Granddaddy, Aunt Olga, Lady Delilah, and Jessie Jo from Idaho shared jokes, stories, songs, and humor at the Moudy Mountain Summer Festival this summer near McCall, Idaho. They were joined by their intrepid handler, Elaine Ambrose.
Children were eager to learn how to make the puppets “talk.”
Take Me on Vacation this Summer!
For summer reading, please consider my books, eBooks, and audiobooks. The books have won 26 prestigious writing awards in three genres: humor, memoir, and children’s books. My books feature authentic storytelling, they have never been banned, they are reusable, and the books don’t need batteries or electronic chargers. All of them were written in Idaho and published in the USA.
Most of these books, eBooks, and audiobooks are described on the Amazon Author Page, but they also can be ordered from local bookstores and independent distributors. Or, bring some wine to my home and I’ll sign a free book!
The audiobooks are listed on Elaine Ambrose – Audio Books, Best Sellers, Author Bio | Audible.com.
The eBooks are listed on the author’s profile on BookBub.
Melody’s Magical Flying Machine
This children’s book about a spirited girl with Down syndrome won the winner of the 2021 New York City Big Book Distinguished Favorite Award for Children’s Fiction. Winner of Silver Medal for Children’s Fiction from Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards. Winner of 2021 Independent Press Distinguished Favorite Award for Children’s Fiction. Kirkus Reviews wrote that the book is “A joyful, well-told story that celebrates the power of imagination.” The book is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook. Published by Brown Books Kids.
Won 2019 Distinguished Favorite for Memoir from Independent Press Awards. Won Distinguished Favorite from the New York City Big Book Awards program. Available in hardcover, eBook, and audiobook. Published by Brown Books Publishing Group.
This collection of children’s stories won the 2018 Distinguished Favorite Award for Children’s Fiction from the Independent Press Awards. The book is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook. 
This bilingual children’s book won the 2017 Silver Medal for Children’s Literature from Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards program. The book was adopted by the Idaho State Board of Education for the statewide curriculum. The book is available in paperback and eBook. 
Finalist for 2016 “Book of the Year for Humor” from ForeWord Magazine. Won Gold Medal for Midlife and Silver Medal for Humor from Independent Press Awards. Foreword Reviews gave the book a rare 5-Star Review. Available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook. Published by Brown Books Publishing Group.
The book won the 2014 Silver Medal for Humor from the Independent Publisher Book Award program (IPPY) and received a 4-Star from ForeWord Reviews. The book won First Place for Humor and First Place for eBook from the North American Book Awards. It won First Place for Cover Design and Top Idaho Author from the Idaho Book Awards. Available in paperback and eBook. Publishers Weekly wrote that the book is “laugh-out-loud funny.” Foreword Reviews wrote that Midlife Cabernet is “Erma Bombeckesque…an argument for joy.” In January 2015, the book ranked #1 in sales in the humor category on Amazon.com and sold more than 8,000 copies. 
Menopause Sucks (with Joanne Kimes) – 2008 – Published by Adams Media/Simon&Schuster. This popular reference book combines medical advice, amusing anecdotes, and hilarious hints for hot women surviving the “M” word.
Other Books by Elaine Ambrose
Drinking with Dead Women Writers – 2012 – with Amanda Turner
Drinking with Dead Drunks – 2012 – with Amanda Turner
Daily Erotica – 366 Poems of Passion – 2010 with Gretchen Anderson, Rachel Hatch, and Liza Long
The Red Tease – Adventures in Golf – 2005 Bronze Medal Winner for Humor from ForeWord Magazine
Waiting for the Harvest – 1992 – Available only from the author.
Short Stories Published in the Following Anthologies
Laugh Out Loud – 40 Humorists from the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop – 2018
A Cup of Love – 2018
Angel Bumps – 2017
Feisty after 45 – 2016
The Dog with the Old Soul – 2012
A Miracle Under the Christmas Tree – 2012
Hauntings from the Snake River Plain – 2012
Little White Dress – 2011
Faith, Hope, & Healing with Bernie Siegel, M.D. – 2009
Beyond Burlap – 1997
My current project is titled Midlife Reboot –
Humorous Stories of Rest, Resilience, and Renewal
You Can Laugh with a Funny Dummy
My seven puppets are preparing material and practicing their stories and songs to entertain folks in the Boise area. As the Puppet Master, I’m eager to hear what these dummies have to say. Watch more videos on my YouTube Channel: Elaine Ambrose – YouTube
Click here for booking information:
Hire Elaine Ambrose and the Gang – Ventriloquist in Eagle, Idaho (gigsalad.com)
The performances range from five minutes to 20 minutes and can include one or multiple puppets. Acts can be tailored for children’s groups, adult business conferences, or a party with middle-aged women desperate for laughter. I also offer online chats with people who can’t leave their homes or care facilities, and the puppets can entertain and sing to someone in a care facility under Hospice care.
