NEW RELEASES
The best thing in the mailbox since Valentines
My of my favorite things is to shop for cards. If I see a rounder of cards in a car wash, I’m all over it. Or in the grocery store. Or, God help me, a Hallmark store. I absolutely love to send funny greeting cards to people for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Tell me, what’s better than going to the mailbox and, mixed in with all those wretched bills there’s a hot pink envelope with a silly card inside. Instantly a better mood, I promise you.
The ShoeboxBlog is a great funny place on the net. Sadly, I’ll often see cards on there that make me snort out loud, but I can’t find them in the store.
Dear people at Shoebox,
I LOVE this card. Please send me twelve of them.
Sincerely your biggest fan,
Amylynn
CLICK CARD FOR A BIGGER IMAGE
Bunnies for everyone. Or trips to the spa. Either way we’re good
HO!!!! Now we need a bunny? A bunny we can give spa baths to.
At first we were concerned that this bunny was in a coma, but no he’s alive – just insanely relaxed.
The answer is not Amazon
A woman had a baby in a Barnes & Noble this past week. She went in there to buy a book. The stupid news article
This is way too boring for this scenario
Damn it, it just kills me when they don’t answer any questions.
Also, what the heck was she doing there anyway? Where were her people? Was this her first kid or her seventh?
Clearly this woman needs assistance.
Yea! There’s a new Bird Box!
I love BirdBoxStudios. Love them.
At least it’s a slow death
Ava and I are putting together a basket for a raffle we’re calling The Quill Sisters Favorite Things. Inside, we have, well, a bunch of our favorite things: Copies of our favorite movies (Action, comedy and classic love story), our favorite books (comedy, historical romance, and best book of all time), there are animals and treats and other stuff we love.
We also figured we better put a Bruce Springsteen CD in there or his feelings might get hurt if he ever finds out he was accidentally forgotten. We’d feel just terrible if that happened. Really. 
The trick was finding a copy. There are no record stores anymore, at least not in our town. Target didn’t carry a copy of either Born to Run (ideal) or Greatest Hits (acceptable). I won’t go into Walmart unless forced. I looked in our everything used store, Bookmans (in two separate locations). Nada.
It was musician husband who clued to me in to the only real music store left in town – Zia.
We pulled up to the store and parked.
“What’s this?” Sassy asked.
“This, my dear, is a record store.” My Honey said the words with awe. “Back in the day, this is the only place your mother and I could buy music.”
“Really.” Both kids sounded leery and confused and sorta unimpressed, but they followed us inside anyway.
“Behold.” He spread his arms wide, encompassing the racks of cds, posters, and other stuff. “THIS is the ’80’s.”
“Hey!” I exclaimed and pointed to one rack. There were actual records in there too. Granted, My Honey and I probably have more in our stash in the office, but this really was a record store with LPs and everything. 10 for $10. Such a steal.
Sassy immediately curled up her nose. “It smells in here.”
I took a deep whiff of patchouli. “Actually, this smells A LOT better than I remember the ’80’s smelling.”
I thought of the old, stolen beer and stale cigarettes and pot smoke and boys and Aqua Net hairspray. I had an extra smell to add to the mix when I was a teenager. Popcorn. I worked in a movie theater all through high school and most of college. Everything I owned – my car, my clothes, my hair – smelled like popcorn. I couldn’t eat it for decades afterwards.
I wound my way over to the rock section, found the “S” rack, and located my Springsteen. I wandered around the store and touched stuff, picked up old albums like friends. Read some liner notes. Thought about where I’d been when I bought Prince’s Purple Rain or Welcome to the Jungle by Guns and Roses. I thought about drinking bottles of Riunite on the roof of my first apartment, which was actually a house, and listened to MTV blaring from below. My friend Jenny and I were the official tenants but about twelve other people had keys, too.
It was a nostalgia overload. Until we were walking out of the store.
“I just don’t get it. Why would you bother to go in there when you can get iTunes from the couch?”
And another part of my youth quietly died.
October 18
We don’t know what’s going on here, but we’re having a hell of a time concentrating on anything. We’ve flit from one thing to another all day. It’s taken hours to write the Five Things and a ridiculous time trying to get our Bank of No Forks work done. We’ve wandered over to the jigsaw puzzle, touched all the pieces, and then wandered away again. We keep opening our writing projects but there has been no new words added there either. We’re fairly certain we haven’t finished a single conversation all day. Before you suggest that 
we’ve had too much caffeine we’ll tell you that we didn’t even finish that today. Hopefully we make it through the funny things…
1. People making stuff up. The Sisters drug themselves over to the neighborhood Chipolte for lunch this week. This sign greeted us at the counter. Go ahead and read it (click for a bigger pic). We’ll wait here and munch on some bacon while we wait. So now we ask you, who the hell is “bacon-averse”? What does that even mean? Amylynn accused the kid behind the counter of making that up. No one is “bacon-averse”. At first we thought we didn’t even want to know anyone who was averse to bacon, assuming that they’d be so philosophically far from our point of view that they wouldn’t be worth knowing. On second thought, wouldn’t that just mean more bacon for us? We’re 
off for BLTs for lunch.
