Excitement--Tuesday night, Jefferson City, Missouri

Sometime's you have to eat your words. Tuesday morning I wrote how everything was going so much better and then--10:30 PM--I'm on the phone with the video store, Hastings (a store I really like by the way) when suddenly we hear a crunch and a crack and police sirens everywhere. Someone--he was captured two blocks away on Cherry Street--ditched his SUV in the alley next to our house, rushed through our yard, and totally demolished our wrought iron gate and latice woodwork by the entranceway.

Can't tell you where he went next, but I do know the police asked me to check out the open cat basement we are beginning work on and to inspect another property where I, by mistake, left a door open. Flashlight in hand, I investigated, saw the destruction--more for me to fix (and I haven't even written about all of the exciting work I've done on the houses on Ash Street like rebuild porches and clean out basements and put up ceiling fans). This time, though, a police officer came to me and said he was ready to do a search. Guess I misunderstood. I thought they asked me to do the search. Since I already did one, they made only a cursory look around.

Twenty minutes later, everything was quiet again.

Then--an hour later--my son says someone's in the yard, so here I go again to see what's going on (armed with a flashlight). This morning we saw the broken gate, destroyed woodwork and some clothing left behind when the suspect made his escape.

This is a small town. Might even be in the paper tonight.