We’re having winter here this week. There was actual fog this morning – something we get as rarely as snow. Any variation in the weather makes the natives of our city a little bonkers, in a good way. It’s like we all of a sudden revert to seven-years-old and we can’t concentrate on anything. Instead of working, we stare out the window and watch the rain/snow/fog as if mesmerized. This was definitely one of those weeks. When we’re made the Empresses of the World one of our first acts will be to make days like this a holiday with a mandatory dress code of pajamas and slippers. Until then, we’ll keep you entertained with some funny stuff. Five things as a matter of fact.
1. ChickenBeat. The Sisters keep tossing around getting chickens. We’re not sure why this has never actually happened, except that the idea of owning chickens is probably a lot more romantic than actually owning them. Neither one of us is especially fond of poop and we understand that chickens do a lot of that. Also, we have to yell at our kids plenty about feeding the dogs and cats. Nobody has the time to add yelling at them about chickens, too. But still, periodically we find ourselves imagining wearing some cute bedazzled overalls and feeding our sleek and stylish black chickens in their little chicken condo. Ava found this which has renewed our fantasies. Remember TigerBeat magazine when you were a preteen? Glossy photos of John Travolta and Rick Springfield for 13-year-olds to ogle. That’s basically what this is. A fan mag for chickens. Ava would have bought it too, but the damn thing was $9.99 with is patently absurd. Still, now we’re left wondering if there was a fold-out chicken centerfold.

2. Home, home on the Enterprise. William Shatner has just signed a deal with a country music label. We’re not making that up. Did you know that he has released 8 albums already? It’s true. We don’t any of them. Our first instinct is to make fun – all the ingredients are there to craft some truly exquisite comedy, but then we thought, hey. The dude is 86-years-old. If someone gave us the opportunity to do half of the bullshit we want to try, we’d go for it. Still not buying that album though.

3. More horrifying vanity projects. Here’s something else we bet you

Gratuitous Tom Hardy picture

didn’t know. Tom Hardy was signed to a music label and had a rap album in 1999. We’ll bet you wish you didn’t know that now, huh? We sure do. Our fantasies involving scantily-clad Tom, buttercream frosting, and puppies keep getting interrupted by some dopey kid in too-low-slung jeans rapping about drugs and bitches.  We have no evidence to support that his rap songs go like that, but that’s only because we can’t bring ourselves to listen to them. They’re right there available on Youtube if you search for them. We did try, but we were too embarrassed to let it play longer than three seconds. Long term, this information does not dull our ardor for Mr. Hardy. We’re just going to squint in our fantasies until this passes.

4. Speaking of crushes. Ava’s heart throb seems to be leading the fashion charge of men in high heels. The very pretty Jared Leto was photographed wearing some Helmut Lang boots on the red carpet a couple of weeks ago. Amylynn was unable to find out exactly how high the heel was, but they seem to be somewhere in the 2’ to 3” range. That’s good because, even has beautiful as that man is, he’s a bit short. He’s 5’9” – which the Sisters have determined is the magic height for much of Hollywood men. Seriously – look it up. Even the afore-mentioned Mr. Hardy is 5’9”. They’re also both musicians if defined loosely. Anyway, a few inches never hurt. They were nice boots. Also we discovered that Amylynn is neither mature enough nor sophisticated enough not to cackle when cruising the sites

Here’s Eric looking entirely sensible

of men’s runway fashion shoots. Some of that stuff is ridiculous

5. Deep Dark Secrets. Here’s something you don’t know about Ava – she’ll watch any documentary about a music star that comes on her television. The odd part is she’ll truly watch any and all of them. She does not have to like the person/band it’s about. She’ll stay up late to do it. Go ahead, ask her about Rush.  She doesn’t like Rush (at all) but has seen two documentaries about them. Just this last week she watched Eric Clapton’s documentary and was totally disgusted by what a whiner he used to be, even though he’s one of the greatest guitarist of all time. His deep dark secret was that his sister was really his mother and it messed him up. In light of this, we guess Ava’s secret isn’t so bad.