Outside the Boise area, I can Zoom to your party. Pick a puppet to sing “Happy Birthday” or tell a short story.
My gigs cost approximately $100 for 15 minutes. Cheap laughs!
Which puppet would you choose?
Jessie Jo from Idaho says to keep a song in your heart. She’ll be performing at the Moudy Mountain Summer Festival in McCall on June 24.
Aunt Delilah is from Britain. She loves to offer serious advice.
Aunt Olga from the Old Country is NOT politically correct.
Midlife Molly is hot! (Menopause and hot flashes)
Huckleberry Hannah is a fun country girl.
Officer Ricardo offers tips for following the law.
Wendell, an ordinary boy, is happy to be average.
Please follow me on YouTube.
Fabulous Facts about My Daughter
After more than four decades of watching and knowing my daughter, I continue to appreciate her strengths and talents. We’re alike because we love to travel and enjoy making people laugh. We’re different because she’s more empathetic and doesn’t need a public microphone. Here are some interesting facts about her.
1. She is a resilient maverick. After 22 hours of labor, she emerged between metal forceps as the doctor braced his foot against the bed and pulled. She weighed almost 10 pounds and was rushed to the Intensive Care Unit with an Apgar Score of 3. That’s when I knew all the pleasant birth and parenting videos were wrong. I finally got to see and hold her 12 hours later. For the next few months, I woke to touch her every few hours to make sure she was breathing.
2. She is precocious. We loved to read books together, and she memorized more than 20 nursery rhymes by the age of two. I know that’s true because I wrote about it in my journal. She’s still an avid reader.
3. She is adaptable. She had six bedrooms in two states by the time she was six. The photo in the rocking chair was taken when we lived at Sand Springs Ranch on the edge of a canyon overlooking the Snake River. We were forced to move, I was seven months pregnant, and she became my dependable helper.
4. She is organized. We created and hosted wellness retreats for women at mountain cabins in Central Idaho. She taught yoga, made healthy meals, and guided the groups on hiking excursions to hidden hot springs. She created crafts for the participants and led inspirational workshops. She also taught me how to set up a website and establish social media accounts. Now she plans workshops, retreats, a podcast, events, and goat yoga.
5. She is healthy. She owned the Stroller Strides franchise and helped young mothers exercise with their babies. She opened a private gym and tailored classes to all ages of women. We jogged in the 5K Women’s Fitness Challenge in Boise. I was one of the last people at the end of the race, but I finished.
6. She loves the arts. We saw Broadway musicals in London, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. She starred in a play in high school and later at a community theatre in Hawaii. She also won a writing award from the Idaho Writers Guild and helped translate one of my children’s books.
7. She loves to travel. We traveled to Europe twice and visited France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. We enjoyed excursions when she studied for a year in Guanajuato, Mexico. We traveled with my mother on an 11-day train trip across Canada from Toronto to Vancouver. (We decided three days would have been sufficient.)
8. She’s funny and has an amazing sense of humor. As a child, she could make me laugh at her stories, antics, and imitations.
9. She is ready for adventure. She visited Hawaii after college graduation and decided to stay. She taught at the Waldorf School on Maui and worked on a tourist boat. When I was 52, we hiked and backpacked for three days across the Haleakala Crater on Maui, Hawaii. I was ready to quit and go live in the forest, but she encouraged me to keep going. So, I did. She returned to Idaho with her future husband and a sweet baby girl.
10. She speaks with authentic compassion. Her eulogy to my mother blended affection, humor, and inspiration to her memories of her beloved Grandma Sweetie. 
One key fact about my daughter is that she is an incredible mother. She has two unique and precious daughters, and they are confident, talented girls. After my daughter had a baby with special needs, the medical professionals told her the baby wouldn’t be able to breastfeed. “Hold my beer” could have been her motto. She worked with the baby until she proved to the doctors that it could be done. Her dedication to her family is commendable.
If I could change anything about raising my daughter, it would be to reduce the long hours she spent in various childcare facilities. I worked full-time to pay the bills and establish my career, and there weren’t any job-sharing opportunities available. Those crucial years can’t be replaced. The bittersweet irony of motherhood is that we live more years without our children than with them. That’s another fact not explained in the parenting videos.
I love my daughter and wish her good health and happiness..
