Amanda Denton Archive

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Bronco’s turn

 

Amanda Denton

I’ve already done Ginger’s “life story” so now it’s time for the big boy Bronco.

Bronco was born and lived life before us with his parents and siblings and a loving human family. I went and picked him up and he was just as happy and warm and fed and cared for as a little dog could be.

He came home and had a glorious existence. Every toy he could ever hope for, a full dinner bowl every night with fresh water at his constant disposal.

The only blemish on his life’s perfect complexion would be Ginger. It’s not so much that he has a problem with Ginger but more like Ginger has a problem with him. Then again it’s not so much that Ginger has a problem with him but more like she tolerates him.

Given Bronco’s desperate need to have every man, woman, child, and animal love him, this shunning hit him hard. He has done everything that he knows to do to attempt to win her over. Everyday he wakes up and tries his best to endear himself to her. To no avail.

After a few years of constant battle, Bronco received the best gift ever.
Ninja.

To say that Ninja is the best thing that ever happened to Bronco would be an understand of the century.

Those two are inseparable. It is a rare occasion that you see one without the other. They spend all day playing and fighting with each other. When they sleep, they have to be touching.

If Bronco were human he would be your stereotypical pothead surfer. Nothing fazes him. He always wants to eat. He has such a laid back attitude that sometimes I wonder if he would move at all if Ninja weren’t around.

He could also be described as the canine version of a trustifarian. Dog has never had occasion to want for anything. My dog has the potential to be the most obnoxious spoiled brat (canine version) but luckily I saw the storm brewing and headed that off the pass.

The last thing anyone needs is a 90 pound black lab with an entitlement complex.

 

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Diamonds, nose jobs, and fake boobs galore!

 

 

With my 5 year anniversary recently passing I was sitting around waxing nostalgic about our wedding and honeymoon. Particularly our honeymoon.

We were married in St. Louis- did the wedding thing, next morning we had brunch with the family and then we drove home to Clarksville where we were living at the time. Left from Nashville the next day and flew to Los Angeles for a cruise.

The cruise came back to the US the day before Thanksgiving and there were no flights to be had so I made the executive decision that we would spend Thanksgiving in Los Angeles and then fly home the next day.
Because we had the time we decided to take advantage of an excursion offered by the cruise line that was a tour of Beverly Hills and various other southern California hotspots.

Sidenote: I am a little bit of an expert when it comes to being a tourguide. When I was a kid I used to stand in front of the mirror and practice my tour guiding and I was amazing. I mean I really need to tap into that talent because it’s being lost right now and that is a shame.

I don’t know where they got the tour guide for this trip. Furthermore, I’m not totally sure how she kept her job as a tour guide. She was awful. Awful, awful, awful in the most fantastic way possible.

We get on the bus and right off the bat she starts talking about the “rarified air” of Beverly Hills. This woman had some real issues with Beverly Hills. Highlight was when we drove down Rodeo Drive and like a good tour guide she pointed out the chandeliers and like the awful tour guide she was she decided to tell us all about how much they cost to make and how much they cost to hang up and how that money could have gone to accomplish so much more than “gilding the entitled lily”. We leave Rodeo Drive and drive around Beverly Hills and on one was safe from her vitriol. The dentist office- they probably fill cavities with diamonds, the doctor’s office- most certainly was a plastic surgeon, the mechanic- well you know they only deal with the most elite vehicles in the world.

We left Beverly Hills and headed towards Santa Monica. I imagine if you’ve ever heard of Santa Monica then you’ve most likely heard of the Santa Monica pier. So as pull into Santa Monica I assume that is where we are heading. Until we pull into the mall parking lot. Oh yes, we went to Santa Monica and saw the beautiful Santa Monica Macy’s.

Mr. Bunny and I decided that we were going to check out the Santa Monica pier instead of the mall’s food court so we headed down and sat down at Bubba Gumps. Seems obvious now but at the time we didn’t consider the fact that a meal at Bubba Gumps might take a little longer than one at the food court. So not only did we get to see the Santa Monica pier we got to run the length of the Santa Monica pier to catch a tour bus. How many people can say that?

We went various other places all complete with the constant running criticism of those with money/those in show business/ pretty much everyone who doesn’t ride the bus.

Judging by the reactions of our fellow tour takers I’m thinking she didn’t get many tips. Which only seems right for a woman who is bound and determined to not ever be a part of the gentry. She likes her air without a side of rarified, thank you very much.

Best trip ever.