Amylynn has the day off for Veteran’s Day. Ava does not. This provides Ava no amount of hurt feelings and Amy immeasurable glee. Not that Amy is rubbing it in. She is not. Sorta. However, instead of being at work, Amy is still in her pajamas with a cat on her legs while Ava is dealing with crazy people. On the other hand, Amy’s entire family is home for the holiday and that means that The Bandit is also sharing the living room, still clad only in underwear, giving a loud play by play of whatever inane video game he’s playing. So everything isn’t peaceful and light. Still, better than being at work any day. If you’re toiling away then enjoy these Five things. We did.

1. Neighbors, seriously. By now you’ve all heard the story of how Rand Paul was attacked by his next door neighbor. It’s been reported that the cause was not political and likely personal. Sources are stating it was over yard maintenance. Leaves and lawn clippings, specifically. So we’re going to lay this out for you, as we suspect it happened. They’ve lived next to each other for fourteen years. Rand was mowing his lawn – apparently something he enjoys. Right there, that makes him suspect, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. The neighbor observes him and the decade old grudge over property lines and just exactly whose tree those leaves fell from and whose grass has encroached on whose yard balloons in his chest. He can take it no more. He charges across the lawn like a bull elephant and tackles the unsuspecting mower. You know their wives are seriously eyerolling right now. Imagine if there’s been an incessantly barking dog.

2. Twas the month before Christmas… The Neiman Marcus Christmas catalogue came out and we rushed right over to find out what we are getting for Christmas this year. We love the fantasy gifts. This year Ava is looking forward to touring an emerald mine in Zambia with a master jeweler and a one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry with a 7.2 carat emerald. You’d think Amylynn would go for the duo of Rolls Royces, but this year she’s kinda intrigued by the bespoke handbags by Olivia Le-Tan. Don’t get us wrong, she’ll take the cars, she’s especially enthralled by the blue one (it’s her favorite color this week). But you know the Sister’s love purses. And they have good senses of humor. The best senses of humor. Nobody has a better sense of humor. And with none of those presents do you need to know our sizes. Perfect.

3. Speaking of Christmas. All of the Christmas decorations are up in the stores. The Halloween stuff was whisked away at midnight on Nov 1st and the holiday crap appeared in its place like the displays grew from magic beans. We saw one particularly terrifying dancing and singing life-sized Santa at Home Depot that will provide some poor child a lifetime of therapy. Ava was in HomeGoods this week and found this enormous decoration. This one we liked. We hope you can discern the size of this thing by the surrounding objects. It’s GIANT. It was $399 so neither of the sisters will be acquiring it anytime soon. No one needs a $399 Christmas ball but Ava is kinda desperate to possess it. Besides, the cats would just break it.

4. Flowers from your boss. Sometimes, when you least expect it, happiness comes from an unexpected source. Take this amazing bouquet of yellow roses, for instance. They were sent to Ava for the wonderful job she is doing in her new-ish position. Nice to be appreciated!

5. They really should earn their keep. We wanted to tell you the story about an 83-year-old woman in Ohio who trained her 65 cats to steal jewelry from her neighbors. In the story we later learned was a hoax, her cats had managed to steal $650,000 worth of baubles from the neighbors. We really wanted this to be true. It made us think for a moment that our cats had real possibilities. Sadly, according to Snopes, it was all fabricated. But the Snopes article was almost as amusing. The hoax news story reportedly used the mug shot from a different story — a 92-year-old Floridian woman who shot at her neighbor for refusing to kiss her. Apparently he never could figure out why she was so attracted to him. So, our cats are still hopeless freeloaders with no plan to make themselves useful.

We made it to Friday. If we believed in such things, we’re certain it’s a damn miracle. Not only did our President NOT blow us up this week, we didn’t get hit by a bus, contract a deadly virus, or get mauled by bears. That last thing is probably because we’re not willing to go outside and that’s generally where the bears are located. Nevertheless, if a roaming pack of bears wandered past the car wash while either of us were there, we most certainly would have met our death by mauling. It was a bad week. All the planets were badly aligned or something. We have put in a formal request for next week to be a major improvement on this one.  These Things amused us amid our despair. Hopefully they’ll do the same for you.

