Steve or Cory?

While i tried to ignore the basement and all its hideous glory, i could hear it in the night calling me "Jennifer" because we are on a first name basis apparently, "you're full of crap! no wait, hows that go? oh yeah yeah yeah, OK, let me start over. Jennifer, I'm full of crap! come clean me!" maniacal laughter inserted here. Yes, the lure of the basement, and its pathetic need to be cleaned, lured me back into its deadly snare. And as a reward for my efforts, i found me a poncho! and not just any poncho, a deluxe rain poncho with a picture of one disgruntled poncho wearing man on the package! He is crazy cool! i imagine if you panned down him his acid washed pants would be tight-rolled. I think his name would be Steve, he would love Charles In Charge, and secretly desire to take over the world. But i could be wrong, i suppose his name could also be Cory.

how could i forget!

OK, so right before i left for up north, who do i spy out my window but my awesome german neighbor, wonderful-walt. Apparently the goggles are not only for grilling, they are multi-purpose, and are now grilling/lawn maintenance goggles. This now leaves me wondering, what else does he wear them for? Inquiring minds want to know. As for my basement cleaning adventures, alas, i was forced to read Harry Potter in my spare time, and so have still not ventured into the basement. OK, so not really forced, but lets pretend. But since i finished reading the book today, and can at last exhale, i will be back to my basement mission in no time*.

*
Above stated "no time" is defined as being less than a week, but longer than 2 days, allowing appropriate time for mandated procrastination and/or complete denial that said basement actually exists.

baby butts

I meant this blog to be an inspiration (the wind beneath my wings perhaps?) of sorts for me to get cleaning, only since i have started the blog i seem to have done more procrastinating than ever.
I just got back from vacationing up north in Manistee, and since i was not going to clean my Aunt and Uncles basement, i have no basement stories to share. So i figured i would share some gratuitous nudity with you instead, just until i can force myself back into the basement with all its surely new-and-improved beasties, that is. Oh how i love the beasties.

Anna the bear

During the past week we were lucky enough to have my awesome 5 year old niece Payton come visit for a few days. One of the many exciting things i promised her we could do was paint her very first mural in the basement on the back of a storage closet door. After a lot of debate she decided that she wanted to paint a picture from a book that was one of my favorites when i was little, The Fourteen Bears. I drew the outline for her, and away she painted! i think she's a little genius, but i suppose i am biased. And now i have a little piece of happiness to keep me company in the dark lair that is my basement.

huh?

Just when i think it's safe, i find this thing. I was sitting in one of the storage rooms in the basement pondering my plan of attack against the junk, when there amidst the caulk, paint and strange bottles of nails, i saw this in all its marvelous wonder. While it seems to fit seamlessly in with all the other junk piled around it, i still have no idea what the heck it is, or what the heck it is used for. And yet i love it just the same. I believe that my parents inherited it along with the house, but the question of why they kept it will forever haunt me. Perhaps it has some way cool workmanly like function, or perhaps i have foiled the basement-bugs nefarious plot against me in confiscating their evil genius bug-o-matic-death-ray.

scuba dude

As i clean and uncover these sadly interesting items, i thought that i would be questioning 'what the heck?' but as i press on and keep digging, i find that the true question is 'why?' Take these scuba flipper thingies here, which are so old that i fear they would dissolve if they actually ever came in contact with water, why oh why do we have them? I may be able to understand if someone in our family actually ever went diving, or snorkeling, or anything else that actually involved wearing these flippers, but we are just not that kind of family. we are more of the type of family to sit on the dock and laugh at the people who do wear flippers such as these. Unless back in the 80's my dad wore them in the bathtub for a good time, i cant imagine why we had them in the first place, let alone still have them.

i go for the bathtub theory.

I was seriously considering putting the flippers on to model them for you all, but i couldn't muster the courage. For i am afraid that they may have become a rest home for invalid spiders and heebeegeebies of all sorts. I found a creepy crawly worm thing the other night on the floor, it was fine while i thought it to be dead, but it was when it began to wriggle and have a little wormy seizure that i lost a good deal of my well maintained composure and totally freaked out. since then i trust nothing down there. it is war. i am confident that i shall conquer the junk, but suspect that the heebeegeebies and creepy-crawlies may out number me as well as the state of Iowa.

*-*-

PS if anyone wants to give me a random assortment of verbs, nouns, adjectives, plural nouns, numbers and a variety of liquids (i think i have covered all of my mad lib bases here, if you think of anything else just throw 'em in) i'll pick a mad lib and put in your words for you and put the story on the blog :) if anyone is interested that is.

NAN

I don't know about the greatest party game in the world, i would hope that some where else in the world there would be something a little better, but perhaps if you're like 12 or something, or apparently, if you're me, mad libs are awesome. I was so busy looking back over all the stupid mad libs that i didn't actually get a whole lot cleaned, although the pile of mad libs has never looked better, if i do say so myself. here's one that my friend holly and i did, in elementary school you ask? no, afraid not, in high school, because even back then we were the crazy party animals, mad libs and paper mache. i blame my parents.

....

What do you do when you have a cold?

You can always tell when you're getting a cold because your puffalump will feel stuffy and you will have a Nan ache. The first thing to do is take a couple of toasters. Then get into your jolly-green-giant and rest, and drink plenty of prune juice. Sometimes it's fun being sick. Food is brought to you on a hula hoop so you can eat and watch TV, and your temperature is taken by putting an ass in your Frito's. If your temperature goes over 628 degrees, a doctor should be called. He will thump you on the door bell and say "ahhh!" Then he will ask you what bumper stickers you ate the night before and x-ray your stomach. Finally, he will give you freaky advice on how to get well. If you do just what he says, you'll feel lumpy in no time at all.

Retarded? yes. and so goes my life.