Costumes by Kathleen

Halloween cannot be over soon enough. Working at Wal-Mart tends to suck the fun out of most holidays and Halloween is no exception. I'm not even the one trying on costumes so why, by the end of the day, am I the one covered in strands of synthetic blue hair, feathers, and glitter? And then there's all the people who are too creative for a store-bought costume and must design their own but they still all come to Wal-Mart for supplies. A person could make a small fortune selling only green tights in the weeks leading up to Halloween. This past weekend alone I helped outfit a pirate hooker, a boxer, the Honey Nut Cheerios bee, a zombie, Dick Cheney, that guy Dick Cheney shot, a pimp and three Amy Winehouses. I have used up every modicum of creativity in my body. I have nothing left for myself. Should I need a costume, I will have to go as a Wal-Mart employee or a librarian.

Meanwhile at home, the battle rages on with my rodent roommates. I was watching tv the other night when one scampered out from behind the coach. I hurled a shoe at it and said "Where do you think you're going, bitch?"...at exactly the same time my poor human roommate was passing quietly by my open door with her laundry. She was startled but thankfully she gave me a chance to explain. We got to talking about how none of us in the house really knew each other very well. We decided we should plan some activities we could all do together and to convert the spare bedroom upstairs into a common room. The first activity was going to the market Saturday morning which of course I couldn't do because my presence was desperately required at Wal-Mart.

We also had a mouse killin' party. It wasn't so much a party as a brief meeting in my room to set mouse traps and chat and sample the cheese/bait. Only one death occurred but it has ignited our bloodlust. Now I know how my cat feels after a kill. It was a great bonding experience but not as much fun as mouse hunting on Robie Street. I have fond memories of our adventures with those unkillable mice, one person banging on the radiator to scare the little vermin out, another person poised and ready with a broom or other murder weapon and someone else standing by with a bucket to be used as needed. Good times.

Here, our newest roommate (the cook) checks the traps in my room every morning, removes the bodies, and resets the traps while I sleep soundly in my makeshift emergency bedroom across the hall. She spent today out in the backyard planting crocuses and arranging rocks in the garden. How did we survive our first month in the house without this woman?

The House

I stole some pictures of my new digs from my roommate's Facebook album.

Roomies

We have a new roommate in our house. She seems like a perfectly nice girl but she'll take some getting used to by the original three of us who had already gotten into a comfortable routine. The first thing she did was rearrange the kitchen to be more efficient, wash all our dirty dishes and stock up on much-needed supplies. The nerve! She may prove to be a bit high maintenance for us. It will come as no great shock to most people that when I'm completely out of legitimate chocolate food sources, I go to my emergency double chocolate cupcake mix and stir up a small bowl of batter and eat it straight. I was having just such an emergency the other day when our fancy new roommate asked me what I was eating. Because she works as a cook at a classy downtown eatery, I was embarrassed and told her it was pudding. But she's not stupid. She knew. Girl needs to learn not to ask so many personal questions.

Rumours are flying that we may soon have another new roommate. But who would be crazy enough to move into this madhouse? Stay tuned for all the juicy gossip about roommate #5.

We also have several other new roommates of the furry, four-legged variety. I called the landlord and told him we had mice in the house. He told me we weren't allowed to have pets. I could tell he used that line on all his tenants who called with pest problems so I didn't laugh. This was not a joking matter. The preferred hangout for the mice seems to be my room because of the convenient access through the fireplace. For all the trouble that fireplace has caused me, it had better provide a warm cheery glow during the cold days of winter. A VERY, merry warm cheery glow. After today's mouse sighting, which was a bit too close to my bed for comfort, I have moved across the hall to one of the spare bedrooms. I'd like to see that wise-cracking landlord try and rent that room with me living in it. Although he would probably prefer it to my previous methods for a mouse-free sleep. I had been setting up several lamps around my bed on the floor because light deters mice (I have no idea if this is true) and I also set up my fan hoping the noise and breeze would keep them away. The fan made me cold so I had to turn the heat up extra high during the night. I'm sure it looked like I was performing some kind of weird ritual. Maybe I should stop being such a girl and just get some mouse traps.

Guess who won't be getting the mumps this year? Me. I got my shot at school on Thursday. I think the vaccine may have made me temporarily insane because I have no memory of the class I had right after the shot and the notes I took during that class look like they were written by someone else. Stupid re-emerging childhood illnesses.

Friday is the only day of the week that I don't have classes or work so the last thing I want to do is go to a boring library conference. This Friday I will be attending the Nova Scotia School Library Conference. This conference already has two strikes against it. First of all, it's in Truro, the second worst place in Nova Scotia after New Glasgow. Secondly, it's about school libraries and I never want to work in a school library because I hate schoolchildren. But now I have to go because all the overachievers in my class are going. Who overachieves at community college? What are these people trying to prove? Unfortunately when all twenty of us graduate in May, we'll all be applying for the same jobs and we'll all be using the same two teachers as references so I can't allow anyone to be too much better than me. Now I just have to keep my mouth shut about having a valid driver's license and being over 25 or I'll get roped into renting a van and driving us all there and that would not turn out well. Possible headlines include "Bespectacled book-enthusiast endangers lives of conference-bound classmates" or "Van full of nerds careens into guardrail. Highway closed for hours to clean up books, glasses and retainers".