1. Who knew Canadians were so boisterous. So a dude in Montreal got a ticket for $149 for being too loud in public. Don’t you know he’s fighting it. Won’t pay it, he says. No way was he as loud as the authorities and complaining citizens claim he was being. That’s what the ticket was for, by the way: “Screaming in Public.” Seems Mr. Moalla was sitting in his car with the windows “mostly rolled up” when C+C Music Factory’s song “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” came on the radio. Mr. Moalla sang along, you know, as a fan is wont to do. We all know we’ve rolled up to a traffic light next to some fool in a car with the radio up so loud that your own car vibrates from

Billy Joel and Baby Remy Anne
Credit: Myrna Suarez

the bass they’re belting out. Imagine how loud Mr. Moalla must have been for a cop to pull him over. It’s a good song, we’ll admit, but not that good. It’s not like it was “I Will Survive” or, Ava’s personal favorite, “Dancing Queen.”

2. What’s Billy Thinking? The news came out this week that Billy Joel just had another child. The man is 68-years-old. I guess it’s different when you’re rich and you have a kid at that ridiculous age. All we can think about is not sleeping for six months and dirty diapers. We were never so happy as when we finally got to leave the damn diaper bag at home. Perhaps when you’re an uber-rich celebrity you hire people for that nonsense. Still – when she goes off for college, he’ll probably be back in diapers himself. We wonder if that thought wakes him up at night in a cold sweat. Well, while he’s up he might as well fix a bottle and change some poopy pants. Also, he named this child Remy Anne – which is totally, totally wrong. The Brights had that name all sewn up 17 years ago.

3. Who is the patron saint of candidates? We looked it up. It’s Saint Thomas Moore. We’re lighting a bonfire to the man, the myth, the legend. Surely he has something to do with the fact that Kid Rock decided not to run for public office. Yes, apparently that was an actual thing. US Senate. From Michigan. Some of our family is from Michigan and, if that horror show happened, we were blaming them for it. Clasp

How we imagine Brenda, Joe’s new girlfriend.

your hands together whether your Catholic or not and thank St Thomas Moore for intervening. We don’t need to add greasy hair to what is already happening over there.

4. Does Target sell crumpets? What exactly is a crumpet? Well, now when we wonder these things we have someone to go to. Her name is Denise and Amylynn met her when she went to pick up kitty food. “Oooh!” she said when the conveyor belt brought the cans toward her. “You have a kitty?” Her accent sounded brilliant amidst all the boring American tones. “Yes,” I admitted, thrilled for any opportunity to talk about my perfect felines. “And if you’re not careful I’ll show you pictures of them.” Denise seemed genuinely interested so I showed her pictures readily available on my phone of Quentin and Joe. She gushed. Of course she did; they’re gorgeous. “You have a gingey!” she squealed referring to the perfectly handsome Jojo Kitty. “I have a ginger, too.” Turns out hers is a girl named Brenda. Originally

Zelda Zeta Fitzgerald

the cat’s name was Beatrice, but that’s a very lady-like name and the kitty got fat. “I thought Brenda was a more fitting name.” We found our English soul mate.

5. Share the hedge. Well, it’s happened.  The Sisters have been whining for a tiny hedgehog for so long now they were convinced no one listens to them.  Not so!  The Sisters have an amazing friend who gave Ava an early birthday.  Needless to say, she was in shock! Check back here during the week for a complete blog on the new baby. For now, here’s a sneak peek of Zelda.  (No, Billy Joel, that’s not an invitation for you to have another baby and steal another one of our family member’s names.)

Here we are again. The end of another week. What have we accomplished? Not a whole hell of a lot. How about you? This isn’t how you thought it was all going to turn out, is it? Us either. No one ever said anything about this constant working and bill paying and fighting with your kids. Gah! We should have paid more attention to our parents when they were going through this. In case any of your cares, we think it’s bullshit. We would start a revolution but that seems like a lot of work. And that, right there, should explain the problem. Never mind. Carry on.

1. This could happen. Amylynn was cackling away while reading the newspaper the other day. It seems that a dude set his manufactured home on fire because he was trying to burn spiders and spider webs with a blow torch. Amylynn couldn’t believe what an idiot this fellow was. Her Honey looked at her strangely. “You’d do that,” he said, “probably without even thinking about it.” It’s probably true. Amylynn’s aversion to spiders is well documented on this site. But still, a blow torch? Maybe he meant to burn the place down, she suggested. But it turns out his mom was inside. She lived, so don’t panic, but we’d like to think he wasn’t sending her to hell with the spiders. Amylynn would like it noted that she doesn’t even own a blow torch.

