9-1-1, What's Your Emergency?

Sometimes I feel a little like I'm living in a soap opera. Do you ever feel that way? Recently my office manager and I have joked about me having a little dark rain cloud over my head, following me around. Seriously, though, although some things in my life haven't been all that great lately, other things have gone wonderfully, so all in all, I can't complain.

Some days, nothing much happens and I hardly know what to blog about. Some days, so much happens that it's impossible to write it all in one blog post. This has been one of those more-eventful 24-hour periods. Jury duty. A craft idea to share. And then there's last night's episode of Life in the 'Hood.

Since last night came first, I'll tell you about that now.

Monday night, at around 8:30 p.m., I was in the master bedroom at the back of the house, writing my blog post about having to get up early for a boring day of jury duty, and Hubby was in the front of the house in the living room watching TV (and taking apart a wool blazer, I might add). As I was sitting here writing, I heard what--when I thought about it for a minute--sounded like one of our neighbors pounding on a metal shed with a sledgehammer. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Then silence. "Now why would my neighbors be tearing down a shed in the dark?," I wondered. Again I heard Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!, so I stopped typing, got up from my desk, and headed down the hall toward the living room to see what Hubby thought about the noise.

"Hubby" (or words to that effect), I called, as I was walking down the hall, "What was that?" "Stay back! Don't come out here," he yelled. "Uh, . . . was that gunshots?," I asked. Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it certainly was! As I learned before long, a car had pulled up outside our house and fired nine or ten shots into the house across the street from us. I'll omit the rest of the scintilating conversation between me and Hubby at that point, especially since his part of it was a bit muffled because his face was pressed tight against the carpet. Somewhere in my mind, it also registered that I had heard a car drive away, so I took a chance and darted from the hall into the kitchen to lock the sliding glass door to the back yard. Hubby joined me in the kitchen and suggested I call 9-1-1.

Well, as you may imagine, mine wasn't the first call they'd gotten from our neighborhood. The operator, though, wanted to get as much detail from me as she could. Did anyone see what happened? No, I was in the back of the house and Hubby was laying on the floor. He DID get a pretty good look at the carpet, but that was about it, other than seeing flashes of light from the gun(s). He didn't see the car or any of the people in it.

Then she wanted to know what was the color of the house where the shooting took place? Gray, I think. It's been painted several times and I don't pay much attention, frankly. I turned to ask Hubby, but he was back in the living room, crawling around on the floor again, turning off lights and the television.

This isn't the first time the same house has been involved in a shooting incident. Oh, no. If you've been reading my blog for a long time, perhaps you'll remember the other incident; if not, you can read about it HERE. The first shooting, the one I talked about in the previous post, happened several years ago, and the nice married couple with kids that were living in the house when I wrote that post? They've since moved out and now there are two adult women with teenaged daughters. The adult women have a couple of shady-looking boyfriends, so our best guess right now is that this shooting had something to do with the boyfriends. Same house, different renters. And oddly enough, at the time of last night's shooting, no one was home, but the women pulled up into their driveway about five minutes later.

After I got off the phone with 9-1-1, I joined Hubby in the living room, peering out between the window blinds. Our neighbor next door came out and crossed the street to help turn off the water--one of the bullets had struck a pipe and water was gushing out. We waited and waited for the police to arrive--they finally did about ten minutes later.

This morning (as I was leaving for jury duty), I took a photo of the house.

I don't know how well you can see it, but the front window is boarded up and if you look close, you can see sticky tapes on it--those mark the bullet holes. There's also a hole in the garage door, the porch post, and the water pipe; the general thought is that the shooter (or shooters) fired the first few somewhat wild shots from the car, stopped and got out of the car, and then took aim at the front window.

Our neighborhood is usually quiet. People are friendly, older, and settled. We live in a decent neighborhood, but we don't live far from some questionable areas. Not far enough, anyway.

Last time we had a shooting, I thought I was fine until I went to work the next day and burst into tears and couldn't stop. This time I thought I was fine, and it seems I am--no tears anyway, although I AM tired and when I hear a car drive by? Yeah, I'm a little jumpy. So I think I'll head to bed with a book and call it an early night. The Sweat Shop will have to wait until another night.

Before I go, though, I wanted to mention that Greenmare over at Mare's Nest, is having rotator cuff surgery and will be out of commission for awhile. In an effort to have a little fun with it, though, she has a contest going on. All you have to do to enter is make up a story about how she injured her rotator cuff--one that's more interesting than the TRUE story. Stop by, wish her well, and make up something outrageous!