Too much excitement

I'm a little bit jumpy. And with good reason.

I live on a street where people shoot out the back window of your car. That's reason enough to be on edge. Then, last night around 9 p.m., I started smelling smoke wafting through the house. At the same time, through the open windows, I heard several neighbors talking about the smell and suggesting that the vacant foreclosure house might be on fire. Within a couple minutes, every fire engine in town was lined up on our street, lights blazing.

Firefighters in full gear were wandering the neighborhood, trying to figure out where the smell was coming from. They never did figure it out. But nothing burst into flames, so they left. Personally, I think maybe several people had their grills going at the same time and created a stronger odor than usual. I did speculate that the fire, when we thought it actually WAS a fire, had something to do with the fact that the guy who used to live there IS a firefighter. Maybe someone was messing with him? Maybe he's a closet pyromaniac? Maybe I watch too much Law and Order.

About half an hour after the burning-smell incident, I heard raised voices outside our front window and went to investigate. That's when I saw the incredibly inebriated woman stumbling down the sidewalk, slapping at the guy walking next to her, and screaming choice expletives along the way.

A couple minutes after that, a police car with lights (and maybe sirens, although at this point, I was so jittery I can't really remember) went screaming past our house and off to the north.

Happy holiday. Police must hate the holidays. Especially in our neighborhood.

In an interesting related development, Henry was checking out the police officer's belt of weapons and cop tools when we were filing the report on the broken window. And he was excited to learn about a new weapon: the taser. "Mommy, what's a taser?" "It's a weapon that, when it touches you, it shocks you and sort of stuns you into behaving." "Oh. So it won't kill ya, it'll just knock ya out."

Life lessons from Lakeside Drive. Lovely.