Sick of Sickness

When Joyce was in the 5th grade (6 years ago), we had a Halloween party for her & her friends. We turned part of the basement into a haunted house (more like a haunted closet), and we did lots of Halloween party games and had a good ol' time. Nothing super fancy, and there were probably 12 or 15 kids altogether. Sam was about 4 years old at the time, and he remembers the party.

About 2 years ago, Sam asked if he was going to get to have a Halloween party in the 5th grade like Joycie. Well, of course! So that boy has been planning his party ever since. I've only started planning about 6 weeks ago. What a great lot of work a party is! Actually, I guess I have been planning it longer than that because after last year's Halloween, I bought a bunch of stuff on clearance in anticipation of having this party.

And of course, Sam has a whole lot more friends to invite because he is inviting not only his friends from his 5th grade class at his school, but also his friends from baseball and football that are in the 5th grade class of our other elementary school in our district. I made him limit invitations to 20 kids, but I think we settled on 22 or so. And since half of them have to drive so far to our house (because they live on the other side of our school district, which is an unusually long district, geographically), I invited all parents to stay for the duration of the party and the siblings are invited to the party itself. So now we're at about 40 kids and 34 parents.

The party is Thursday evening (no school for the kids on Friday). And I have so much to do by then! I've already got a lot done, and spent a bundle of money, but I'm only about half way there. Before this party is over, I figure I'll have well over $500 into it. The hours of work, I don't even want to total 'em up.

And... Sam is sick with a bad cold, upper respiratory infection like what I had. Kev is sick, too. Grrr...

I feel bad for them both, and I hope their sickness doesn't turn into pneumonia or pleurisy like mine did. But I hope that Sam isn't so sick Thursday evening that he can't even enjoy his own party. That would really, really bite.

Kev is on midnights until tomorrow night, and he got home from work this morning with the plan to clean his new muzzle loader. He just got it recently, and he spent last Thursday afternoon sighting it in. To sight a gun in requires shooting it over and over, adjusting, shooting, adjusting, shooting. We're pretty certain someone heard his shooting and decided to check it out. He broke into our pole barn, where Kev's hunting room is, and he took Kev's new muzzle loader (Thompson Center with a Leopold scope, about $900). Kev had 5 hunting knives on his table out there, and he took 4 of them (the 5th one is trash, the 4 he took, very nice), about $200 or $300. He also took Kev's Brunton binoculars that I gave to him for Christmas a couple of years ago, about $400. And that's it. There was so much more in that room he could have taken, it's crazy. There are thousands of dollars worth of hunting clothing alone, and several pairs of boots, all expensive. Compound bows and arrows, ammo. Sitting on the bench right next to the Bruntons was a nice range finder. I guess we're lucky. Whoever it was left his hand print and shoe print on our window ledge. We figure he parked out on the road and walked through the brush & woods, coming up to our place from the back. Where he entered the pole barn is quite dark at night because our yard light doesn't reach there, shadowed by the building itself.

The whole thing just creeps me out. Kev had set his muzzle loader in the corner of the room behind this big piece of tree that he uses for a hat rack (it's a piece of a cedar tree that was washed smooth on a Canadian lake that my brother hauled home for us to use as a hat rack because it had so many knobs on it from branches, it's actually pretty cool). Whoever entered the room had to look for that gun, because it wasn't visible at all. So we think he spent a bit of time out there picking out what to take. May he rot in hell for eternity.

I can't imagine how I'd feel if someone broke into our house, because I'm extremely disturbed by just the pole barn!

But what really creeps me out is that Joycie parks out there in the garage end of the pole barn. I keep thinking what if that sick, degenerate motherfucking thief was out there when she was parking her vehicle...