2. Doing it right. Halloween is just around the corner. You wouldn’t know that at our house. It’s supposed to be in the high-nineties next week. The only way we know it’s almost Halloween is that the Christmas decorations are starting to go up at the mall. Blahahahaha. We exaggerate. The only way we know it’s Halloween is because there’s pumpkin-spice crap at the Starbucks. The people in Parma, Ohio are way luckier in that they have a dude who made a two-story At-At in his front yard as a decoration. It’s amazing. The crazy thing is that he’s not even a Star Wars fanatic. He just thought it would be cool. And it is. We’d totally wear our General Organa costumes over there and hang out.

3. We have enough crazies, thank you. The best stories come out of Florida. Take this one for example. There’s a woman running for Congress who stands by her story that she was abducted by aliens when she was seven, “but that should detract from what she’s done here on Earth since then.”  The whole thing has an Alice in Wonderland aspect to it, doesn’t it? So what has she done on Earth, you ask? She’s a leadership teacher at Miami Dade College and runs a consulting firm. We don’t know what they consult on, but it certainly sparks our curiosity. Tin foil hats perhaps? Sure, she may be nuts, and her primary claim to fame is that she’s ridden in an alien space ship, but she’s held a job so elect her to Congress. Everyone calm down; it’s just alternate facts. Gadzooks, we’re spiraling, people.

4. The color orange. Some folks don’t think the Home Depot is the place to get parts to your Halloween costume.  Those people would be the employees. Ava took the boy who used to live at her house but now lives on a college campus there to help find wire for her Halloween costume. Turns out they had just what she needed but it needed to be cut with bolt cutters. If you’ve ever been in a HD, you know they have tools around the store you can use. Or, if they don’t want you to use them, they shouldn’t leave them out. Ava talked the boy into helping her cut the wire. After he was holding the bolt cutters she said “If any employees see us, drop the cutters and wire and make a run for it.” That kid has no sense of humor because he put the tool down and went and got an employee to ask permission to use them. After much explaining and divulging the fact the boy was an engineering major, permission was granted. Ava sternly told the employee the HD logo color was ORANGE just like Halloween for goodness sake and they should be more accommodating to Halloween costume builders, shouldn’t they? Ava informed the boy the whole event would have been more fun with Amy.  Together, they would have never asked for permission and nothing would be funnier than two chubby women making a run for it from a Home Depot with wire and a bolt cutter on the evening news.

5. We’re starting a Go Fund Me for bail. The news just came out. One of our life long dreams is about to come true. Our prayers to all the gods have finally been answered. They’re opening a Red Panda exhibit at our local zoo. There’s going to be two of them – the perfect number. They’re not staying permanently (booo!). They’re just here as a layover until their Utah habitat is completed. But we’ll get them for a while so we’ll have to act fast. A couple of facts you may not know but are integral to our happiness. Red Pandas only weigh 7 – 13 pounds. Jojo Kitty is twice that. Hell, Quentin is already over that and he’s just barely a year old. Also, their diet consists mainly of bamboo. You’ll find recipes for bamboo cake in our search history. We predict that Coach will be having a sale on their tote bags for Christmas.

Today is Friday the 13th. This does not disturb us. We are not superstitious. Black cats? Yes, please. We’re not walking under any ladders because we don’t have anything to do with ladders, no matter what day it is. We’re even happy to have 13 people to dinner, so long as there’s dessert. We just don’t believe in bad luck. Although, maybe we should reconsider this. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could just wave some sage around, chant a few words, and good stuff would happen? If that worked, the first thing we’d do is chant for some lottery winnings. Every day spent in our day-jobs makes us pine more desperately for our book store. These five things made it better for us this week. Hopefully they work for you, too.

1. Go, go Godzilla. We’re huge fans of John OIiver’s Last Week Tonight. Sunday he was discussing the latest social issue in America regarding the removal of Confederate statues. He suggested that maybe we should get some statues of Godzilla to replace them. We were immediately intrigued. We think that would be awesome. There are simply not enough statues of nuclear-born monsters in this world. Wouldn’t that be fabulous? We love Godzilla and we think someone should start a Go Fund Me account. We’d totally contribute. We should put on the South Lawn of the White House. Have it look directly in the windows.

