NEW RELEASES
March 8
It’s cold and raining again. Just in time for the book festival. Why does the weather have to act like this? Honestly, it’s like it plots against us. You don’t think that’s true do you? The weather isn’t trying to stick it to us personally, right? It’s probably just us being paranoid. If you’re in town, please come down to the book festival. If you’ve ever read anything, you’ll have a good time. Besides, if Amylynn gets anywhere near Larry McMurty she’s going to need all the friends she has to get out of that trouble. You know those book characters you fall in love with, have a twenty year love affair with, who you keep vividly alive in your imagination? That’s how Gus McCrae from Lonesome Dove is for Amylynn. If you hear anything about an incident, we’d
appreciate it if you’d not mention anything about the panda thing to the authorities. Alrighty then, off to the funny things.
1. Ninja thieves. This is a true story. The Roman Catholic church in Pittsburgh lost a massive pipe organ. Someone snuck into a closed church and stole it. Now we’re not talking about a little organ like you see in the mall being played by those guys with really bad toupees. No, this was an enormous 200 pipe organ. You’d think that the matter of stealing such a thing would take a considerable amount of time and possibly a small army of movers. How in the name of Steinway did no one notice this happening? It 
turns out the organist took the instrument from the defunct church for safekeeping and no one is pressing charges. Still, we’d like to know how this event went completely undetected.
2. More thievery. Three people stole an $2.5 million 82-foot yacht in Sausalito, CA. That’s a big yacht. They were caught and had to be rescued when they ran it aground. Originally, we read that it was three women, something we found hard to believe. Usually women don’t do things by the seat of their pants – such as joy riding. Usually there is a plan – like they’re going to fetch something fuzzy. Perhaps they ran it aground because they were too busy trying to locate the glove box for the owner’s manual. There is one sure way to prove that the Sisters 
weren’t involved. When the boat was located, they officials found it stocked with pizza and beer. There was no mention of cake and you can be assured, if the Sisters had anything to do with this, there would have been plenty of cake on board. We do wonder, though, how long it would take to sail to China.
3. The band’s getting back together. Apparently Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher have all signed on to reprise their roles in the next Star Wars movie. We are so excited about this. The Sisters do love
to be clear, ours looked NOTHING like this
us some Star Wars. Also, we firmly believe Han shot first.
4. Paleo bread. We just found Paleo bread – named after the diet. We’re not doing that diet, but one similar and we are so excited over the prospect of “bread” with 1 carb per slice we can hardly stand ourselves. It’s $6.00 per loaf but that doesn’t matter. ***Update*** We got the bread and can we just say, ICK. It was sawdust. So bad that butter wouldn’t even soak in, but sat on the top mocking us. And it wasn’t $6 – it was $10. Can you freaking believe that? $10 for a mouthful of sawdust that
no amount of butter in the world is going to make edible. We’re so sad. This is like the Anti-Favorite Thing.
5. O’Reilly and Stewart. We’ve mentioned our crushes on Jon Stewart before. Frankly, he may be the only crush we have who’s not a certifiable white trash/red neck. We are not fans of O’Reilly but apparently he and Jon are friends outside the television arena. Although, they are such polar opposites we can’t imagine what they talk about over dinner that doesn’t erupt in hair-pulling and food-throwing. We do love that they’re friends. That gives us hope. Jon has most recently suggested that Bill be elected as the next pope since he already thinks himself infallible but it’s doubted Bill would take the demotion.
What cat? We don’t know what you’re talking about.
The Sisters have a tale of woe. Before I get in too deep, I want to tell you that it all ends well, but there was a very dark time when we were quite concerned that the end would be dark indeed.
You all know about Joseph T. Kittywiggles, Esq. He is our office kitty. He lives at my house after My Honey found him in our boat when he was only about 4 1/2 weeks old. He was an orange ball of angry for about two hours and then he decided he loved me as much as I loved him and he was ruined as a vicious stray ever since. He’s been coming to work with me at Bank of No Forks everyday since. The Aunties in the office adore him. He’s often the only thing that keeps us sane. What we do for the bank is very stressful and everything they say about having a pet in the workplace is true. After a particularly bad customer conversation, there is nothing better than rubbing a kitty belly. Honest to Zeus.
So when when all the tenants got a letter from the property management forbidding pets in the building, we were crushed. C.R.U.S.H.E.D.
