July Blog From Joy

July Blog from Joy and The BOOB Girls

Launch!:The launch party for BOOB Girls VII: Ten Little Puritans was a tremendous success with more than 100 people coming to our Centering Corporation office to laugh, listen to music and meet some of the characters from the book. Thank you!

Laugh!: The reviews of VII are all good. It’s a funny read and has some of the strangest, off-the-wall names of any of the series.

Listen!: Don’t tell anyone, but BOOB Girls VIII is in the works. While I spent a lot of time thinking about plots (how DOES Stephen King do it??) some of my readers asked about the girls’ background. Who are they? What were they growing up? So the next book’s working title is Learning to Love Willie and will tell the backstory and be a take-off on nursery rhymes.

In the meantime.

If you haven’t gotten Ten Little Puritans yet, here’s how:

Send a check to me, Joy Johnson, for $15

Box 4600, Omaha NE 68104

I’ll take care of the shipping and it will be inscribed and signed. 

Now take a quick peek at a snippet from VIII, which hopefully will be ready to launch around Valentine’s Day.

People often ask how much of the books are from my own experiences.

This one is. It really happened to me. 

Mary Rose, Marge and Hadley are worried because Robbie seems bored and lethargic. They secretly enroll her in an online senior dating site. This is one of her first dates.

Note: BSTHI stands for Big, Strong, Tall, Handsome, Intelligent.

From BOOB Girls VIII

“So?” Hadley asked. “How did it go? Tell all, girlfriend.”

Robbie tossed her purse into a corner and stepped out of her sandals. She plopped down on Hadley’s sofa and let out a long breath.

“Was he BSTHI, Robbie?” Mary Rose asked, her eyes getting wide and her grin getting bigger.

Robbie smiled, “Oh, he was BSTHI all right, Mary Rose. But in this case the ‘H’ had to stand for ‘Homely.’ He definitely wasn’t much to look at and I really believe old men are terrified of old women who have bright nails and are over five feet seven inches tall.” She shook her head. “Here’s how it went, girls.”

They leaned toward her. As Robbie began, Marge came in from the kitchen with four glasses of iced tea and passed them around. She settled onto the couch next to Robinson Leary. Robbie straightened up and shook her head.

“As Josh Billings said, ‘there is great power in words as long as you don’t hitch too many of them together.” Well, I have never been with a man who hitched more words and talked so much, without really saying anything. If being a good listener is a virtue, he won’t be crossing the pearly gates anytime soon. Like Twitter, St. Peter’s too busy these days for any more than one hundred forty characters. As soon as we shook hands he started in on his resume of suffering about how he climbed the ladder into becoming a Strategic Air Command officer. He went on and on and on and frankly I couldn’t care less.”

She sipped her tea and shook her head once again. She looked at her three friends who were listening intently. “After about ten minutes of non-stop suffering, he took a drink of his soda and I blurted out, ‘In my off-hours I’m an axe murderer.’”

Mary Rose gasped, Hadley blinked twice and Marge chuckled.

“It went right by him!” Robbie said, making a quick gesture past her head with her free hand. She looked as if she didn’t believe it herself. “I thought maybe he was hard of hearing, but he wasn’t. He just kept climbing that ladder through officer training, the fellow captain he hated and how they should have promoted him faster. Suffer, suffer, suffer. As my husband used to say, ‘Piss, Moan, Bitch.’ So when he took a breath, and believe me he needed one, I leaned toward him a little and said, ‘I know four ways to dispose of a dead body.’”

This time all four girls laughed. “That’s not what got his attention,” Robbie said, smiling and pulling her bare legs up under her, putting her arm on the back of the couch and looking at Mary Rose. “I used your line, Mary Rose. After another ten minutes of his talking and not looking at me, I said, ‘I watch The Walking Dead and I know how to kill a zombie.’

“He stopped short and stared at me. I am convinced there is a universal fear of a zombie takeover of the world and that they’ll capture the government and run it like some of the zombies we have now.”

All four girls were still grinning. Robbie went on. “He looked at me, finally for the first time, then he cocked his head and said, “You watch The Walking Dead?”

“Yep. And I know how to kill a zombie.”

“What is a lovely lady like you doing watching a show like that?”

“Learning to kill zombies?”

“And how does one do that?”

Robbie took a sip of her tea. “He had excellent grammar, like ‘how does one?’ So I said, ‘One needs a sword and a whole lot of kitchen utensils.’ Then he stood up, shook my hand, thanked me for coming and left.”

She looked at Hadley. “Is your computer on?”

Hadley nodded. Robbie got up from the couch. “Come with me ladies, I’m going to order a tee shirt. I saw it online. It’s black and says, This is My Zombie Killing Shirt.”

Mary Rose hurried after her. “I want one too, Robbie!”\

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The best part of this blog? I told this story at the International Conference on Death and Grief at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. And people started sending me zombie shirts!!!! Ben from Centering helped me get a shirt from Zombie Burgers in Des Moines, Iowa. I now have 5 great shirts.

1.     Zombie hand holding a burger, from Zombie Burger.

2.     This is My Zombie Killing Shirt (ordered by me, online)

3.     Rule 1 – Cardio (runner chased by Zombies – gift)

4.     Zombie to do List (gift)

            Moan Loudly

            Drag Feet

            Eat Survivors

            Infect the Population

            Eat more survivors

            Try not to get killed again

5.     Birthday gift from VSBFF – Dracula: Man or Beast

She likes to be different.

OK girls. I need three more Zombie or Walking Dead shirts (size L)to have an “Old Lady Wearing Zombie Shirts Week. Feel free to send me the most tasteless ones you can find. Just zombie them off to the address above and I promise a photo will appear on the BOOB Girls Facebook page.

You will all agree with me, I know, that a lady has to update her wardrobe now and then to stay in style.

I love you all

Thank you for loving me and for loving The BOOB Girls.