2. Russell Brand. Turns out Russell is hot. We know what you’re thinking. He’s not hot; he’s annoying. That’s what we always assumed, anyway. Amylynn was completely ready to be royally irritated. It doesn’t take much to irk her anyway. Ava knows this and purposely engages people that she knows will rankle Amylynn. She’s a sadist. Anyway, Russell was on Bill Maher last week and he was a revelation. Besides the fact that he’s got crazy/beautiful hair that would qualify him to appear on Versailles, he’s smart. Really smart. He goes a million miles an hour which would be totally exhausting to hang around with, but he’s also shockingly intelligent. Bill offhandedly asked him to define gerrymandering and much to everyone’s surprise, Russell gave a text-book definition right off the cuff. That qualifies him as Sister Crush-Worthy. We totally get it Katy Perry.

3. We need a puppy! Somehow we’re living our lives wrong. We tell everyone we meet that we want a puppy. That has done us absolutely no good whatsoever. Vladimir Putin on the other hand is gifted a damn puppy every time he turns around. Just this week he got his third gift of a puppy. This time a Central Asian shepherd from Turkmenistan. He’s already received two other puppies – a Bulgarian Shepherd from, you guessed it, Bulgaria and an Akita from Japan. All of this because he’s mentioned that he likes dogs. We’re not kidding when we tell you everyone we know is aware that we need a puppy and we get NOTHING. And the real kick in the ass here? He gave them stupid names. Verny, Buffy and Yume. He’s a moron. So unfair.

4. None of them are ever fat. The North American Wife Carrying Championships were held recently in Maine and the winners this year are Jake and Kirsten Barney from Virginia. In case you’re unaware, this is a race wherein the husband totes the wife through an obstacle course. If you think that sounds absurd, then you should be made aware that the Barney’s won fives-times Kirsten’s weight – $630 – and 12 cases of beer.

We’re nearly desperate for this one.

So there’s that. We remember a time when we were 126 pounds. We did not allow ourselves to be carried for beer. Now if there’d been a puppy in the offing…

5. Steph Laberis, again. Remember a while ago when Amylynn bragged about the charming kitty print she’d bought from this artist the Sisters loved? We’d been searching and searching for where to buy more of her work and we hadn’t been successful. And then there was a horrible fire that ravaged California and Steph Laberis posted on Facebook how she was selling signed prints and all of the money was going to a relief fund. With a squeal that could probably be heard all the way to California, Amylynn popped over to her site and there were several of the prints we’ve been dying for. We bought  them all. ALL. We’re good humans for contributing to the cause and we got the prints we wanted. Honestly, it’s like Christmas. We even got some prints for people for Christmas. Maybe we’re living right after all. It’d be better with a puppy.

Well, didn’t this week seriously, seriously suck. We were completely stunned by Vegas – kinda numb which is a truly awful thing to admit, but lately it just seems like there have been so many of these tragedies. And then Tom Petty died and, well, shit. Everyone go fetch a puppy or a kitten and come with us. We’re going to hole up in a big comfortable bed, watch reruns of anything we can find on television, and eat terribly unhealthy food. After all the abuse the universe has heaped on us for the last month or so, we all deserve to feel sorry for ourselves for a bit. Come on. We just changed the sheets. Otherwise, here’s some things to get you through. You’ll understand how we only came up with 4.

1. He’s probably got excellent vision. You’re never going to believe any part of this story. The whole this is so very, very odd. Come along with us on a magical ride. There are people in this world who are able to grow things – you know, plants and vegetables. The only thing the Sisters can grow are pets and children. But there is a dude, nay a wizard, in Minnesota who calls himself Chris Qualley.  Chris grows carrots. Extraordinary carrots. This latest one is in the Guinness Book of World Records as coming in at 22.4 pounds. Amylynn would like it noted that the carrot is in fact bigger than her cat, but just barely. If you want to learn more you can go to the Carrot Museum on line and be educated. Seriously. There’s a carrot museum. The Sisters couldn’t care less about the hows and whys of this horticulture snoozefest. Hey Chris – as soon as you turn it into a carrot cake you be sure to let us know. We care about carrot cake a whole lot.