The man who runs our building stopped by the first Joe-Free day to make sure we weren’t angry. That’s when we got the whole story. No one was really concerned with our little cat, but there had been issues because the people in the office next door had been bringing in their dog – a German Shepard named Duchess. She’s a very sweet dog and I would often stop in and give her a snuggle, but they were really pushing the envelope with a big dog in there. When the Management told them they couldn’t have the dog, the bastards narked us out. They literally pointed at our office and said, “They have a cat!” so it had to be acknowledged.
Who does that? People who want to get their ass kicked in the parking lot, that’s who.
Ava asked the landlord if we had a letter from the ADA could we keep the cat? Ava pointed to me in my office and whispered that I was very unstable and needed the cat for psychological reasons. He said if we had a letter he’d be happy to present that to the owners and see what happened. I was instructed to twitch if I saw him in the lobby. I don’t know why I always have to act like the crazy one.
Immediately, Ava got on the internet to find out what the rules are for the American Disabilities Act and service/support animals. We decided that was our solution. We needed to get Joe designated as a service animal. And we needed a prescription for him.
This seemed super easy at the onset. We got the verbiage needed for the letter and we set out to find ourselves a doctor.
Easier said then done. My doctor rolled her eyes at me. Ava’s doctor accused her of using him for Retin A and bullshit and declined to acquiesce. We started to fret. I called my mom to see if any of her docs would do it and she said, “Amy, most people don’t get to take their cat to work.” You understand that I don’t care about those people and their lack of cat. I’m only worried about mine. So she was out. All of the security guards scoffed at our troubles and assured us they could take care of it. NOPE. None of their leads panned out either.
We couldn’t understand it. For crying out loud we weren’t asking for a prescription for morphine. All we wanted was a freaking CAT.
My Honey suggested we find a Pot Doctor and as him to substitute “cat” for “pot”. Brilliant. Our state just voted in medical marijuana so this should be a breeze. Nope. I couldn’t find a pot doctor at all.
One guard spent a tour in Iraq and was fairly certain he could get a PTSD letter from the VA, but we still haven’t seen it.
Leslie – a poor substitue
It had been a month with no cat and we were beginning to despair. Sassy sent me to work with a funky unicorn as a substitute. We named it Leslie and tried petting it like we did Joe, but it didn’t purr and we realized that this was proof that we really and truly are insane.
We found a place on line we could pay $150.00 for a letter and we were afraid that was what we were going to have to do.
Then, completely out of the blue, my mom says, “I can write that letter from you.” She’s a certified counselor and she has like fifteen letters after the R.N. in her name. I have no idea why she waited a month. Torture? Possibly. She did write a hell of a letter – sounded completely official. Technically it was official since she wrote it in an official capacity.
We held our breath and gave it to the manager. It took them a week to decide, but we finally got our cat back. We have to be discreet – which isn’t a problem since we’re no longer speaking with our neighbors.
THE CAT IS BACK!
A day to reflect for a moment in silence
This is very, very important… Seriously.
Thank you, Debby!
Another blog tour stop
This time the lovely Sallie Lundy-Frommer is hosting me on her site. She came up with a fun series of questions for me. Head over there and find what was my favorite part of Lady Belling’s Secret.
For this kind of money the 3D should happen in your lap
I took my family to the movies this weekend. We saw Jack the Giant Slayer. It almost killed me.
How you ask? When did going to the movie become so dire? The whole affair started out innocuously enough. I loaded Sassy and The Bandit into the car with My Honey and my father. My dad and husband were chatting in line and my kids were either fighting or horsing around – who can tell anymore. It changes at the drop of a hat anyway. Once minute happiness knows no end, then BOOM, someone’s crying and the other is tattling.
I approached the box office and requested two adult tickets, one senior and two children. That’s when the horror happened.
“That’ll be $61.00,” the pimple-faced extorntionist told me.
“What!?” I exclaimed. I don’t know that insanity had me in my grip, but I swear I was anticipating a grand total of $29.00. It’s not like I’d already added the total up in my head or anything. Maybe I thought this was 1982, but that $61.00 absolutely caught me off guard.
Then the concessions were another $26.00.
Holy mother of Odin. It’s not like I’ve been living in a cave, but when the hell did this happen?
My feet are always cold, too.
March 1
Oh dear Heaven, it’s Friday and we owe you Five Favorite Things. This week crept up on us for sure. Maybe it’s because we’re so sidetracked with the book coming out, being obsessed over Amazon rankings, the signing at the country club tomorrow, and the Tucson Festival of Books coming up next weekend. Then there was the ring debacle and the even bigger nightmare of getting the contest widget to work right. Amylynn really needs a nap – she’s been a little extra cranky this week. Ava’s no help at all since she just likes to poke the bear with a stick when Amylynn’s like that. Still, we have made it to Friday and that’s a beautiful
Don’t be confused. This is the OLD Titanic
thing. These things amused us during the lulls in Amylynn’s breakdowns this week. We hope you agree.