2. Poulet – part deux. We read an article about how many more colors chickens can see than humans. We didn’t learn an actual number but it amounts to a crap-load. They can see totally different rainbows than we can since they can see infrared and scads of other colors. Now don’t you somehow feel cheated on an evolutionary scale? We do, still we’re not keen on laying eggs in exchange for more colors. And we don’t like exercise so we’re not going to start crossing a 
bunch of roads for no damn reason.
3. Naps. A new study about sleep suggests that your brain uses its down time to clean up in there. The scientists described it as a cleaning spree, saying that it “flushes out gunk that builds up while we’re awake.” We resent that we’re always working. Jeez now we can’t even enjoy a nap knowing that our brains are in there Lysoling everything down. It’s ridiculous. The other thing that disturbed us about the article was that it stated, “despite decades of research, scientists can’t agree on the basic purpose of sleep.” Seriously? If we don’t get sleep some of us are excessively cranky. Have they never met a three-year-old? The only thing we learned from this was
Pancake & Sugar Tree
4. Pancake and Sugar Tree. Sounds yummy, right? Totally not. If you put these in your mouth you’re going to be very sorry when you come away with a bunch of pet hair in your pie hole. Pancake is a kitty who just won her mother $10,000 from the Friskies Awards people who award prize money for kitty videos on the internet. Sugar Tree is her Doberman best friend and they both live right near us. We found the video and were not especially impressed, but then we may be jaded because Jojo Kitty is the best kitty EVER. You can go decide for yourself (follow the jump above). Also, we learned that Pancake’s Mom also owns camels, emus, sheep and ostriches. Why the hell do all these people get all these animals and
We don’t think babies should have beards
5. Reasons to celebrate. Today is National No Beard Day. Look if you need a reason to drink – or shave – then here you go. We’d like it noted that we don’t have beards. Never have. Not really looking into acquiring one. Nobody said anything about leg hair, which we have because regardless of what it says on our dashboard thermometer, the calendar says it’s winter. Surprisingly, we don’t have a very strong opinion about beards. Crazy, huh? We have strong opinions about EVERYTHING. Beards are alright by us so long as you don’t have owls living in there. Especially when they’re worn by Robert Downey, Jr.
At some point pets should become a tax write off
So, one of the things that’s changed since Jojo Kitty came home is that he’ll need to be on a prescription diet – probably for the rest of his fuzzy little life.
That’s a bit inconvenient because the food the veterinarian recommends is by prescription only. You know that also means it’s crazy
Jojo Kitty looking quite comfortable – probably because he didn’t have to clean up the puke.
$40 for a seven pound bag.
Pets are expensive, but I’ll pay for it because I’m ridiculously in love with that cat.
I’ll also feed it to our older cat because I can’t figure out a way to feed one cat one type of food and the other cat something else.
What I’d really NOT like to do is feed the dumb ass dogs $40 cat food.
Also, when the dumb ass dogs do steal an entire bowl of $40 cat food I’d really, really like them not to immediately throw it up on the living room rug.
I don’t think I’m asking too much.
Today’s humiliation is brought to you by the number seven
My dad had a stroke several years ago. I mention this so when I tell you this story it will have context and you won’t think my dad is as crazy as I am.
I took him out to lunch on one of my days off this week. Lunch out always runs into a bunch of errands that he needs to run. We went to the library and to get his glasses fixed.
“Stop by the bank,” he said. “I need some cash.”
No problem. I found a bank branch along our errand route and pulled into the parking lot.
“Give me your ATM card and I’ll get it for you.” I extended my hand for the rectangle of plastic. “How much do you want? Twenty dollars?”
“Oh, no. I don’t need that much,” he said.
“Well that’s the smallest denomination the ATM has.” 
“I only want seven dollars.”
SEVEN DOLLARS.
I held back my whimpers as I held the door open for him to shuffle inside.
When I saw the line, the line we were about to get in for seven freakin’ dollars, I said “I’ll give you seven dollars. In fact, I’ll give you ten. Three extra for agreeing to leave.” I knew this wouldn’t work but I gave it a shot because hope springs eternal and all.
I already knew what he was going to say – “I don’t want your seven dollars, I want my seven dollars. I have my own money.”
We waited for over twenty minutes to get two singles and a five-dollar bill.
I’m always afraid when I take him into the bank and take over the transaction for him that the teller will be certain that I’m coercing him into giving me his money. You hear these stories all the time – unscrupulous children and confused parents.
Not this time. When I told her he wanted to withdraw seven dollars her look definitely wasn’t suspicious.
I appreciate her waiting to laugh until we left the window.
It’s raining OUR men
If you wonder what the gentlemen in our books look like…
It’s a good thing the little psychopath is cute and fuzzy
Behold! I have video proof of Jojo downing his toys. Sadly I had to shorten the video in order to email it to myself. In the full length version you would have heard My Honey doing a comedy routine about the School for the Deaf and Blind playing a volleyball game. It’s very sad and very, very funny and completely wrong. Sadly that part was edited out. Still, enjoy Jojo drowning his beloved pink pipecleaner.