by Kathy Brasby | Sep 17, 2026 | Humor, Stories
I was driving on I-76 recently when a vehicle passed me, sporting a personalized license plate. MORON35.
This is a gift to a humor writer.
In Colorado, the owner paid an extra $60 for the first year and then $25 extra every year to renew a vanity plate. (I looked it up. I don’t have any. Too cheap).
I researched and found plenty of understandable examples. Like FAMILY or USMC or 14ER (climbed a 14,000-foot Colorado peak).
Who would pay extra to have MORON35?
Then I wondered if others had already taken MORON1 through MORON34, so the driver had to settle on MORON35.
If so, it would suggest there are at least thirty-five MORONS in Colorado.
My husband had a unique license plate collection that’s still hanging in our garage.
He might have wanted to snag MORON35.
We were on vacation, browsing a souvenir shop on St. Thomas, when he asked the clerk if they sold local plates. He was assuming an expired plate.
The guy hesitated only a moment before declaring he had one in back. He disappeared for a couple of minutes, returning with a St. Thomas license plate.
We didn’t notice the fresh specks of mud until later, after we paid $35 for the license plate and left the store. Then we wondered if the clerk wrangled the plate from his car or a co-worker’s.
But my husband treated that plate like it was diamond- rather than mud-encrusted. It still hangs in our garage.
As MORON35 zoomed away, I thought about that clerk on St. Thomas claiming a cool $35 for thinking fast.
I’m not sure if he qualifies as MORON36 or GENIUS1.
Or if we do.
by Kathy Brasby | Aug 4, 2026 | Humor, Stories
When my sister texts, you gotta grab the screenshots.
She once offered to take a kidney instead of past-due rent from property we managed. Once she referred to her grandchildren as Angery and Dustbin, followed by “oops.”
So you’ll understand my reaction when I got a text:
Sis: I sent Maggie a package of rubber ducks awhile back. They now have a jeep. I was in the clearance aisle at Walmart and there was a poacher of ducks so why not?
Me: You mailed a duck poacher to Maggie?
Sis: Yeah. There is a hero in town. The dash is lined with ducks.
I was curious. Could AI interpret my sister? I pasted in the conversation. AI roulette.
AI went for literal first: “This is about Duck Duck Jeep, a friendly gesture where Jeep owners leave rubber ducks as a friendly gesture.” Double friendly gesture means it’s verified, I guess.
Well, yeah. I figured out the friendly gesture part on my own. I waited.
AI turned therapist. “Does the speaker see the dashboard-duck collector as aspirational? Or as a hero introducing Maggie into the community?”
No. When my sister aspires, it is definitely not for a duck collection.
AI then assured me that there was no metaphorical coded language. In other words, my sister was not an undercover agent.
I texted my sister about using some of her texts in my newsletter.
Sis: Maybe….magybnet
That sounded like a new fungus to me. I haven’t asked AI, though.
by Kathy Brasby | Jul 20, 2026 | Family, Humor, Stories
Approving the frog farm should have been enough, but finding metal salad forks in my freezer clinched it for this year. Once again, cousins camp would be a learning opportunity. For me.
Ten grandkids, ages sixteen to three, gathered for a few days of fun while I facilitated and fed them.
My eleven acres provided a rich environment for exploring and digging.
I had gathered a gallon jar full of buttons to use for crafts. (Well, my sister found the jar at an estate sale, and the prior owner must have spent a lifetime saving buttons.)
“That’s a ka-jillion buttons,” I said, turning the jar from side to side.
Math Boy, who is twelve, smiled. “Ka-jillion is a complete number. You can’t have a ka-jillion and one.”
Learned something.
We painted rocks on day three, to be followed by the button craft and then building miniature gardens.
The ka-jillion button craft paled next to finding a water tank and adding water, rocks, and sponges, then lovingly pouring in caught frogs. Voila! A frog farm.
We never dipped into the ka-jillion buttons.
While throwing together a meal, I discovered metal forks nestled atop the ice cubes.
The fifteen-year-old explained that when someone lays icy forks on the counter beside regular forks, placing your forearm on the forks feels like you’ve laid it on a grill. No actual burning involved. How cool is that?
The fourteen-year-old provided the forearm and then howled. “It feels like that!”
I’m sure that trick will be a hit at my next birthday party.
The best story of the week came when some of the kids accompanied me and my dog for a stroll beside a local canal. Scout likes to dive in for a swim, but the kids were skeptical that he would jump in the water.
“He does it as often as he can,” I assured them.
“Does he drown very often?” one asked.
So at cousins camp this year, I learned about icy forks. How to assemble a frog farm.
And that my dog has nine lives.
by Kathy Brasby | Jul 2, 2026 | Humor, Stories
I enjoyed the dream of living on a hobby farm. Until the Day of the Cat.