2. Let us know when you make a Kraken. We’ve mentioned before how much we love jewelry. Heck – we’ve even admitted that if there’s a zombie apocalypse the first place we’re going is Tiffany’s flagship in NYC. There’s no reason you can’t wear diamonds while macheteing the walking dead. We also love glossy magazines because, among other fabulous things, they’re often filled with spectacular jewelry ads. Ads where the jewelry is so freaking expensive that they won’t even list the value – “price available upon request” they say. That’s hoity-toity for “you can’t afford it”. Ava found this in the latest issue of Elle Décor. This beauteous item is by Van Cleef and Arpels. There is a whole glittery collection inspired by Noah’s Ark. We’re not sure about that title since, as far as we’re aware, no unicorns, Pegasus, or phoenixes made it on the Ark. Maybe they should make a Loch Ness

Alexander Vlahos (Monsieur), George Blagden (Louis XIV)

Monster or a Big Foot and call it the Mythical Ark. We should get a discount for all of these good ideas. Call us.

3. Oh the hair… We discussed this one before in the Five Favorite Things, but it’s back and worth another mention. If you’re not watching the Ovation series Versailles you’re doing yourself a serious disservice. This show is unbelievable. It’s all about Louis XIV, the Sun King, who built the palace Versailles. Well of course HE didn’t build it but we’re not in the mood to argue semantics. The show is actually filmed at the palace so all the gorgeous sets are real. The costumes make a person want to weep they’re so lovely and expensive. The acting is phenomenal and the story incredibly gripping all the more so because this shit actually happened. Several times in season one we had to look stuff up because it seemed too fantastic to be true. Season two just started. Go watch season one – there aren’t that many episodes so you can get caught up quickly. You’ll be thankful you did. Also, we want you to know the actors playing the royal brothers are scrumptious.

4. Free advertising. The Bright children demanded new water bottles. We live in the desert and water bottles are a very serious matter. V.e.r.y. s.e.r.i.o.u.s. It’s practically a state law here – you can’t leave your house without water. Ava always forgets. Ava is lucky to leave the house everyday with the essentials ie; herself and her purse. Anyway, the new water bottles are called Hydro Flasks. They keep ice and water cold for up to 72 hours. And by goodness, they really do. You don’t truly know joy until you take a sip of icy cold water on a 110 degree day. You know how you buy stuff all the time and the product never quite lives up to the advertising? Not so with the Hydro Flask.  It really works. The problem (Isn’t there always a problem?), is the price. These things cost $900.00 dollars each.  Okay, that’s an exaggeration. They cost around $40.00 and on up each depending on the kind, size, personalization, etc. No one should pay $40.00 for a water bottle unless you live in the desert and than it’s okay. At least according to the Bright children.

Thank Zeus September is over. That month was way longer than was necessary. You ever notice how that happens? If you want to see something really horrifying take a look at a calendar and notice how close we are to Christmas. How the hell did that happen? It’s like we weren’t watching and it crept up on us. Prepare your wallet. That’s why we need the Five Favorite Things. When stuff is sneaking up on you and you’re getting mired up in September you need to be on the look out for absurd things to keep you going. Here’s what we found this week.

1. Officer Boris. Amylynn is in charge of finding speakers for our local chapter of Romance Writers of America. Every year we do a panel of dangerous jobs. This year Amy rounded up some Search and Rescue people as well as an officer from our local police department in charge of the canine unit. She absolutely insisted that he bring his canine partner. Holy Moly was this dog cute. We know you have an impression that police dogs are scary, but, in the case of Boris, that was totally not true. It’s possible that we would have a different impression of him if we were criminals and he was actively biting us. Nevertheless, when Boris is just being a doggy, he’s freaking adorable! He climbed in our laps and showed us his favorite toy. Cutie patootie.

2. Patron Saint of Pajamas. Hugh Hefner died. If anyone ever lived their life to the fullest, we’d guess it was him. The boy who lived at Ava’s house but who is currently in college considers Hugh a genius of style. At the very least he provided the inspiration for the young man’s plan to live the rest of his life in silk pajamas and velvet robes. That’s really all the style points we can give him because that mansion of his was pretty awful. And the grotto? No thank you! We understand he spent an exorbitant amount of money to get the crypt next to Marilyn Monroe. We’re not sure how we feel about that exactly. We kinda hope Marilyn haunts him in the afterlife.