 

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A character study

 

Amanda Denton

 

A character study

 

Congrats! I’m working on character development and decided to start with the easy targets, the characters that I spend my days with. So I will be “telling the story” of each of my dogs and now you get to read it. You lucky reader you!

Ginger has had a rough life. And if she could talk, she would tell you all about it. A human Ginger would be crabby and sarcastic and wonder what on earth she did to deserve all this injustice in her life.

When Ginger was a tiny puppy she was dumped in the middle of the road. As she sat on that concrete island watching cars pass she probably wondered what in the hell she was going to do next. She’d been so rudely taken from her mother, shoved in a pillowcase, and then unceremoniously chucked from a barely slowed vehicle. Her butt was bleeding for unknown reasons and she hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for hours or even days- she was a puppy so obviously has no concept of time- and it was rather cold out there in the Kentucky winter.

Whilst contemplating her dire situation a human approached and picked her up, putting her in another car. Seeing how the last car situation turned out, Ginger was less than thrilled with this turn of events but was too tired, cold, and hungry to put up much of a fuss about it.

Luckily this human was of the good variety and cared for her as much as she could with her limited income and resources. A year or so later the human started hanging out with this other human and luckily he seemed to know that dogs can’t survive off canned vegetables alone and saw to it that she was fed actual dog food.

Things were good for awhile. There was a brief moment that a new puppy came along and Ginger wondered why what she had done wrong that the humans needed a newer model but at the end of the day it wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened- oh no, the worst thing that ever happened was when the humans left her at some random gathering of other dogs. And then some other humans came and got her and brought them to their house with an annoying yappy dog whose eye she emphatically stomped out prompting her return to the dog gathering.

There she sat, day after day, pondering how on earth she had come to this place in life when around the corner she saw her original humans! Oh happy day! Ginger returned home with them and life was once again happy.

That is until they brought IT home. IT was big and loud and whiny. IT liked to climb obstacles and was obsessed with trying to convince her to run around like a mad person/dog. IT was the worst thing that had ever happened to her and she knew this because she’d been pretty sure that she’d seen the worst thing to ever happen and she was wrong before. THIS was the worst thing that could ever happen to her.

Time passed and she learned to tolerate IT, discovering that IT could provide some alternative to the banality of the day. Just as she was starting to warm up to IT’s presence, the worst thing that could ever happen, did just that.

The wild banshee that would make the fictional Tasmanian devil look as if he had just a very mild case of ADHD was brought home by the humans. This was the worst thing that could ever happen to her. Not only was IT still around but now IT has discovered that the wild banshee was fun to play with and they spent all day acting like buffoons in a very loud and wild manner. Things were tolerable until the wild banshee decided that she would solve problems with her teeth and now Ginger spends many a day sitting in a corner, bleeding, while plotting her revenge. This is the worst thing that could have ever happened to her but she will have her day.

Oh yes, she will have her day…

Next segment: we delve into the psyche of the stoner surfer dude that is Bronco.

 

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Just one of those days

 

Amanda Denton

Up until recently, I had a delivery route for the paper I write for that took me all over half of my town and part of another. There never ceased to be some sort of amusement out there on the wild roads of southwest Georgia. There was one day however, that was particularly awesome.

It started out just like every other Wednesday. I delivered papers, chatted with a few gas station owners, wished that the Good Life City would be somehow covered in a blanket of snow as I sweat my lovely rear end off — the normal events. Once I hit about the halfway point of my route though things got weird. A very good kind of weird.

I pulled into a gas station (duh) and noticed a new sign in the door that said, “Now available — Blanket of Mexican.” I’m not one to pay much attention to broken English (oh, who are we kidding, yeah I am) but this was too good to pass up. I mean come on, blanket of Mexican? It’s a combination of horror film and “as seen on TV” in its finest form.

Just as I had stopped laughing at that somewhat twisted image, I pulled into another gas station and saw a dude standing there wearing a Burger King crown. If I wasn’t a happily married woman, I would have talked to him. I mentioned such on Facebook and a friend of mine asked why I couldn’t just talk to him. Apparently, she has never found herself in the presence of such sexiness because if she had she’d know that you don’t just talk to a man rocking a Burger King crown, you have no choice but to go home with him and I’m not that kind of girl.

The crown jewel of my day was at my next stop. I pulled into a parking spot and looked off to my left. The front license plate caught my eye. It was that diamond-plate pattern you find in auto shops and was pink … and it had a big ol’ crown on it.

My curiosity piqued, I took another look and I would not be surprised if the owner of this car had a wedding colors of blush and bashful.

