Treats

Our little Hotterville has Trick or Treat on the Saturday afternoon before Halloween. That's how it's been since like 1970 or something, which would be the last year I actually participated as a....participant.

Every year I buy like 8-10 bags of candy and then the following Monday morning, after eating an entire bag myself over the course of Trick or Treat weekend, I take at least three bags to work, just to get it out of my house.

It was chilly and drizzly when I went to get my hair cut at 10am yesterday, and it was supposed to be chilly and drizzly all day, so in an effort not to enable an all day candy eating binge for myself, I brought six bags of candy to the check out at the grocery store....and in a bold (and it turns out ridiculous) move, I put two back and came home with four. Because I'm an @ss.

After the first HALF HOUR of Trick or Treat, I had 15 pieces of candy left. It started sprinkling and I thought, OK...no more handing out candy on the porch...I'll go inside and the first 15 kids to knock on the door get this.

The trouble is when one kid comes up on to the porch and knocks, thirty other kids in the neighbors yards see you giving out candy and then they swarm. Until you're standing on your front porch with an empty bowl, shouting, I'M SORRY BUT I'M OUT OF CANDY. And still the bumblebees and ladybugs come up your steps on their tiny and unsteady little legs. Even the big Frankensteins and Transformers come marching, stiff-legged and holding out their pillowcases.

I had to quit answering my door. I felt like I was trapped in Shaun Of The Dead, a truly humbling experience.

And next year? F*ck it. I'm buying a hundred bucks worth of candy and let the chips fall where they may.

My co-workers will love me.

Guess who...

...is going to the Jake Monday night for ALCS game 3???

Me!!!

Can I get an AMEN, somebody???

Gifts

It's been brought to my attention that maybe the dead animal gifts left on my doorstep are not specifically for me.

Maybe Mr. Big Fat Kitty Cat has a secret admirer. Maybe some nice neighborhood girl cat (or boy cat...there's nothing wrong with that) has a little crush on Mr. I Sleep In The Middle Of The Bed And I Don't Even Care Who Owns The Bed.

And I'm thinking Mr. I Can Eat As Many Sets Of POD Earphones As You Can Possibly Purchase better start learning to wield the Dead Animal Shovel (patent pending) and take control of the carcass situation...before he finds himself taking a little ride behind the garage on it, so to speak.

I'm just saying.

Dead

I watched baseball till midnight last night. Thank God we won and it's on to the division series or I'd be really ticked, instead of just tired, right now.

So tonight I come dragging home from work, half dead, the couch loudly calling me, to find a bird lying face down at my back door. And Jadn was in the house all day! There's no way he can take credit for this carcass.

I had to enter my domicile by the front door, for crying out loud. I wasn't taking any chances of the bird coming back to life and flying up my skirt, thank you very little.

So what does this dead bird mean? That some neighborhood cat is dropping dead gifts off for me? Or the poor dumb bird (I think they have brains as big as a grain of rice, don't they?) had a heart attack while he was flying toward my house and just dropped out of the sky? He was playing dive-bomber at my dinnette window and crashed?

Frankly, the whole thing is rather unsettling.

I kinda hate days that end with me getting the Dead Animal Shovel (patent pending) out of the garage and winging a carcass behind the garage.

Eewwww.