The baby elephant arrived at our zoo! We’ve been waiting with much anticipation. Amylynn has a thing for elephants.

Anyway, she’s here!

I had to stay home with a sick kid today who acted remarkably healthy all day. Just imagine my dubious expression. If I hadn’t been with her during the night when things were bad, I’d have believed she just wanted to play hooky.

Not that I can blame the kid. Not really.

I remember when I was a kid, my mom would wake my brother and I up in the morning and say, “Get dressed. We’re going to the zoo.”

My mom firmly believed in mental health days.

So, I wore my pajamas to drive The Bandit to school (no, I am not ashamed of that) and went back home to Sassy who was still sound asleep in my bed. I turned on Hell Boy because I freaking love that movie, grabbed a cat and forced it to cuddle with me, and went back to sleep.

Sadly, this means I wasted an entire day watching silly movies with the girl and playing video games with my boy when he came home. Sassy and I made duct tape bows for the dogs. I actually made dinner–sour cream and chicken enchiladas–YUM! I read half a book that I’m pretty sure I’ve read before, but I continued on anyway. It’s a pretty good book.

I didn’t get any writing done on my current book, and I got the final edits back on the book releasing in December.

All in all, it was a good day.

What the hell is going on in Alabama? Did you see the picture of the monstrous alligator that was captured there? Gargantuan. Abso-freaking-monstrous.

It weighed 1,011.5 pounds and broke the first scale they tried to put it on. Instead they used a backhoe to weigh it.

We’d like to mention that it was a woman who finally killed it with a shotgun blast to the head.

We’re not sure that we’re happy about the whole story. We’re not sure anything that magnificent, such a perfect example of its species, should be killed for sport–even though it’s not fuzzy. Also, we want it eating us, mind you. For this reason, we’ve cancelled all planned trips to Alabama.

The alligator put up a hell of a fight. At one point it towed the boat with five people in it “at a startling speed” across the creek until the boat hit a stump sending all the people tumbling. Doesn’t that sound exciting?

What some people do for fun. I just don’t get it.

As those of you who read this blog on a regular basis know – we love Red Pandas.  They’re freakin’ adorable and we have risked jail to add one to our family.  We also love cookies.  Drum roll please . . . here’s a red panda eating cookies.  Our day is complete and we hope yours is as well.  All together now – AWWWWWWWWWW!

I’m supposed to be writing on my WIP (that’s work in progress for the uninitiated in the writer’s world acronyms) but I paused for a Pinterest break. That means I was sucked into that vortex for at least an hour before I even realized it.

I’d like to say that it’s important for me to have visuals in my head of my hero and heroine before I get very far. It is important, but no one needs to do that for an hour. Still, God I love Pinterest.

Anyway, I needed to come up with an 1815 American sea-captain that would look just disreputable enough to captivate an English Miss.

I think I did it.

What do you think? Is this Nathaniel Johnson, Captain of Martha’s Patriot?

He cleans up really well, but I kinda like him a bit scruffy and wind-blown.

Go here and see the rest of the board so far.

It’s been a really long week. One of those weeks that goes on for like 6 weeks. Or at least 17 days. Extraordinarily tedious days spreading one to the next. It was very existential. Perhaps part of the problem was that Amylynn finally caved in and read The Fault In Our Stars. That book will kill you unless you’re Ava, then you’re dead inside and all that misery won’t affect you like a human. Also, the puzzle at work is taking forever and we’re tired of looking at all these red and white pieces that don’t fit anywhere. Thank God there were some things that made us laugh and we’re going to share them with you.

1. People with too much money. Some fellow in Braintree, MA owns a Maserati. Well, if that wasn’t annoying enough, we’ll tell you that he had it painted like a cop car. That got him in a wee bit of trouble with the actual police who did not find it funny. Instead of a regular cop car, this one was decked out with Decepticons logos. For example, the door stated, “Decepticons punish and enslave.” Isn’t that nice. He was charged with impersonating a police officer. Or a Transformer. Either way, there are people with way too much money who clearly don’t know how to spend it.