The seats were pink, the steering wheel had a pink cover, the dashboard was wearing a pink coat. It was very, very pink. But that wasn’t the crowning achievement. Oh, no. That honor went to the embroidery on the seat covers that proclaimed this vehicle was in fact owned by a “lil’ princess”. Because every princess needs a crown there was a rather large one hanging from the rear view mirror.

As I was drinking in this beauty, the owner opened the door. I damn near died when I saw this woman. She was about 5 foot nothing and at least 75 years old. She had her glasses hanging from a chain and looked like she’d probably been a librarian for 50-plus years.

It’s a good thing I was already parked because I would have probably caused an accident, I laughed so hard.

Once I composed myself, I drove on to my next stop. And as God is my witness, I’m sitting there waiting for a woman and a Piggly Wiggly employee (who was probably about 6 foot 5 inches and 100 pounds, and pushing 90 years old) to cross the parking lot and I notice the man’s shirt says “Getting Piggy With It”.

I about lost it. Outdated cultural reference adorning the shirt of a man in the twilight of his twilight? It was too much.

By this time I was thoroughly tickled and pretty much anything set me off. The cherry on my fabulous sundae of a day? Driving home and seeing a sign advertising a prayer service for rain.

In and of itself — not a big deal and not very humorous.

The fact that there were big-ass snowflakes on this rain-centric sign?

Enough to send me home in a fit of giggles.

Another fabulous day!

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Dear Jessica Fletcher

Hello! Through the wonders of Netflix, I’ve had the opportunity to become reacquainted with your body of work on “Murder, She Wrote,” and I felt compelled to tell you how fabulous I think it is.

Well over 200 murders! Impressive! And that was just when the cameras were around, I can’t even begin to imagine how many others there were when you escaped the public eye. Bravo ma’am, bravo.

That being said, I do have a few questions for you.

1.) How many siblings do you have? And are they the most fertile people on the face of the earth? Because I couldn’t help but notice that you have more nieces and nephews that any one person I know of. And they always seem to be the subject of a murder’s dastardly plan or at least somewhat involved with another person who is the subject of the aforementioned dastardly plan. Perhaps you have a brother who is the King of Siam? I figure with the wives and the courtesans that could explain away at least a third of the people who call you Aunt Jessica. And I imagine the king of Siam does have enemies so there’s the reason behind all the dastardly planning.

Next time you have a family reunion, can you invite me? I figure with hundreds of people milling about they won’t notice one more. And let’s not kid ourselves, someone would end up dead by the end of the night so I’ll just eat their dinner so you don’t even have to set another place at the table.

2.) This is a two-parter: What high-ranking public official do you have compromising pictures of? And, are you sure you understand the meaning behind the phrase, “I don’t want to interfere”? Every single time someone ends up dead and the cops show up you tell them that you don’t want to interfere but then you go along and do just that. For some reason, outside of the cursory “stay out of my way” from a gruff detective, every cop in this country just let’s you traipse around crime scenes without a single objection. I’ve seen enough Law and Order to know that this is not normal. I’ve watched you single handedly compromise more crime scenes than the stereotypical rookie cops who doesn’t know better. How on earth are you allowed to keep doing that? It bottles the mind.

3.I know Cabot Cove is a quaint little place but seriously, do you not fear getting run over by a car every time you ride your bike down the middle of the road? Because every time I see you doing that I have to remind myself you can’t hear me as I scream “GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD LADY!!!”. Also why is it that you feel the need to jog while wearing long sleeves, long pants, and a towel around your neck? I get overheated just watching you.

Other than those few things, I’m a big fan. Every time I fire up Netflix, I look forward to seeing which niece or nephew is going to show up and what hijinks they will drag you into. Always a good time.

Thanks and until next time;
Me.

 

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Next Great Mediocre Novel

I love MrBunny. I do. Even though he has some major faults, I am woman enough to see past those things and find it in myself to continue to love him.

(Let it be known that some of these faults are more egregious than others. Example: Last night he declared that Outlaw Josey Wales was the greatest movie of all time. I mean come on — of all the movies in all of time we’re going with Outlaw Josey Wales as the greatest? This is the kind of thing I have to deal with on a daily basis.)

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Revival of a Different Sort

 

Just to preface this: I do not think the ailment featured in this story is a laughing matter. I’m sure to those affected by it, it is quite traumatic.

To the rest of us however, yeah, it’s funny.

So I’m in Tampa while MrBunny attends some IT conference. In my mind they all stand around bragging about how big their computer hard drives are but I’m hoping it is much more involved than that.

