Man Gets Drunk, Calls Wife Beautiful

When I arrived home, there was a stack of papers on the floor in front of the door of our apartment. At first I thought that we were getting in trouble for playing music too loud, but then I noticed they were in front of everyone else's doors too.

Turns out it was a document from the strata council notifying owners that the former property management company of our complex had misappropriated tens of thousands of dollars from the strata corporation. The strata council was very upset by this. They thought it was a very bad thing, and they were right, but it didn't upset me as much as this other piece of information couched in between all the fraud hoopla. Strata fees were going up 20-30%.

David came home and I showed him the documents. All the blood drained from his face.

"Why?" he said.

"I don't know." I said.

We both knew we couldn't afford to pay $400/month for a strata fee. We were very upset about the idea of paying that amount of money- so upset, in fact, that we couldn't even talk to each other without one of us almost crying.

Later that evening, I was reading on the couch and David came into the room and said,

"You know what? You know what I want to do?"

"What."

He said he wanted to be an irresponsible drunk. He said he couldn't handle any more pressure, any more bad luck, that all he wanted to do was quit his job and drink all day.

I said, "That is a wonderful idea"

He thought I was being sarcastic, but I wasn't.

"I'm going to Safeway to buy some jam." I said.

I told him we needed the jam, because we hadn't had jam in a long time. He agreed it had been too long. "Go buy jam." He said.

I got in the car and drove to the liquor store. We had $587.00 in our account and with that I was able to buy 75 six-packs of Bowen Island Lager. A very nice man named Al helped me push the cart full of six-packs out to my car and loaded them all in my trunk for me. "Have a good night," he said. His nose was a red juice nose, and it looked like it wanted me to invite him over to share the beer, but I just said, "Thanks, you too.", got in my car and drove back home.

I only brought two six packs in from the car, one in each hand. David was laying on the floor listening to Donovan.

"Where's the jam?" he said.