Accidental Ventriloquist
For most of my 50-year career, I’ve been a public speaker. I started as a television news reporter and talk show hostess and later worked in corporate communications and public relations before starting a small publishing company and creating professional workshops in southern Idaho. I enjoyed traveling to conferences across the country to present writing workshops and motivational, humorous speeches.
Two calamities silenced my voice: Covid and a heart attack.
In the spring of 2020, I was scheduled to return to Ireland to give writing workshops during a two-week excursion followed by speaking at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop in Ohio. Both events were canceled due to Covid. Travel and speaking engagements stopped, so I took an online course about how to create and publish writing webinars on Zoom. Travel restrictions were relaxed, and in June of 2021, I traveled to Todos Santos, Mexico to present a workshop at a writer’s retreat. Unfortunately, I suffered a heart attack the night before I was scheduled to return to Idaho. My guardian angels worked overtime to secure airport wheelchairs, clearance at Customs, and transportation home.
Cardiologists in Boise diagnosed cardiomyopathy heart disease with a reduced ejection fraction of 30 percent – meaning my heart was broken. I had two surgeries, and the second one in 2022 installed a defibrillator beneath my collarbone. I continued to have shortness of breath, so I canceled the webinars and future speaking engagements. I didn’t have the energy to walk around the block or to speak for more than a few minutes.
I was wallowing, silently, in self-pity until my friend Sheli Yerkes Gartman, CEO of Women Ignite International, contacted me in the summer of 2022 and asked me to join a group of funny women in a comedy show for the WICON conference in Boise in October. I decided I wasn’t finished with life, so I eagerly agreed to practice with the group.
I had used finger puppets in many of my past presentations, and I decided to expand my part of the humorous program and incorporate larger puppets. For the show, I dressed as an Egyptian Queen (a former life, no doubt) and held a southern-speaking puppet on one hand and a monster-speaking puppet on the other. My first ventriloquism act was a bit ambitious because I needed three voices, including my own. I was the first act on stage and entertained for five minutes. I felt triumphant. The program lasted over an hour and included group skits and other monologues. By the end of the show, I knew I had a new hobby.
I watched YouTube training videos by famous ventriloquist Jeff Dunham and joined a Facebook group of lady ventriloquists. They recommended companies selling full-body puppets for ventriloquists. I now have a family of seven. I’ll be entertaining at a music festival near McCall, Idaho in June. My goal is to perform several five-minute gigs. I hope to increase my stamina so I can speak longer without gasping for air.
Meet the Puppets
I enjoyed naming my seven puppets. I had some help from Facebook friends about the name Huckleberry Hannah. The other choice was BlueBerry Belle, but the letter “B” is difficult to pronounce without moving lips. I practiced daily how to speak various voices, but sometimes I mixed up the accents, but no one complained.
Lady Delilah arrived from The Dummy Shoppe. She is British and offers sassy opinions and bold advice.
Jessie Jo from Idaho is a custom order from The Dummy Shoppe | Puppets by JET. She sings country western songs and promises hilarious stories at music festivals and other events.
Aunt Olga is from Axtell Expressions. She arrived from the Old Country and enjoys telling stories of life using her thick Russian accent.
Midlife Molly is a custom order from Pubbets. She’s soft-spoken but offers pithy advice for middle-aged women in need of hot-flash humor.
Huckleberry Hannah is another creation from Pubbets. She has several outfits and speaks with a charming southern voice.
Officer Ricardo is a dedicated law enforcement officer with a Mexican accent. I found him online at an Etsy shop. He offers tips about how to follow the law.
Wendell is an ordinary boy who is content to be average. I found him online at Folkmanis. He is soft-spoken with a low voice, and he is a storyteller.
To publish my short ventriloquism acts, I record my puppets on my iPad and upload the videos to social media and to my YouTube channel. I often laugh out loud as my puppets say comments I never intended for them to say. Ventriloquism has opened a new opportunity to share my love of storytelling. This 71-year-old grandmother with heart disease isn’t finished, yet.
Insulted by Amateurs
This week on Twitter, I was attacked through nasty personal insults from a caustic clan of boisterous bullies. One person wrote that I was “Trash,” and another called me “old and ignorant.” Yet, another witty wordsmith told me to “eat a giant turd for breakfast.” The most painful accusation came from a person who claimed I wasn’t a humor writer. Ouch. I’d send him one of my award-winning, bestselling humor books, but I doubt he reads books without pictures.
What egregious sin prompted strangers to ridicule me on Twitter? I legally and correctly offered my opinion about the Caldwell School Board meeting where the agenda included a discussion about new rules for transgenders that would allow biological males into the girl’s bathrooms.
