping and a little sleeping and then we did more talking about writing. Oh, and there was giggling. A lot of giggling actually.
We arrived Friday in the early evening. We checked into the hotel and terrorized the front desk. Then we went to dinner and terrorized the waiter at Claim Jumper. That’s where the drinking began with pomegranate sangria – something I recommend for everyone, by the way.
Later that evening, we met Jimmy Thomas, world famous cover model. He
just happens to be the dude on Kelli’s cover. Even as drunk as I was, and I’m mildly embarrassed to say that I was quite drunk, I still took a pretty decent picture of Kelli and him 
on my phone.
Ava went to bed early and Kelli poured me into bed around midnight. I guess. Apparently, I snored and kicked her all night long and Kelli hasn’t let me forget it yet. For the ten thousandth time, “I’m very sorry. Truly. I feel very repentant.” But I still hold that she should have just woken me up instead of suffering silently as she did.
The next morning we headed across the street to the outlet mall and shopped our brains out. I was so excited to get away from the family and spend some quality girl-time I could hardly stand it. It was so nice not to be responsible for anyone but ourselves for two and a half days. We shopped for hours. Seriously, hours, and it was glorious. Nordstroms and Saks 5th Avenue, Kenneth Cole and Wilson’s Leather. We fell madly in love with puppies at a pet store – more on that later – and and tried on countless pairs of shoes. We had so many bags when we left the mall, we were staggering. When I unpacked today I found gifts galore for everyone and bought exactly one
The "after" picture of the car
thing for myself. Typical.
We got back to the hotel and had dinner. We sat at a table hosted by one of my favorite Sci-Fi Romance writers, Gini Koch. After dinner we terrorized a clerk at a CVS where we got the makings for Mud Slides, Mojitos and White Russians. Of course, that made us a big hit at all the author panels we attended for the rest of the evening as Kelli toted around a 55 gallon drum of Mojitos in her purse.
One of my favorite things about meeting many of the authors we did this weekend was that I’d done interviews with them for the Tucson Festival of Books this year, but I hadn’t time to read all of their books by then. There just isn’t enough time in the day to read all I want and write all I want and still go to that stupid 9 to 5 job and speak with my family. The Sisters bought several books of authors that particularly intrigued us that we’ll pass back and forth.
On the ride home, Ava tortured her husband with texts about the puppy “we’d purchased.” We seriously considered getting one and then just passing it back and forth, moving it to the next sister’s house as soon as each husband caught on. We figured we could make that work for quite some time before we were figured out.
Then I almost drove off the road laughing so hard when, as we passed the Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch on the freeway half way home.
Don't I look friendly?
“Let’s steal an ostrich and then pretend like we can’t see it when we get home,” Ava suggested. “Come on, let’s practice our straight faces.”
“What ostrich? You see an ostrich? That’s weird. You know, we did go shopping but we didn’t get an ostrich. Who would do that?”
One thing that still has me pondering….
Everywhere we showed up at the conference, and we always showed up together, people would say, “Oh! The Quill Sisters. I’ve heard about you.”
Weird, right? Should I be alarmed?
Just so you know, it was for red velvet
I read this on MSN this morning and I’m just delighted to see that our good work is finally being recognized.
LONDON (Reuters Life!)- British spies hacked into an al-Qaida website to replace instructions on how to build a bomb with recipes for making cupcakes, newspapers reported on Friday.
The Quill Sisters’ motto,”Everything’s better with cake!” is certainly true in most cases. In fact, I can’t think of anything not made much better with a good bit of moist cake and butter creme frosting. Additionally, we also find that feelings of hate and rage are greatly lessened after double chocolate and raspberry filling. Let that be a lesson to the middle east.
Everybody gather ’round, hold hands and sing along:
Cross your Crossables
Tomorrow afternoon the Sisters are leaving work early and heading off for a girls weekend.
We are so excited we can barely stand it. There has been A LOT of stress in all of our lives lately and, boy, do we need to let loose a bit sans children and housework and men.
My daily calendar had this timely quote:
As children, men were told, ‘Be a man! Don’t cry!’ and women were told, ‘Let it out. Cry, you’ll feel better!’ And that’s why as adults, women become very emotional, and men become snipers.”
Pam Stone
We got the opportunity to attend a reader/writer Romance event super cheap and we jumped at it. Besides the opportunity to talk to other writers, we thought it would be a good idea to relieve some stress so as to not disprove the above quote.
Lately, I’ve been checking out bell towers and I know Kelli was looking into an assault rifle. Ava is more desperate. Her tendencies tend to run in the direction of laying down in traffic. Things have not been peaceful.
Remember the old Seifeld line, “SERENITY NOW!”? That’s become my mantra. It’s best while screaming like George Costanza.
I’m feeling very George and hopefully, this weekend of shopping and reading and writing and drinking and sleeping and eating bad food – not necessarily in that order – will do us three a world of good.
Cross your crossables.