Instant street cred

Instant street cred

I don't know what you guys did this weekend, but I assure you that it wasn't nearly as exciting as our weekend was. Don't believe me? Read on.

Oh sure, it started out innocently enough. We did our usual loafing around the house of course, but we also drove about an hour to a neighboring city for a meeting that I had. This city is also where my family resides, so we all met up for lunch out first. After lunch and the subsequent meeting, Nick and I decided to hang out with my brother and sister-in-law, and of course our precious little niece, because we just don't ever get to see them enough. And whenever the option is posed between doing just about anything or hanging out with our niece, we are ALWAYS going to choose being with the baby. We'd probably give up the chance to have lunch with the Pope himself if the other option was to stick around and feed the baby mashed squash.

Anyway, the plan was to play with the baby, make a lovely dinner together and watch a movie afterwards. And yes, I realize that this is still not very thrilling. I'm getting to it.

When Nick went out to our car to grab the movie, we realized that while we were in the warm, cozy house enjoying a great dinner, our dear, dear Kenneth had become the victim of a vicious drive-by shooting while parked on the street.

Yes, I just said that our car was in a drive-by. And no, my brother and sister-in-law do not live in the ghetto. They actually live on one of the most well-known and nicest streets in the whole city, so your guess is as good as mine as to why we were targeted. Wrong place at the wrong time, I guess. Either that or I have some disgruntled readers who were upset at the way the vote turned out.

I suppose I should say that it wasn't exactly the type of drive-by shooting you are probably picturing. It was only a quiet pellet gun, hence why we had no idea it had occurred until Nick happened to go out to the car. But it WAS a shooting, and they WERE driving, so you can connect the dots yourself.

The front driver's side window was shot out, and the pellet traveled through at such an angle that it also hit the front windshield, leaving a small bullet hole. A second pellet hit the side of the car and left us a nice little parting gift.

Nick was so upset that he stood outside in the freezing sleet in just this t-shirt and no coat, using every swear word in existence (while also making up a few of his own). He waited out there by himself for the police to come, and no, he did not want a coat and no, he did not want to come inside by the fire. He preferred instead to stand around and swear, so who were we to question that. The police officer said that just the night before, six or seven vehicles that were parked at a nearby shopping center had their windows shot out by a pellet gun as well, so it looks like whoever is doing this is out on a little shooting spree. The good news is that the shopping center has surveillance cameras, so we are really hoping that they can get a license plate number or at the very least, a vehicle description.

We (I mean Nick) spent a good portion of the night on the phone with the insurance company, and my parents came over to the rescue with a plastic tarp. Definitely put a damper on our evening.

Since we weren't interested in driving home with our window completely open, we had to stay the night in town. My parents took us home with them, gave us new toothbrushes, and we slept in our clothes in the guest room. That night, my dad spent way too much time thinking of a way to engineer a new window out of a paperclip, a sock and some Saran wrap. Or something like that.

The next morning, the boys worked outside while my mom, sister-in-law and I watched from a giant picture window above the driveway. While drinking mugs of hot chocoolate. It was very hard on us.

Having a crazy plastic window did come in handy on the drive home. We were able to stare at the people who passed us and say stuff, like, "Dude, what are you lookin' at? Haven't you seen a plexiglass window before?" Or, "Why are you driving so slow? We DON'T EVEN HAVE A WINDOW and we are going faster than you!" Good times.

And we thought once we got our window fixed, we'd just keep our plexiglass/wood window combo in the trunk like a spare. How many people can haul around a spare window? Not many, is my guess. And who knows when you might need to pull out your spare window.

Anyway, the car is in the shop at this very moment getting all repaired, so hopefully we'll get Kenneth back very soon. We miss him. And a special shout-out goes to our oh-so-helpful family members who assisted us in so many ways, whether it be a couple of free toothbrushes and some contact solution, an entire rigged-up window, or letting us borrow their super-sweet mini van while the car is in the shop. We will be riding around in STYLE for a few days, so let us know if you have any kids you need us to take to soccer practice or anything.

There goes whatever tiny bit of street cred we incurred.