3. Hopefully they take checks. We love these stories when they come up. Someone in  Massachusetts was digging around in their friend’s basement and found a library book that was a bit overdue. He returned it to the library who thought it was awesome. The due date stamped on the inside was November 11, 1938. We don’t know anything about the book – “The Young Lady at Home,” by T.S. Arthur. We wonder what the original borrower thought of it? Was it so good he wanted to reread it? Did he lose it? We imagine he misplaced it and found it in December 1938, but he was he too terrified of the librarian to return it. By the way, the fine now is $2,800. That book can’t be that good.

4. Not that Ava would take them up on it. Congratulations to the women of Saudi Arabia! The King has decreed that for the first time in 27 years women will be allowed to drive. Obviously, this is a huge gain for women’s rights and for their individual freedoms. It’s a baby step as they’ll still require their husband or father’s permission to purchase a car, but it’s still a step. We have a few tips for you. Get yourself some oven mitts. We live in the desert too and that steering wheel can get wicked hot. Also, DO NOT allow your children to eat

This Red Velvet was amazing!

in the car – not even once. You’ll never get the goldfish cracker residue from your upholstery. Your Sisters in the US are happy for you. Here’s to midnight ice cream runs, ladies!

5. Just Desserts. As you may have read in this blog, the Sisters work in the mortgage industry. Every year, the Women’s Council of Realtors has a charity auction. It’s brilliant because it only includes cake – homemade, bakery, restaurant – cake from everywhere! This year there were over 100 cakes auctioned off and the charity made a boatload of money. Some of the cakes went for $600.00 and higher. A lot of the winners share their prize right there at the auction, plates are provided on all of the tables. The Sisters ate so much cake they can’t even look at it right now. We won’t need more dessert until at least Thursday.

I work in a nine-story building and work on the fifth floor. When I came to work here I thought, “Excellent! I’ll take the stairs and lose some weight!” Good plan, right? Yep. I felt like an Olympian in training. I had all these excellent intentions. Things were gonna work out!

On my way to lunch that first week, I trotted down the stairs. I do that a lot. Go down the stairs because, you know, DOWN. The first time I attempted to climb UP the stairs it ended poorly. I gave myself a pep talk as I walked across the parking lot. This was going to be good. It would only really suck for the first couple of weeks and then my endurance would build and I’d be practically racing up those stairs like Rocky. Yes indeedy!

So, I opened the gray industrial fire door that weighs 7,000 pounds and heaved my chubby little self up the 90 individual stairs to my office. The plan was when I got to my floor I’d sneak into our suite through the back door closest to my office, shut my door, and silently die on the floor so no one would see me.

That is not what happened.

I used the bannister to drag myself up the last few stairs, panted on the landing, and then grasped the door handle. It didn’t budge and it wasn’t because I was now too weak to open the 7,000 pound gray industrial fire door. No, the god damned thing was locked.

Imagine the scene if you will: an empty stairwell, a breathless woman trudging her way back down the stairs, sobbing the whole while. I was a pathetic sight, I’m certain.

So the elevator it is.

Today, I ran out to grab some nice healthy lunch. On my way back I eschewed the stairwell because, you know, fool me once… And I got into the elevator with several other people from my building. We rose to the third floor and several people got out leaving me and one other gentleman alone. The doors closed. Then nothing. Literally nothing.

Gonzo and Camila off to climb the stairs

For at least forty-five of the longest seconds EVER that box of death hung there doing nothing. I looked at the man who was surely going to be sharing an obituary with me later and he also appeared concerned. Then all of a sudden our deathtrap jerked to life and shot us up two floors to the fifth like a flying chicken from the Muppets

I’d rather be stuck than catapulted. At least I could have seated myself on the floor, eaten my wrap, drank my flavored water, and read my book until the firemen showed up. I’d have been content for hours so long as the other guy wasn’t a panicky sort. Or at least I would have been until I had to pee. Then things might have escalated.

Speaking of escalators…Can we get one of those?

Today is the first day of autumn. Wahooo! It was still 91 degrees here, today, at lunch time. But hey, that’s not 110. Thus we woke up this morning with hope in our hearts. This is actually going to happen. Bring on the fall! We’re just dying to put on a sweater. Or some socks. One of our favorite things about colder weather is that the cats get super cuddly. In the throes of summer, they don’t want to sit on you any more than you want them to do so. Living with cat hair is one thing. Having it stick to your sweat is another thing entirely. In a different autumnal theme, we’re not interested in pumpkin spice anything. Except maybe cheesecake. We’ll take cheesecake in any flavor. Except asparagus. That’s revolting. We haven’t tried it or anything, we’re just extrapolating from experience. Anyway, here’s some things to make you say, HA!