2. Another brilliant mayoral decision. In the wee town of Cormorant, MN the citizens elected Duke the Great Pyrenees to the office of Mayor. He won in a landslide. The election committee didn’t disclose exactly how many of the twelve votes that were cast actually went to Duke the dog, but the majority did. Yes, you read that correctly. Twelve votes were cast. Obviously, this is a major metropolis. Still, let’s be honest. It’s not like our state is known for making wise choices with it’s elections so we shant be casting stones. In fact, the Sisters are thinking of nominating Jojo Kitty for governor.

3. Beau the maimer. In the spirit of full disclosure, we’ll tell you that not only did Amylynn request the specific maiming procedure, but she spent a considerable amount of money being maimed. We told you about the first tattoo on her wrist–the one with the crown and Calm Down. Well, she did another one, too. She had a twenty-seven year old tattoo that was darned near unidentifiable at this point. It took three hours yesterday to cover it up. Beau was the tattooist. He put up with an enormous amount of torture from Ava who terrorized him with comments like, “It better be perfect.” Also, turns out Amylynn did a lot of involuntary flinching. Amy was forced got to listen to hours of conspiracy theories that spanned ebola all the way to alien visitation. Good times.

4. Vegetables aren’t funny. It’s true. Many vegetables have absolutely no sense of humor. Take broccoli for instance. Seriously, take the broccoli. Ick. We read an article that suggested many new marketing ploys for food in the coming years. It was suggested that the farmer people will start taking out ads for broccoli. What could they possibly do to make us eat it? Not even covering it in chocolate would do it. Not even wrapping a $50 bill around a stalk would entice us. Broccoli is icky. You can go ahead Madison Avenue. Take your best shot.

5. Does your dog have green eyes? Researchers say it’s possible dogs get jealous. Well duh.  Of course they do.  The second we pay any attention to the cats, the dogs come right over pushing their noses against our leg with tails wagging.  Interestingly, the cats don’t get jealous.  They just give you the “If you’d rather scratch that drooling monster go ahead, we might be available when you come to your senses” look.

5.

Since we’ve had such a fascination lately with armadillos, I thought you might enjoy this. The True Facts series on YouTube is a scream.

Once I watched this I am 100% certain we will not be getting a screaming armadillo. I have screaming kids at home and I don’t need any more of that nonsense.

The best part is Jerry. Remind me not to have Jerry do research for me on my latest historical.

FINALLY! The present the kids got me that was shipping from England arrived.

Sassy built it and it’s awesome – a personalized iPhone case. She took all the pictures of my kids and fuzzy babies and her father.

I have absolutely no idea why this had to come from  England.

Perhaps that’s where the elves have unionized and their contract requires that they work in Great Britain.

Whatever the reason, YEA!!! I love it.

I’m working with a bunch of historical authors – some HUGE names in the genre – to try to up our cache with the market, rebrand ourselves, etc. We’re in the brainstorming stage right now and during some awesome discussion this video was brought to my attention.

HA!!!

Sooooo, the Sisters had to go to the vehicle inspection station today for emissions testing.  Well, we didn’t need to be tested, but Carly did.  We don’t emit because we’re ladies.  Anyway, you pull up and get in line behind some other cars that we assume were there for the same purpose as us.  We thought everything was going smoothly.  Cars were pulling in and pulling out at a fairly steady clip.  No one seemed upset or unhappy.  When it was our turn, we pulled in.

We were told to get out of the car and to go stand on a large smiley face.  We swear this is true.  Ava and Amy looked down and thought WTF?!  Seriously, why was there a giant grin painted on the floor of an official government facility and why were we being asked to stand on it?!  Ava immediately sent Amy back to the car for her camera phone.  The worker thought we were nuts.  We’re used to that so it doesn’t bother us.

Ava was about to harass the worker about it when she noticed he was wearing a smiley face wrist band.  We swear this is true.  The wrist band had little smiling yellow dots all the way around it.  In fact, all of the workers had them on and all of the other folks were standing on smiley faces on the floor just like the Sisters.

In the end, Ava and Amy decided to ignore this situation.  Nothing good can come from being the only people asking questions about a 70s psychedelic icon when you need to pass to get your vehicle registered.  Go Smiley Face!!!!  We’re growing up!