It happened and I’m ashamed of myself.

The Sisters are trying to get everything done for our trip to San Antonio next week for the Romance Writers of America national convention. We’re running out of time  to get dresses finished and, we’ll admit, we’re in a mild panic. We needed a dress ribbon. Hobby Lobby is near by. We had to set aside our political issues for the sake of time.

We’re not proud.

To make it up to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor we made a big show of discussing our ovaries the entire time we were in there.

This is good advice. Something for us all to work towards on a Tuesday.

We had a huge monsoon storm this evening. There was only a 50% chance of rain which usually means the night will be dry as a bone. 50% chance of rain just gets your hopes up. I try to ignore that kind of forecast. I just watch the clouds and periodically stick my nose outside and smell for rain.

Photo by Dave Barstow

If you live somewhere besides the Southwest desert you might not know what I mean by “smell for rain”. Out here you can smell before it comes. It’s the best smell in the entire world. Seriously. If I could bottle that smell and the feelings it incites, man, I could make a gazillion dollars and make the world a happy place.

We were having a barbecue when the thunder started. Truly righteous thunder and lightning entertained us for about a half an hour and then the sky opened up. It rained so hard for ten minutes you couldn’t see the road. The electricity went on and off. The kids squealed. My heart lightened.

Weather like this makes me so happy. Seriously. Instant good mood.

Until the storm causes a cable and internet outage.

OH THE AGONY.

Ava’s off having all kinds of fun while we toil away at soul-sucking jobs. How is that fair? How? The only bright spot on the horizon is that it’s Friday. We do love a good Friday. Or a bad Friday. Really any Friday. The only benefit we can see about Ava being gone for the week is that we haven’t eaten Chipolte once. Not one single time. We’re fairly certain that by next week Chipolte will have sponsored a milk carton with her face on it. They must be beside themselves with worry. Think of the welcome we’ll get when she drags us back there next week. Maybe we’ll get free guacamole out of it. Here’s some stuff Amylynn laughed about while she was gone.

1. Luxury cars. Rolls-Royce wants us to all calm down and stop worrying about them. They’re doing just fine. Great really. Apparently the sales of the luxury automobile are up. One of these days we’d like to buy a car whose base model starts at $263,000. Our asses would be damn fine resting on that leather seat when we cruise town on National Tiara Day. And it would make going to Chipolte that much better. We’ll have Jeeves park right in front.

2. Tortoises on the lam. The week the police department brought down a couple of runaways. Two desert tortoises escaped their home and the police found them cruising South in the Northbound lanes of a fairly busy street in town. “A slow speed pursuit ensued.” Blahahahahahahaha. We can only assume they were handcuffed and thrown in the back of a squad car and then prosecuted within the limits of the law. That’s the way we treat people moving too slowly on our streets. We don’t care if you’re going the wrong way, just do it quickly.

3. Apparently there is an age limit. This is important information for those of us as we  approach our golden years. We all refuse to grow old, that’s not news to any of us. But we are getting  more fragile as we near that big Five-Oh. Take for example some poor sod in Germany. He’s in his fifties and he went to a Motorhead concert. Afterward, he couldn’t figure out why he had such awful headaches, so he went to the doctor. Turns out all that head-banging caused a brain bleed. As the wife of a heavy metal musician, Amylynn has seen this in person. Usually they just have to wear a neck brace for a week. Why those guys can’t just get botox like all the women? Hell of a lot less intimidating than having a hole drilled in your head.

4. Way better than other airlines on our shit list. There was a run in last year between the Sisters and Delta Airlines and the TSA. It was a huge mess. We swore we’d NEVER EVER fly Delta ever again, and we were serious. That was until they were the cheapest flight to Pennsylvania. Once again, Ava had a horrible flying experience with them. We’ll let her tell you that story. Other people on a Frontier Airlines flight out of

The actual parrots

Wyoming were having an awful flight, too. They sat on the tarmac FOREVER and their pilot felt so bad, he ordered them pizza. All 160 people ate Domino’s pizza while they waited. We’re just sayin’, we bet those passengers don’t have hate in their hearts for Frontier.

5. Squawk Me Elmo. The Customs officer discovered  two parrots tucked inside a stuffed Elmo doll. They seized the birds from the smugglers and sent them to quarantine. The birds, not the smugglers. You know this started our wheels spinning. We just need a bigger stuffed animal than Elmo. Also, it would help if we didn’t start our smuggling operation with an animal that doesn’t scream, “Let me out!” with a parrot accent.

Ava sent me this picture from Pennsylvania with no explanation. Fortunately, I have a good imagination. I still can’t decide what’s going on though. What do you think? Here are some ideas.

Just when you thought we were kidding about all this nonsense with fuzzy animal napping, I bring you more craziness.

The biggest flaw in these plans of ours is that we keep telling you about them. That’s why the FBI is eventually going to haul us away. As it is, there are suspicious black sedans lurking in the Bank of No Forks parking lot and we suspect they’re there for us and not representatives of the Banking Commission. They’re probably closing in on us right now.

Look – they even have a panda on this plane!

Anyway…

A Russian fellow named Roman Valerevich Seleznev was just arrested for hacking into the Phoenix zoo. “What the hell was he trying to do in there?” you ask. Well, nothing good, we assure you. Actually he’s a well known hacker and he was stealing credit card information. We heartily disapprove of that, we assure you, but the hacker part might come in handy.

It occurred to me today as I was reading this article in the daily Picayune, that we might be able to use his skills in other ways.

