our house in the middle of a....drug bust!

At first thought of moving into our townhouse, I can't say I was terribly pleased. I'd only seen the place once, and it ended up being a drive by. Al's sister lived here for a while but when we came to see them, they weren't home.  My houses growing up were always in new developments with brand new houses with potted flowers and window shutters and trampolines and connecting back yards that all the mormon kids ran around together in. So, needless to say, this place looked like a hole. But then once we got inside and came here a couple times, I decided it was going to be great. It's got a lot of room and is clean and nice and we're really quite comfortable here! I love our home.

I knew right off the get go that our neighbors were treats. Special treats. Every day when I would come home, the two neighbors on our right side were sitting right outside their door (since that is the only place to sit that is on your own property) basking in the sun...and they had been there the entire day. Dale had his shirt off and was the color of a walnut and the texture of an elephant and Susan had her orange spandex dress on with her hair slicked back. This was the same. Every. single. day. They are both on AISH and pleasant as plums and love to say hi but nothing else every time I walk in my house and also love asking for favors.

Susan is my favorite. We can smell anything and everything she does in our stairwell (and the rest of the house) but really good in the stairwell. She likes to smoke and also likes to burn her stinky food that she makes for her and her dogs. One day we heard smoke alarms going off and went to shut them off thinking they were ours. Turns out they were coming from the stairwell. So we waited like 10-15 minutes, and I figured I should send Al over there since I started smelling a nice disgusting smokey smell wafting in. So Al knocks on her door, and here comes Susan....one smoke detector under her right arm and one in her left....still beeping.
"just wanted to make sure everything was ok over here..."
"oh ya, just burnt some food"
"......."
(gesturing to the smoke detectors) "these should go off in a while."

She's the best. Another incident:
Knock on the door.
Alan opens the door..."oh, hey Susan!"
"could you shovel my walk for me in the morning?"
"..sure!"
"I can't get out of my house."
Susan climbs through the snow back home.

We also, right off the get go, noticed that our other neighbors a few doors away had LOTS of friends. New, different friends every day. Most of them 20-something grease monkeys just getting off work from their blue collar jobs. Everyone has a key. And if you don't, all you need is the mail box to get your friendship fix. But mostly, walk up to the house, go in, stay for two minutes, get your friendship, and go home....happy as ever!

As you can imagine, they are all quite friendly. And we really do love it here.

But a few nights ago, the top story in the Herald was a shooting.....involving a cocaine bust. We see the picture in the paper and, wouldn't ya know it, that's right by our house. Like, our house was almost in the picture.  A legit, straight-up shooting right across the street from us. Our neighbors, upon questioning, referred to our neighborhood as "the projects" and "livin in the slums"

I feel pretty legit now (and BA enough to use the word 'legit').....like I've seen everything. "oh yaaa, this one time...pretty much right outside my front window...I saw a man shoot a guy....right in the face! I saw the whole thing!"

I guess it's a good thing we have to move soon. For now, I'll just keep my pepper spray on me at all times...like I was already doing anyways due to extreme paranoia.

PS the guy that got shot is ok. No need for panic. But he really DID get shot....and we really did sleep through the whole thing.