The kindness of strangers, well, my kids

Sometimes we use my car like others use traffic cones. We use it to reserve spaces on the street. We park it to block a spot where we access the side yard when we've scheduled the excavation guy to come tear up the yard. That's what we did last night. Parked it and didn't think much about it.

This morning, Mr. Dog got up early to prep for his "digging friend," as Little Dog calls Kevin, our excavation guy. Not long later, Mr. Dog called up to me from the foot of the stairs. My car was broken into last night. Passenger side window smashed out. Glove compartment and center console rifled. Shit. Well, we checked and I hadn't left my phone in the car, my purse was in the house, nothing major had been mistakenly left in the car. Nothing much had be taken. The crackhead, or meth monkey had taken my iPhone charger and a pair of iPhone headphones. That's it. Nothing of much value. So they got away with two small, low value items while I am left with a broken window to replace and the bill for that will far exceed the value of anything left in my car. Fine. That's just great. I went right into the house to get someone out to fix it up.

My first call was not promising. Turns out no one does mobile car window repairs on Sunday. All of the supply warehouses are closed so they don't have the stock to do it. Better yet, since tomorrow is Memorial Day, they won't be open then either. I'd have to wait until Tuesday to get this fixed, and that's kind of a problem because I'm flying to Atlanta on Tuesday. Isn't that grand. I refused to believe this so I made several other calls. Each time I managed to get a hold of someone, they told me the same thing. No luck until Tuesday. Just cover it with plastic and wait. My mood turned toxic.

I know we live in a "transitional" neighborhood. I know that just a few blocks east of our street is the worst stretch of the drug and hooker zone of a major street. It was getting better for a while, but with the economy tanking and all, it seems to have gotten worse. Not long ago someone broke into our garage. My car has already been broken into once in my own driveway, and a while back my bike and child bike trailer were swiped right off our porch. Other neighbors have reported mail thefts and break ins. I realize this is part of the price of living in the city instead of tucking ourselves safely away in the suburbs, but it freakin' sucks.

With all f these circumstances working against me, I went to make breakfast for the boys. I thought at least I should feed the kids instead of stewing in my fury. So I made toast and cheesy eggs, piled up the plates and went to feed the boys. They love cheesy eggs and gave me great praise for my hard work. I served them first and when I sat down to my breakfast I somehow managed to tip the plate and slide the entire meal onto the floor. That broke my dam. Suddenly a flood of curse words worthy of a sailor with an attitude and a large vocabulary flowed out of my mouth. Tears welled up in my eyes. When I finally lost steam, I looked over and saw two very shocked children.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't use those words. I'm just so frustrated and angry about the car, and my breakfast. I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's ok, mommy," said Big Dog using his calming voice that sounds a lot like the voice I use when I need to soothe down a tantruming child. "You can have some of my eggs."
"No thanks, sweetie. But thanks for that."
"You know," said Little Dog, "I've spilled my eggs before. Everybody spills sometimes."
"Yea," Big Dog continued, "I've dropped my whole plate one time and had to go get more."
As frustrated as I'd been before, a small smile started to pull at the corners of my mouth.
"Maybe you could go get some more," suggested Little Dog.
"Last night papa spilled some milk," said Big Dog. "It happens." And he shrugged a little shrug.
And surprisingly, I felt better. I'm raising some pretty nice people here.