What is it with me and cops?

Some of you may remember my run-in with the cop after I parked the wrong way in front of my house a few weeks ago because of the whole too-many-cups-of-coffee-issue.

Well, the weirdness continues...

Yesterday, I pulled up in front of my house after dropping the kids to school and I heard a plastic-y crunching noise. So I got out and looked and there was a pile of credit cards. I figured maybe one of my neighbors dropped them, but when I picked them up, I realized that they belong to several different people.

So, I brought them inside and called the non-emergency police number to find out what to do with them. The guy I spoke to said they'd send someone out to fetch them. When the knock on my door sounded, I grabbed the cards and peeked to make sure it was the police and stopped dead. It was the same dude from the "I had to pee real bad" incident. Now this may seem reasonable, but we have a police force of almost 250 officers, which means there are 80-90 cops per 12 hour shift. Even with our city divided up into quadrants, that's still 20-25 cops for my area of town.

I went out onto the porch and we had the following conversation.

Cop: (with his hand on the handle of his taser) "I hear you found some credit cards."

Me: "Yes I did. Here...these are for you." (I handed him the plastic sandwich bag where I'd stored the credit cards so I wouldn't lose them. You might think it wouldn't be possible to lose a pile of eleven cards in an hour, but I'm amazing and can misplace anything in three seconds flat.)

Cop: "So, you found them in your backyard?"

Me: (befuddled by the fact that it's the same cop) "Yes. Wait...no. Not in the backyard."

Cop: "In the front yard"

Me: Yes. Wait...no."

Cop: (Eying me a little strangely.) "Well, where did you find them?"

Me: "By your car."

Cop: (Suspicious weird look aimed my way - at this point, I was worried that he was starting to think I'd stolen them myself)

Me: "I mean, I found them in the street, where the front end of your car is. Sorry...they're a little gritty - I kinda ran over them. Accidentally."

Cop: (Flipping through the cards) "Well, I'll take these back to the station. Thanks for calling this in."

Me: "No problem. Um...by the way, thanks for not giving me a ticket a few weeks ago for parking the wrong way."

Cop: (Clearly trying not to laugh) "Yeah...I thought that was you."

I worry that there's file that has my name on it and it's getting bigger by the month. If there is such a file, I'm guessing it says things like "crazy" or "odd behavior." Oh well, at least it wasn't the same cop who came to visit me when Betty the Biddy called about my children dancing naked in the rain.

Small mercies, right?

So does this stuff ever happen to you? I'm hoping it's not just me, so if you've got weird cop stories, let me know that I'm not alone - lol!

What a week...

On Monday and Tuesday, I was informed repeatedly via nasty phone messages and email that I am the "meanest, most selfish person in the world." I was also informed that if the toxic person I jettisoned from my life resumes her self destructive behavior, it's all my fault. I'm not buying into this pile of crap, but I can't say it doesn't hurt.

On Wednesday, my husband and my youngest son and I went out to the boy scout camp for family night and the Order of the Arrow ceremony. The boys chosen for the Order of the Arrow are called up in front of the entire camp, spend the night alone in the woods without shelter, remain silent for 24 hours and perform a service project - the project in this case was chopping wood for 8 hours. Both my son Killian and Brynn's son were chosen to take part. The ceremony was really cool and I'm so proud of both of our boys. Personally, I can't believe Killian stayed quiet for 24 hours, but apparently he did.

Check out Brynn's blog on the subject of camp over at Hitting the Hot Spot. It's great. http://totalebound.blogspot.com/2008/07/brynn-paulin-live-from-summer-camp.html

On Thursday, I got a frantic phone call from my daycare girlies. Usually they call me at around 10 AM when they wake up and I pick them up and bring them back to my house. This morning they called at 8, screaming and crying that someone was trying to break in. They called the cops and I raced over there to find a very frazzled handyman who was hired by the landlord to do some work on the house. Unfortunately the landlord never bothered to call and let the family know that someone would be doing work.

After the police left and the contractor stopped freaking out, I took the girls home with me and we took Corwin, my youngest to the orthodontist where we discovered he needs two phases of braces. yay. Then we picked up his two best friends and they spent the night.

On Friday, the overnight guests stayed 'til suppertime when I happily dropped them back at home. Then I got ready for my RWA meeting the next day. Since Brynn was still at camp, I had to run the meeting. I think it might have been the shortest meeting in RWA history - under 15 minutes.

After the meeting was finished, I picked up Brynn and we drove downstate and had supper at the lovely Cindy Spencer Pape's house (her husband is an awesome cook) Isabelle Drake and her husband were there, as was the delightful Kaener Langford and one super awesome Dakota Rebel. I'd met everyone but Dakota before, and I'm happy to report, Dakota is just as freaking fabulous as she seems like she is online. I laughed 'til I cried and had an all-around wonderful evening.

This week, I'm doing piles of laundry, prepping for our family vacation and writing like a mad fiend.