Lost In The Corn Hole. I Mean Maze. Corn Maze.
This week is similar to last week in several ways: 1) the electronic monitoring ankle bracelet is still attached and functioning, 2) still handsome, me and 3) Mrs. Pops has taken Monday off, which is a HUGE problem, post-wise. It means major, major disruption of my routine. Very disturbing. More time driving around and interacting with actual people means less time sitting on my ass trying to think up jokes about people having sex with jack-o'-lanterns. Seriously, that's what you people would be getting if I had the time.

But alas, this "family" thing is seriously cramping by blogging style. Go go go, do do do. I haven't even had time to take all my pants in to be let out, as I do at the start of every holiday season.

Like it or not, this is the beginning of the holiday season. I saw my first fake evergreen garland around a post inside the Best Buy this weekend. It's here, people.

I also know it's the holiday season because we've already begun enjoying our annual series of traditional events I like to call "Get Horrendously Overcharged While Doing Things I Hate". Stuff that makes kids happy but involve me standing in lines and interacting with goats.

Let me explain:

This weekend we took the kids to the big giant Pumpkin Patch. For those without children, these are super-commericialized "farms" where you can go and celebrate the spirit of Halloween by paying way too much for a pumpkin.

Usually this involves a mall parking lot, a giant tarp, a few hay bales (bails? I think it's "bales") and an inflatable bouncy-house.

Where I live is still on the edge of civilization, so if I drive far enough we can find an actual working pumpkin farm. We go to one every year way the fuck out in the wilds of San Bernardino county. There amid the actual pumpkins growing right out of the ground one can also find corn stalks and scare-crows and a petting zoo (hence the goats) and hay bales and giant inflatable bouncy-houses. Very authentic all of it.

The huge swath of maturing Christmas trees just adds to the Halloween feeling. The place converts from a pumpkin farm in October to a Christmas tree farm in November/December. So by repetitive association, nothing says "Halloween" to my children like a Christmas tree.

The main attraction, naturally, are the giant inflatable bouncy thingies that kids get to climb in/on. My oldest ones, anyway. The youngest is still in the scream-until-I-can-go-and-then-cry-until-daddy-has-to-crawl-in-and-get-me phase, which is less charming than it sounds.

Each "attraction" costs a certain number of tickets. They use the ticket system for two reasons: 1) the awkward numbers of pre-bought tickets means you WILL have some left over less than the cost of another go on the giant tiger-face slide thingy, so either they get to keep your two bucks when you don't use them OR you give them another four bucks so two of your kids can go and 2) because "three tickets" in exchange for three minutes of fun-time sounds a lot less like gouging than "three dollars".

I was thinking about it as my kids ran and ran their blissed, sockless little hearts out. It works out to a dollar per minute to run around in one of these things. It would cost me less many to take them to a whore.

Not ANY whore of course. She'd have to be relatively clean and probably be willing to cut me a frequent-visitor discount in order to get a competitive rate. Also she'd have to be literate as my kids would probably just want her to read them a story or something. But what I'm saying is it's possible to be more money-wise than pumpkin-patch visiting.

I think the suggestion of taking my children to a whore is the right way to end this post here at the beginning of the holiday season.

Tomorrow I do not plan to post as I'll be busy with kids and shit like that. The latter half of my day is all booked up with my diabetic coma. Man, I love Halloween.

So Bucketeers, it is with a heavy heart that I say to you: Adieu. Until Tuesday. Assuming I come around by then.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.7


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 9:04 PM