1. Titanic. Some crazy Australian billionaire is building an exact replica of the original Titanic. Why do so many crazy people come from Australia? Not bad crazy. The Super entertaining brand of crazy. We don’t know either, but it sure seems they breed them over there. It’s never been on our list of places we really need to visit primarily because that flight is like 75 hours long and Ava can’t hold her breath on germy airplanes for that long. Still, we’d probably really like it because we wouldn’t feel quite so crazy over there. These might be our people. Anyway, back to the boat. He’s building it in China. Uh huh. China. What could possibly go wrong with this plan? He was brilliant enough to point out that with the handy development of global warming there aren’t as many icebergs in the North Atlantic to cause trouble. Still,
Loud, pesky alien
we think we might like to go. He wants people to wear period costumes, so that sounds fun. No word if he’s making the cast of the movie take a cruise but if he is we’re definitely in. We have some stuff to chat up Leo about. Don’t forget to pack the shark repellent.
2. Loud noises. There was a sonic boom over town this week. The air force base declared it wasn’t them. Uh huh. Obviously it was space aliens returning that Mars robot. Anyway, the funny part comes in with the comments on the website of the local newspaper about possible explanations. One person suggested, “it’s the Republican party self-destructing” or “It was thousands of potholes enlarging simultaneously”. Also, “It was just China running some tests.” 
Our favorite: “The Legislature passed another flaky bill and the State moved severely to the Right???” There are funny people out there.
3. HUGE feet. We loved this picture because of the sheer size of this foot. The polar bear in question, Boris, lives in Tacoma, Washington. He needed a little eye work done and a root 
canal. That seems reasonable since he’s 27 years old. While he was under, they did a mani/pedi. Will you look at the honking foot this guy has? Imagine yourself coming across a bear big enough to belong to that foot out in the wild. Mercy. Still, we’d give him a quick snuggle while he was under. Maybe kiss his belly. How many opportunities do you get to kiss a polar bear belly?
4. Best fashion accessory. Quvenzhane Walllis, the little girl nominated for best actress for her role in Beasts of the Southern Wild, carried a variety of stuffed puppy purses during the Red Carpet season. She looked super cute at the Oscars. Why did she pick that particular dress, you ask? Because it was sparkly and fluffy. Finally, someone who knows how to navigate the red carpet without looking like a dolt.
5.The red shoes. Somehow we didn’t know that apparently all popes wear red shoes, but we guess they do. We love red shoes. A lot. When we looked it up Wikipedia stated, “The Papal shoes are the red leather outdoor shoes worn by the Pope. They should not be confused with the indoor papal slippers or
why wouldn’t you want to wear these?
the Episcopal sandals, which are the liturgical footwear proper to all Latin Rite bishops.” Doesn’t this sound awfully complicated? The Sisters have a hard enough time keeping sling-backs and peep-toed shoes apart without getting religion into it. There is a lot to learn about Papal footwear – you simply wouldn’t believe it. Paul VI abolished buckles from all ecclesiastical shoes. We don’t care so much about that, necessarily, but we don’t like his stance on use of the indoor velvet papal slippers which he also discontinued.We may have to rethink this whole running-for-Pope thing if there are this many footwear decisions to be made. By the way, do you think we could get a pair of those velvet Papal slippers in the Vatican gift shop.
We’re giving away Francesca’s engagement ring!
The winner of Francesca’s ring is Michelle A.!!!!
Congrats Michelle. Wear it well!
Where you can find me in the next couple weeks
I have so much happening in March.
This Saturday, March 2, my friend Sabrina Devonshire and I will be at the El Conquistador Country Club to sign books from 9-12. I’m dragging Ava there, too. We only travel as a set. We’re a very small gang.
On Saturday March 9 I’ll be signing at the Tucson Festival of Books Booth #179 right outside the Student Union and the UofA Bookstore tent. You can’t miss it. There’ll be plenty of books by lots of great writers – local and otherwise. If you’ve not been to the Festival you really should. It’s an amazing spectacle.
Also at the Festival on Saturday from 4-5 I’ll be conducting a workshop with Jennifer Greene and Jesse Petersen on Comedy in Romance. Jesse is a hoot and you should check out her Zombie series – they’re hysterical. FYI – she’s also the same writer who wrote the blurb on the cover of my print copy. I happen to love both her Regency romances as Jess Michaels and Jenna Petersen and the Zombie stuff as Jesse Peterson.