A Car In The Yard: Evening Excitement

Last night Ernie and I were sitting in the media room when he heard a, well, not a crash, not a boom, just a big THUNK outside. The No Outlet sign at the end of our alley gets hit sometimes; in fact Ernie had just called the City that day to tell them an Ameren truck ran into it and it needed to be fixed, so at first we thought it might be that. When Ernie looked out however he saw that a car had somehow backed into our tree in that front corner of the yard. It was really wedged in. We ran out to the porch and the driver yelled out, "I'm so sorry" and seemed to be trying to drive away. We started shouting and she stopped. I still can't quite figure out what she did. I guess she must have pulled up into the neighbor's drive and then tried to back into our alley but missed it by a long shot. The neighbors (the ones with the many, MANY visitors) yelled out and said they didn't know who she was. We nodded and called the cops. I came in and called the boys down and we fluttered about. Owen ran out to stand with Ernie and Leo and I stood in the warmth, peeking out the window. Eventually I put a coat on and went out and the woman was walking away from the front steps. Owen told me she'd wanted to use our bathroom. I immediately felt bad and said, "Oh, she can use our bathroom!" but Ernie just said, "uh, no, she's stumbling around; I don't want her in our house." And Owen said, "Yeah, we've got some good glass in there." Side note: good LORD but I love that boy.

Eventually the cops showed up and she yelled, "They wouldn't let me in their house to pee," and the cop said, "Of course not, you're a stranger" which made Ernie and Owen feel better. I still felt kinda bad. The whole thing went on and on and on as these things do. A cop fell on the ice. The woman started yelling at us for watching. Well, this I did not feel bad about. Her car was in my yard. When they started giving her the sobriety tests we did go inside though...just didn't feel right to sit and watch. Eventually they took her off, a cop came and got our information. I was so glad that Ernie was the one to talk to him as they asked his height and weight for the police report. Ugh! Eventually a tow truck came. It took quite some doing to pull it out due to the weird angle it was at and the adjacent telephone pole.

This morning the yard looks remarkably undisturbed. Our sun dial is broken and the tree has some gashes. The health of this tree was already a bit precarious so we shall see what this does to it. The car's tail light sits on the ground next to it. Here's to a more peaceful evening tonight.