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Smelly Basement

Welcome to my home. There is shit on the basement floor. Would you like a cup of coffee?

That is how my day began. Actually, it started with my mom informing me that the basement had flooded. It turns out the overflow thingy backed up and deposited the contents of anything sent down the drain onto the basement floor. Fabulous. So Ryan and I stayed home this morning, called a plumber and that was that. I�m at work now. The house stinks. Bleh.

This would happen right before we are scheduled to leave town. We fly to Chicago tomorrow morning to go purchase a car for Ryan. He�s picked it out, put a down payment on it, etc. Everything should go well, but we�ll see. The phucknuts at the dealership still haven�t faxed me the paperwork. I hate them already. If things don�t go well, we will spend our anniversary on a bus or on a train. I don�t want that to happen. As it stands, we will most likely spend the night of our first anniversary in either Des Moines or Springfield. Sounds romantic, eh? I did spend a little time seeing if there were any cool places to stay in the states of Iowa, Missouri or Illinois, but really didn�t find much. I�m sure one of you knows of a great little bed and breakfast on this quaint little lemme stop you right there.

Bed and Breakfasts are where old people go to �make love.� They don�t have sex there, they �make love.� They admire the doilies on the arms of antique chairs, they sip brandy by the fireplace discussing great little shops they browsed in earlier in the day then they go upstairs to their queen size bed and make love. Ew. And in the morning, they all sit around and talk with complete strangers about what neat little things there are to do in the area. The reason B&B�s exist in an area is because typically, there ain�t much to do in that area. If there were cool things to do, there would be the need for a hotel, and the more fun the activities, the nicer the hotel. B&B�s suck. I have no need of them. I guess I shouldn�t knock them too hard, though. I�ll bet they don�t have shit on their basement floor. Then again, who knows what type of kinky shit those B&B people are into.

Jane mentioned in her journal that she was the provider of Halloween candy to an economically diverse crowd. There wasn�t much diversity in my crowd. Most of our trick or treaters had come from a nearby neighborhood that is made up mostly of rent controlled duplexes. There were a lot of really cute kids and costumes, but I was a bit surprised that many of them weren�t even in costume. We gave out tons of candy, a bit more than we thought we would, but that might be because of a Halloween tradition I didn�t know about until this year. It is called �Mama�s Bag.�

Mama�s Bag is a plastic grocery sack held by the chaperone for the kids. After the kids get their candy, the chaperone holds out the bag and says �Don�t forget to fill up mama�s bag.� I�m guessing that most of the chaperones were indeed Mama. One even informed us that we were to give her more candy than we gave the kids. �I�m bigger than they are � I need more candy!� she cried out. We complied, because, well shit � she had the nerve to ask. Here you go!

I don�t think many houses in my neighborhood were giving out candy because we had a couple of groups come back twice. I recognized one group, but the other just told Ryan flat out that they�d already been to our house, but we were giving out the good stuff so they had to come back for more. The kids were all polite, and if they weren�t they mama made sure they were. We did have one kid who seemed a bit old to be out trick or treating, what with his REAL mustache, but what are you going to do. We gave him two Almond Joys figuring if he was mature enough to grow facial hair that he was mature enough to enjoy old people candy bars.

Alright, I had best get back to work � or wait � I�d best start working. Who knows. Everything is all out of sorts. At least there is no longer shit on my basement floor.

2:22 p.m. - November 04, 2005

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