Anyways. I’m at the hotel and I’m walking down the hallway on my way to go pick up MrBunny (there was a mix-up in hotels and we ended up about four miles away from the conference) when I hear quite the commotion coming from one of the hotel conference rooms.

I mean, it was really quite loud. People were laughing and clapping and singing. As I walked by I noticed there were people dancing, as well. Of course my interest was piqued so I skulked around a little bit to see if I could figure out what this meeting was for.

My eyes first caught a big ol’ poster with the tagline “Feel 21 again? Tell us about it!!”

Whaaat? Have these people found the fountain of youth? Is that why they are dancing around whilst singing and laughing? Why aren’t they sharing? Was this some type of clinical trial meeting up and sharing their fountain of youth stories?

I NEED ANSWERS!

I found them.

Regen-erect.

Oh, yes. You read that correctly.

I had somehow stumbled upon a group meeting for an erectile dysfunction “all natural supplement”. All of a sudden I felt really awkward. As if I was going to turn a corner and see people sitting in bathtubs in random public places while naked. Luckily, I hadn’t drawn attention to myself (people were really focused on the presentation and their celebration- not that I can really blame them), so I quickly and quietly made my way down the hallway and out the door.

Picked up MrBunny, grabbed some dinner, went back to the hotel and tried to not think about all the really happy people staying in the rooms around me. I didn’t make eye contact with anyone for the rest of the time there.

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Another Edition of Random Thoughts

1. Perhaps the “communication skills for women” seminar the hotel I’m staying at is hosting should be renamed to “observation skills for women” or “noticing the previous six big-ass yellow signs that say where this seminar is located for women”.

2. If you pass 10 signs saying that the right lane is closed ahead and you go flying by me (in the right-hand lane), don’t think there is a snowball’s chance in hell that I am letting you in. YOU ARE DEAD TO ME!

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Dear Home Improvement Stores

Home Depot and Lowes, I’m talking to you.

Whose genius idea was it to start taking down seeds and seedlings in June? I mean really? Why on earth does this make sense at all? More specifically, where on earth does this sense?

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Didn’t like that wall, anyway

In front of our house sits a brick retaining wall. Correction: in front of our house used to sit a brick retaining wall. Now there is just a pile of bricks where that wall stood solidly for 40-plus years.

Mrbunny and I were just farting around the house trying to get a few last-minute things together for our vacation when suddenly the house literally (said in my best Rob Lowe/Chris Traeger imitation) shook accompanied with a very loud boom. It sounded like when we were having the trees removed out back and they’d knocked one down.

Of course, we look out the window to see what it was and discovered there was a truck in our front lawn. I know I once threatened the old lady next door to go full out redneck on her a– but this wasn’t quite what I had intended.

Anyways, I go running out to see if the driver needed help and just happened to catch him in the futile effort to stash a can under his seat. Because, you know, when you are bleeding profusely from the head your first priority is to try and hide the evidence, and of course no one will think to look under the seat.

Man, who was obviously impaired, ignores the lady, who was to my knowledge of the medical field persuasion, to please sit still while she gave him a cursory glance over, climbs out of truck.

Now it should be noted that the truck was completely wrecked and we could see fluids pouring out of it. I know I didn’t know what these fluids were and it didn’t appear as if the other women standing there knew, either, so when the man went to light a cigarette I ran as fast as my short chubby legs would let me. I was less than 24 hours away from heading to the islands for a much-anticipated vacation and I wasn’t going to let something like being engulfed in a fireball stop me.

Impaired Man decided to finally listen to our pleas to stop smoking near the truck, so he promptly threw the lit cigarette into my dry-as-the-Sahara lawn. Just what I need — a brush fire. But I suppose in the grand scheme of things, a brush fire is more desirable than a fireball, so maybe he was on to something.

Police show up. Ambulance shows up. Fire department shows up. Man is checked out, put in ambulance, and mystery liquid is determined to be harmless water and antifreeze.

Good times.

Now, I’m in an “if you give a mouse a cookie” situation.

When we fix the wall, the new brick will make the old brick look bad. And then if we fix all the brick, the yard will look like crap. And if we fix the yard, then the brick on the house will need to be power-washed. And if we clean the brick on the house, then the siding will need to be painted. And if we paint the siding, then the roof will need replacing. And if we replace the roof, then we need new windows. And if we get new windows, the roof will need replacing. And if we replace the roof then …

That pile of bricks is looking pretty attractive and exponentially less expensive right now.

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