What if we had him hack into the Phoenix Zoo–or really ANY zoo that has an animal we want, say Denver (clouded leopards), National Zoo (pandas! and fishing cats)–and set them up to FedEx us the baby in question. FedEx is well known as the shipper of choice for zoos and such so we doubt they’d even blink an eye with a new request. They’re just happy to ship away. They have free boxes and everything.

We’d have them send it to the Quill Sisters business address at the UPS store. We’ll let Jason there know to keep and eye out for a box that wiggles. We’re certain he’d babysit for an hour or so until we can get over there. Jason’s a great guy.

We’re preordering the Fuzzy Baby Chow from Amazon.

This cartoon is so unbelievably true. I spend more time than you’d believe trying to decide if what I write is funny. Honestly, it’s so hard when you don’t have an audience to laugh at your punch line.

Did you people know that today is World Chocolate Day? Me neither! How was I not notified of this? HOW?

This seems like something I would have been made aware of.

I feel like my whole day is ruined.

You know what’s worse than not knowing it’s World Chocolate Day?

Not having chocolate to make you feel better about the fact that you’re peeling so badly from your sunburn that you look like a leper.

Seriously, I’m probably going to weigh three pounds less after all this flaking, burnt skin comes off. To make it even worse, I’ve developed a rash on my poor, painful skin.

When all is said and done, I’ll still be as pale as ever.

Here’s a TMI moment for you.

Over the weekend, My Honey and I were in the car when I pulled a long strip of skin off my arm (ewwwwwwwww!) I unrolled the window to toss it outside.

“You’re not going to keep that in a special box? An old skin box?” he asked with a smirk.

“No,” I said in a tone that implied that was absolutely ridiculous. “That’s only for toenails.”

Happy birthday, America! We sincerely hope there will be cake. A nice red velvet with cream cheese frosting and blueberries, perhaps? We trust that we’ll not be disappointed. Ava is off on her vacation this time, leaving Amylynn to pester other people in her stead. The real innocent party in this deal is the World’s Greatest Receptionist because she’s now on week two as a QuillSister substitute. That can’t be easy, but it will be funny. There were funny things this week. Are you ready? Of course you are. Grab a snack and buckle up. Here we go.

1. Political Aspirations. We always considered that the Sisters are not appropriate for political service. Especially Amylynn as she’s not good at hiding her feelings–especially irritated ones over stupid people. Ava is a master manipulator so she’d have some minor success but then things would inevitably go horribly, horribly wrong and there’d be issues. Therefore, we’ve never even considered the idea–until now. Up to this point, none of our plans for getting various desperately desired animals into our possession has come to fruition. We have a new plan.  The U.N. Secretary General and his wife have just adopted a lion named Tumaini. Adopted. A lion. So now we’re looking for political donations. And some people who’ll stand up and say nice things about us. We’re willing to pay handsomely.

2. She doesn’t need more incentive. It seems President Obama likes to get out of the White House to get yummy nibbles. Imagine how excited Ava was to learn that one of his favorite places is Chipolte. Now, imagine Amylynn’s eyeroll. Ava does not need further incentive to force us to eat there. POTUS even eats Burrito Bowls. Sigh. There was a dust up in the aftermath of the Chipolte escapade wherein Obama reached over the sneeze guard to point and ask questions about the ingredients. Everyone at Fox News lost their shit. If Amylynn thought that reaching over the sneeze guard would get her ousted from Chipolte, she’d do it in a heartbeat. Sadly, Amylynn is too short to reach over ANY sneeze guard.  Obama also enjoys the Shake Shack and Starbucks where he got a green tea. Green tea? He escaped the White House and all the reporters for a Starbucks run for green tea? Seriously? Next time, he really should let Amylynn order for him. And there’s no sneeze guard at Starbucks.

3. Snow? What? This actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but we’re still astonished. On a day that it was 98 degrees where we live, it snowed five inches in Montana. We find it really difficult to reconcile this. In the previous two days it had snowed 14 inches, and they were expecting 4-8 inches more. We want to remind you, it was 98 at home and the very next day it rose to 102. By the 19th, we’d already had 19 days over 100 degrees. Montana and Arizona share a time zone, so it’s not like we’re that far apart. This is crazy shit, right? Still, we’d like you to know that it’s still better than the 5,000% humidity we had in Florida.

4. COOKIES! There has been a chain of sandwich shops that we’ve been monitoring for the last couple of months. The sign has been up forever, but there was always the codicil attached saying “Coming soon!” We really weren’t sure what the hell their definition of “soon” was, but we don’t share the same outlook. Eventually, The Potbelly Sandwich Company opened as we went in this week. The sandwiches were just alright–nothing wrong with them, but nothing to get excited about either. But they completely sold us on one specific service. This was how our smoothies and milkshakes arrived. WITH TWO COOKIES CIRCLING

3 little roses on Amylynn’s ring finger

THE STRAW! It’s like they dug into the deepest trenches of our brains and extracted the one thing that would make us the most excited. LONG LIVE THE COOKIE STRAW!

5. Cheapest nail salon on the planet. You know we’re bored at Bank of No Forks. Nine hours a day is a long time to do nothing. We’re always searching for the next way to pass the time. Doing our nails is a fairly extensive past time. We have probably 100 different nail polishes and every gadget you can imagine to make them pretty. But the best thing of all is that the World’s Greatest Receptionist is ever expanding her skills. She has long been the Queen of Polka Dots and now she can paint roses. Gorgeous, adorable, roses of any color. If you’re near us and you have boring nails, you have no one to blame but yourself.