Then Like a Distant Scream

Here are some pics I took last week while I wandered around my neighborhood. This a photo of a grown-up chair that fell over and a kid chair that's still standing.

I guess I'm going to be a little scattered tonight. I stayed up way too late last night for this one reason, and you know how I get when I'm sleep-deprived - my self-diagnosed ADD runs wild. Who knows what the hell I'll say.

This is some kind of garage like building with windows. I like the whacky color combination.

Stinky went to a haunted cornfield outside of town called Field of Screams. (have I mentioned lately how much I love Iowa?) One of the kids who went with, lives a block over. He's a good kid, but he's a total Eddie Haskell. Every time he's over, he just keeps kissing up and it's so obviously fake, that it annoys me just a little. Anyway, Stinky said when they were out at the haunted cornfield, at first he kept trying to be all tough and say, "Bring it. BRING IT!" And then when someone jumped out from the cornstalks with a fake chainsaw and a mask and indeed brought it, he ran down the field, screaming like a five year old girl. Damn. I almost wish I was there to see it.

Here is my favorite tree on my street. I'm also a fan of the 70's looking wagon type vehicle in front of it.

My daughters work and hang out with a girl who's dad graduated from high school with me in Ottumwa. It seems so weird. I remember running into him and his wife when our kids were little. We were all laughing (until we cried) about having kids so close together in age. My girls are sixteen months apart and his kids are about that same distance apart, except his wife had twins with the second pregnancy. So, when we saw them, they had three kids under the age of two. Shoot me. Anyway, if you had told me that our kids would grow up to be good friends, I'd never have believed you. Since I never lived anywhere longer than four years straight when I was a kid, the concept of knowing someone my entire life besides kin, is entirely foreign to me.

This house is also pretty seventies. My neighborhood is kind of retro like that.

I do this thing. Some people find it annoying. Of course, I think it's kind of charming, but since I know I'll never be able to stop, I kind of have to. I change the words to songs to fit the occasion. And just for the record, I did it long before Weird Al made it famous. In junior high, there was a kid named Sam. I'm not using last names anymore, because in the past, guys I knew from junior high have googled themselves and found my blog. It's actually been cool, because I hadn't heard from them since 1979, but I don't want anyone to take the shit I write the wrong way. So, Sam used to call me flea, since my hair was all wild and crazy and messy. Sam was a little heavy, so I got him back by changing the words to Foreigner's, "Hot Blooded", to "...He's fat blooded, check it and see. His pinky finger weighs a hundred and three...." Yeah, it was bitchy, but then I was fighting a guy who would sit behind me in class and take his finger and wave it all around my head and make a buzzing sound, like I had bugs in my hair, so I like to think we're even.

I continued with the Foreigner theme when the girls were little, and I used to sing "Juice Box Hero" when I got them their liquid refreshments, after they woke up from their nap. I also changed the Backstreet Boys song to, "Everybody, wash your body..." when it was time for their baths, until the guy I was dating at the time, put a moratorium on that one. What?

Today, my co-worker John was being particularly annoying, so I had to change the words to Barry Manilow's "Copa Cabana" to, "His name was John. He was a loser..." And then he threw a handful of rubber bands at me over the cubicle wall and it helped me get through the day.

What songs do you change the lyrics to, and what do you replace them with?