1. The Phoenix Zoo baby. There’s a new tiny baby at the Phoenix Zoo. We use “tiny” in the most basic sense to illicit an appropriate “awww” from you because this baby was very, very tall. She is of course a baby giraffe and she is quite adorable even if she does have very big knees. We think giraffes are super cute, but we generally find most animals cute. The thing about giraffes is that they’re relatively safe from us since stealing one would take a serious amount of work. It’s not like you can scale the wall and tuck one in your purse – not even a really, REALLY big purse – and walk

out of the zoo. We are very intrigued by that Direct TV commercial that had the miniature giraffe on it. We would get ourselves one of those for sure.

2. Madame L’Oreal. The richest woman in the world died this week. Liliane Bettencourt, the 94-year-old make-up icon passed away possessing what both Forbes and Bloomberg estimate to be 44 billion dollars in assets. How many zeros is that, you ask. 44,000.000.000. Nine. Nine zeros. While reading about her we discovered that she lost 22million to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. That’s not even a drop in her bucket. GADS! Also, there was a massive scandal involving her being bilked out of approximately 1 billion in art, cash, insurance policies and probably anything else of value by a con man playing a very long game. Can you imagine? Being bilked out of a BILLION dollars and still being financially secure? We couldn’t get bilked out of $100 without a nervous breakdown.

We’ve been looking for an angel investor to make our bookstore dream a reality. So – hey – heirs to the L’Oreal fortune – $5M is only a drop in your bucket when you look at the big picture. It’s only six zeros. You wouldn’t believe how grateful we’d be.

3. Speaking of massive wealth. We’ve been looking for a country to ex-patriot ourselves to. New Zealand was a contender for a long time. Hobbits have a certain appeal. Sweden was bandied about. Even Panama if we were looking for a warmer clime. However, we think we’ve landed on Norway. What pushed us over the edge was the news that the country created a “sovereign wealth fund” twenty years ago, investing oil and gas profits into a fund. This week it was revealed that this fund is now at 1TRILLION dollars. Sweet baby Odin, that’s 12 zeros. TWELVE. That’s tolv in Norwegian. We figure we’re going to need to learn the language. This fund is dedicated to making sure that the future generations of Norwegians have secure pensions when they retire. You should probably learn Norwegian, too. On another little note – according to the United Nations report, Norway is the happiest country on Earth. And Norwegian Forest Cats come from…  

4. You’ve wondered and now you can know. We found this app created by The Oatmeal. If you’re unfamiliar, The Oatmeal is a really funny comedy blog that you need to visit immediately – after you’re done on our blog. We’re huge fans. Jojo Kitty even wears an orange collar from the Kitty Convict Project. Anyway, The Oatmeal cares about us cat owners thus this app was born. It’s a series of questions that become alarmingly clear that your cat is scarier than you thought. It turns out that Jojo Kitty has only a 64% chance that he’s trying to kill us but Quentin came up at 100%. Honestly, we’re not surprised about either of those results. Jojo is waaaay too lazy to be plotting anything. Quentin on the other hand, that cat just wants to watch the world burn. He might have learned some bad habits while in prison. I don’t know. All we’re saying is that you should get the app and be aware. Not that we’re going to do anything about it. We’re blindly stupid when it comes to our furry children.

5. A shot in the dark. Crazy stuff always happens to the Sisters. As proof, we submit the following: Ava was shot last night by a glass bottle. Recently, she has been drinking something called Kombucha. It’s a fermented beverage that is supposed to have many health benefits. But don’t let anyone lie to you, no matter what flavor it purports to be on the label, it will taste like pickle juice. You also shouldn’t shake it. Anyhoo, Ava bought a few bottles yesterday and put them in her car after work while she went to the hair dresser. When she got home, she took the bag out of the back seat and headed for the mailbox. Halfway there was an extremely loud pop, like a gun shot. It was so loud, Ava’s children and three neighbors came outside. What they found was a stunned Ava, blood and glass everywhere. One of the bottles had exploded! This story doesn’t actually sound funny, but it really is when Ava tells it.  Consider inviting her over for a coffee and an actual reenactment. Make her show you how she almost fainted.