My next door motel neighbors get more and more bizarre every day. I wish I could hear more of the conversation. It sounds like they have a pretty exciting life. Today she was ranting about something that involved her saying “They’d have no proof! I would deny it!” every few sentences. The guy was yelling that he was ready to kill someone. I heard her complaining about being in protective custody at some point. Something about bus tickets. They’ve been there for a week now. They’ll leave to go somewhere, get in their truck and crank the starter for several minutes straight. Sometimes it will start up and they’ll rev the engine for awhile before it dies. Then they’ll go back to cranking the starter for another few minutes. It amazes me that the battery never gives out. The guy just left a few minutes ago. It took him a few minutes to get the truck going, but he finally left. When they can’t get it started they’ll come back into their room, extra pissed off for the night. Luckily they were fairly tame last night when the kids stayed over.

Yesterday morning, the guy’s cell phone kept ringing. I guess he doesn’t know how to stop it from ringing when he doesn’t want to answer it. It seems to ring fairly early each morning and it’ll ring the full 4 times before going to voice mail. Yesterday someone kept trying to call them. On the 3rd attempt the guy yelled, “FUCK you!” at his cell phone to try and stop it from ringing. It didn’t work.

Yesterday I went to the post offices (I have 2 of them I have to visit until my mail gets consolidated into just the cheap one), visited the Book Bin in downtown and bought 3 books. I got The Complete Novels of Mark Twain, volumes 1 and 2. They’re both copyrighted in the 1960’s and I think they’re fairly complete. Then I got the Encyclopedia of World History which is copyrighed in the 1940’s. I’m so overloaded on books that I need to read. I’m not even finished with the Mark Twain bio that I started over a month ago. I also went to the thrift store and looked around for awhile. I think I’ll be buying my dishes there once I get moved into my apartment. Lots of good stuff there for cheap. I went by a bike shop and I went to Wendy’s for lunch. I later found out that Colleen and the kids went through the drive-thru there while I was inside eating.

At the UPS Store, some guy in his mid-20’s stopped me and said, “You’re from Illinois??” (He noticed my license plate.) So I told him I was, what part I was from and he said he was from Effingham. The weird thing is, this guy had no teeth at all. No teeth. And he was in his 20’s. It seems like there’s a lot of this around here because he’s the 3rd young guy that I’ve seen in the past couple weeks with no teeth. At the parade, a couple of guys walked by me probably in their mid 20’s and the one that was talking was missing his 4 front teeth. Other than that he looked like a very normal person. I’m just wondering how someone loses so many teeth so early in life. My friend Shonna in Illinois lost all of hers in her late 20’s because of drugs. Meth, I think. Maybe meth is just really big around here. Or maybe I just happen to be running into the few residents with no teeth.

Around 1:30 I picked up the kids from Colleen’s. I really hoped the kids would be up for the idea of seeing Zathura at the theater. And they were. We stopped by the theater to check the times on it and we ended up getting there just as it started. The kids say it was better than Jumanji. I really liked it, but I think Jumanji was much better. Definitely not a disappointing movie, though. Went back to the motel for awhile and then went to Izzy’s for dinner. Emily picked Izzy’s and I had a little trouble finding it. It was a nice buffet restuarant, though. It’s weird taking directions for things from Emily. She told me where Burger King was this afternoon for lunch too. She knows the town better than me. I still take wrong turns and get a little lost occasionally.

Before the movie I took the kids by my new place. We walked around it and they looked in a few windows. Looks like they’re still painting it and renovating the bathroom. They seem happy enough with it. Today we went to Albertson’s for donuts. (Going out for 3 meals a day is getting expensive) Some old guy there knew Emily and gave her a hug. He claims he saw me at the parade with them which is BS since I wasn’t at the parade with them. Guess he works at the after-school thing though. Hung around the motel most of the day, played some Legos. I think I napped for a short time, read some of my book, watched Jumanji on TV. Took them back to Colleen’s at 2, after some lunch at Burger King.

It’s still rained every day and there’s plenty of more rain in the forecast. The end of this week, rain is being replaced by “areas of fog” in the forecast so maybe that’s a good thing. I wish there’d just be a few really nice days here before winter officially starts. It’s hard to enjoy exploring the town very much when it just rains all the time.