On the Day of the Cat, a glorious spring morning, I was milking a goat in a sealed room (meaning we kept our barn cats out). Our four-year-old daughter climbed onto the big feed box at the wall and looked behind it.
“Mom, there’s a cat back there.”
I froze.
How had a cat gotten in?
I was afraid to ask, but did. “Is it dead or alive?”
She studied the gap between the box and the wall. “Dead. Can I pick it up?”
“NO!” Yuck.
My husband was typically the designated handler of all things gross. Dead things. Spiders the size of a child's fist. Mysterious smells. He is a man of courage and strong stomach. But he was forty miles away at his job. I was home alone.
Well, just me and a curious preschooler who was already angling for new ways to interact with the deceased.
“Leave it alone,” I added because I could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. She huffed and crossed her arms, but stayed put, feet dangling, watching me.
I drew a long breath, avoiding any mental images of what a dead cat smashed against the wall might look like.
Believing strongly in the principle that it’s better to face the horror than let it hang over your head all day, I finished my morning barn routine s-l-o-w-l-y and squared my shoulders.
It was time.
I gathered my supplies like someone preparing for battle.
✅ Hand sanitizer
✅ Thick trash bags
✅ Face mask
Back into the milking room I marched with my daughter right on my heels. She wouldn’t miss this for the world.
Paint dries faster than I moved into the room. I leaned over the feed box and looked down the gap.
There, tattered and soiled, lay…
… a purple and white stuffed cat toy.
I stared at it for a long moment.
“You said it was dead,” I said to my daughter.
“Well, it’s not alive.”
So ended the Day of the Cat. Minus, as it turned out, any actual cat.
by Kathy Brasby | Jun 16, 2026 | Family, Humor, Stories
We’d traveled an hour and a half for a tasty lunch with our cousin. Going straight home was not an option.
My sister and I had made this trip, and you’re probably thinking we folded in some shopping afterward.
Not exactly.
“Could we go to this estate sale?” she asked, pointing to a tiny map on her phone.
It was only thirty minutes away. Not on our way home, but, hey, the sun was shining and we’d just finished this great meal and conversation with our cousin. Why not?
That question gets me into trouble a lot.
But away we went.
“What are you looking for?”
“An anvil.”
I never expected rare pottery or collector figurines. But an anvil?
As we drove (I put her behind the wheel of my car), I wondered what an anvil would do to the trunk. Would it punch through the floor of the trunk and bounce behind us on the highway like an escaped rabbit?
“Can we even lift an anvil?” I asked.
Minor details. She shrugged. “Somebody will help us.”
The anvil sold a half hour before we got there. She was sad. I was suddenly grateful for the extended conversation about future travel plans with our cousin that delayed us for a half hour.
So my sister went on the hunt for other treasures. She’s an artist. She sees things differently.
And we stumbled onto a room, books cascading from wall to wall. All free.
I didn’t need to go further. I started plucking books and stacking them. I am a writer and a reader. This was close to a perfect afternoon.
My sister started searching through the piles of books, too. She’s an artist who doesn’t do much pleasure reading, so I guessed she must have taken up a new hobby.
We left with as many books as we could pile from fingertips to bottom of chin.
“Wow, you must have found some interesting books,” I said.
“Yep,” she said. “I need some nice-looking books for the decor in my Airbnb.”
by Kathy Brasby | Apr 18, 2026 | Humor, Stories
If I ever start a story with the line “My sister and I…”, buckle up. We have some strange adventures. For example, last weekend my sister and I went shopping for an anvil and came home with two armloads of old books. That story is coming in a future newsletter.
But let’s jump into this story.
My sister and I were on a road trip, driving close to the edge of the Earth. We hadn’t seen a house for 5 miles. We hadn’t even seen a cow for 5 miles. The only living things in sight were two antelopes racing across a far hill.
Not to worry. We weren’t bored; we were talking. Then I looked down at the speedometer. I was driving 80 mph.
“Oh, man,” I said and immediately lifted. Lifted is a racing term I learned from my husband. I don’t race. Except maybe when driving at the edge of the Earth.
As I lifted, we flew past a crossroad with a state patrolman sitting at the stop sign.
He pulled me over. He walked up to my window. “Do you know why I stopped you?”
“I was going too fast,” I said, and he nodded. “How fast did you catch me at?” I wondered if I had managed to slow down at all before he clocked me.
“Eighty.”
“Yeah,” I said.
He took the usual stack of paperwork back to his car. When he handed it back to me, he leaned down and looked into the car. I don’t think my sister waved at him, but, knowing her, she might have. Then he said, “Use your cruise control after this.”
He walked back to his car and pulled away. No ticket. No warning ticket.
My sister and I both took a deep breath as he drove over the next hill.
I owe that nameless patrolman big time.
And that’s why I have given my sister permission to nag me about the cruise control.