Save The Drama Fo' Yo' Mama

Does anyone else get a lot of drama in their lives? My personal drama has slowed quite a bit since leaving the theatre world (and Alamosa and residents thereof). But it can never fully end.

Today we took the van in for some routine maintenance which required us to use the car to carry everyone home. It wasn't that big of a deal, except Matt had to sit up front with Josh and me. It did remind me of another day we were forced to use the car for several people...

(Insert Wayne's World dream sequence here complete with wavy lines: Doodle-a-doo, doodle-a-doo, doodle-a-doo.)

Last April we moved into Mom and Dad's new house. We were living in their basement and hadn't found our own house yet. The day we moved in, the neighbor across the street seemed to be having some issues. There were three police cars with several officers milling around the outside of the house. Dad's truck was parked in our driveway and ours was in front of the house with one cop car parked behind me, the second across the street and the third parked on our side of the street on the other side of the driveway. Got the picture? Things calmed down eventually and all seemed fine. (BTW, someone else was going to buy the home before Mom and Dad and prompted a letter to be sent to the neighbors around us that a group home for mentally challenged adults was going to be moving in. That deal fell through so Mom and Dad got the house but no one bothered to let the neighbors know that the first letter was now void so between the letter and the cop cars, some neighbors were very hesitant to get to know us.)

By June, problems with the neighbor across the street happened again. Josh and I left the house to vote and we had left the kids with Mom. My sister Lori and her three boys were staying with us and Pete had just gotten home from his mission. After voting, I called Mom and she told us that cop cars had shown up across the street again and they needed us to take care of the kids because Tyler (Lori's oldest boy) was having a bad asthma attack and needed to be taken to the clinic.

Josh and I were almost home when we saw that our street had been blocked off. We began turning the corner to get to the house from the alley behind it and heard over the police radio that the people at our house were standing in their front window and needed to get away from it to be safe. Josh sped up a bit and we parked in the alley and went quickly into the house. Along the way we met a police officer who came around to the back door to talk to Mom. We let them in and discovered that the guy across the street had an arsenal of guns and ammunition and was suicidal. With Tyler's health and a total of six little kids in the house, we agreed with the officer that it was a good idea for us to leave (he also asked Mom if they could use their front room as additional surveillance--that was kind of cool). Unfortunately, the only vehicle that was safe to leave in was the car parked in the alley.

So,

Mom

Lori

Pete

Tyler

Trenton

Teagan

Emma

and Abby

all sat in the back of

the car

while Josh, Matt and I (two months pregnant) sat in the front seat. We got to the clinic and met Dad there (who was driving the Mustang). Mom, Lori, and Tyler stayed at the clinic while Dad took Pete and maybe a kid or two and the rest of us went to stay at Gramma and Grampa's house for the next several hours.

By the end of the day, we were allowed home and the neighbor was taken into custody. The house across the street is currently for sale.