A writer on Twitter, Jared DeLoof, expressed disdain for conservative objections to the proposed rules. It’s still a free country, so I wrote this response: “More than 1,000 concerned citizens arrived but couldn’t get into the meeting. What is extremist about parents not wanting biological males in the girl’s bathrooms?”
Mark at @MarkRichins1, a transgender supporter, immediately responded and asked me this question: “How do you know if someone is “a biological male”? What happens for XXY kids? Or kids born with ambiguous genitalia?”
I responded:” I really don’t want to get into this, but I must reply. I gave birth to a son and a daughter. I noticed the son had a penis, so he was a biological male. As for the examples you mentioned, what are the statistics? I’ve been alive seven decades, and I haven’t met them.”
That prompted this sweet response from @Manders719: “Bless your ignorant heart Elaine.” I prepared a response, but she blocked me. So did @Sisyphus43. Apparently, bullies now use a drive-by approach to conversation. Write something nasty, then block the recipients so they can’t respond.
I also commented on a Tweet from Boise City Councilwoman Lisa Sanchez. She moved away from the District required to retain her seat, so she can’t be on the Council. I wrote a true statement about the racist comments she has made. Some locals weren’t happy with me.
Happy RINO @FredWaddel wrote “You’re supposed to be a humor author and this is the best you got? Might need a job change. Try the IFF.” Oh, Happy Rino, why would you write that to a funny grandmother with heart disease?
An “Antifa Whisperer” at @AntifaWhisperer said I was “Trash.” I find a certain irony in that statement considering how Antifa trashed cities across the country.
@Thomg57 said my “white privilege was hurt.” I think he found that line in “Liberal Insults to Own the Man.”
There was an obscene comment from @Plasstastic., a guy using the clever name Elon Musky: “Hey Elaine, Eat a giant turd for breakfast.” I reported the tweet to the real Elon Musk.
Here’s one more example to prove the tragic death of wit. Meowmix64 wrote: “You’re too old to still be this ignorant.” I’ve never met this woman. Yes, I’m old and have numerous traits, but ignorance is not one of them.
Why do these people have the right to say whatever they want, but I am condemned for expressing my opinion?
As a free public service, I will teach these struggling, spitting writers how to better articulate their personal grievances against this goofy, misunderstood grandmother. Here’s a blog post I wrote a few years ago. Obviously, they didn’t read it.
Lamenting the Loss of Literary Insults
At a recent live production, the word “motherf***er” was spoken, much to the delight and approval of the audience. I cringed at the offensive profanity, proving my lonely status as an ancient but lovable old fart. William Shakespeare, the great English poet and playwright who died more than 500 years ago, created a similar insult in his play Titus Andronicus with the words, “Villain, I have done thy mother.” Isn’t that better?
Profanity is mainstream in conversation, online sites, books, movies, blogs, and most school playgrounds. But some of us still refuse to write the f-word, and I resort to asterisks because I can’t do it. The word is brutal and vile, and lacks literary and lyrical language used in outdated manuscripts. Consider more of Shakespeare’s eloquent insults:
“You scullion. You rampallian. You fustilarian. I’ll tickle your catastrophe.”
Who wouldn’t be destroyed with this quote from Falstaff in Henry IV? Any fool can call someone a “son of a bitch.” To truly humiliate a foe with words, try this quote from King Lear:
“Thou art a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver’d, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.”
Shakespeare’s talent excelled beyond the boring insults of “asshole” or “creep.” His characters hurled creative verbal abuses such as “cream-faced loon,” “moldy rogue,” and “a toad; ugly and venomous.” Shakespeare was brilliant for destroying a character’s reputation with a single zinger: “Your virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese.”
My current agitation with the decline of proper language was triggered by an official description printed on the registration form for a national nonfiction book award: “Entrant, or it’s duly authorized representative…” It’s elementary for this association to review its knowledge of basic grammar concerning “it’s” and “its.”
I’ve discovered that some current literary techniques and basic grammar rules are being discounted in favor of “creative license.” Imagine a book titled, “For Who the Bell Tolls” or “As I Lie Dying.” Does it make you cringe? Or, am I a useless curmudgeon, smacking my ruler on the knuckles of last century’s students?
I would love for some young writer to reply to my anguish by using some of Shakespeare’s more infamous insults:
“Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog!”
“Thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows!”
“Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat.”
“I’ll beat thee, but I would infect my hands.”
Yes, I would appreciate the label of “luxurious mountain goat” over the crass and trailer-trash accusation of being a “motherf***er.” To paraphrase the Bard, to curse with wit and elegance or not to curse; that is the question.
