eastowners

Current Mood: Ecstatic

I know it’s been a while since I’ve last posted, but things have been a little crazy around the Eastowners’ house. About 3 weeks ago I went back to work. It was a huge step for me, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle it. So far it’s been a good thing, and I love the people I work with. I’m working a seasonal job in a Christmas tree distribution office. Apparently I can’t stay away from Christmas trees, as if you know me in real life you’d know that I worked on a small tree farm after high school for a few years. Now, I’m dealing with truck drivers and their companies mostly on the distribution side of things. It’s taken me away from keeping up the house a bit and doing the things I had been doing during the day when Clare was gone, but the extra money will come in handy to help pay down some credit card debt and do some projects around the house.

If you read Brad’s portion of the blog you’ll know that we’ve had some things happen to us as of late…both good and bad. About 2 weeks ago Brad’s cruddy Nissan Altima was stolen off the street from in front of our house. It made life for us a little difficult, as I am Clare’s transportation to school and we leave around the same time as Brad usually does for work, so it wasn’t like I could take Brad to work. Brad walked a few times, rode his bike, and once in a while if we were ready fast enough I drove him to work on our way to school. Well, it wasn’t really on our way, but I made it on the way. It really put some strain on our lives, but in the end Brad got some exercise and actually found that he enjoyed his bike ride.

Then something odd happened 2 weeks to the day the car went missing. I had a voicemail on our phone from a guy named “Josh” who said that there was a Nissan in his driveway, and was wondering if it was ours. It was in an alley about 3 blocks from our house behind a house that looks like it was split-up into apartments with a large parking area where our car was. After calling the cops we went down to identify the car, a squad car came by, took some prints, and sent us on our way with a caved in roof and hood as it looks like whomever took it had a dance party on it. After closer inspection it looks like they may have danced on the roof after not being able to steal the radio out of it.

Things began to look brighter until I went to leave to take Clare to school on Thursday when I noticed all but one of our pumpkins were stolen. I know they were just $20 worth of pumpkins, but the one that really mattered was one that Clare had already carved. She had planted pumpkin seeds at my parent’s house, the pumpkins grew, and my parents took them with them on their Halloween campout with Clare for her to carve. She put lots of time, energy, and creative thought into this pumpkin, and it sucked to have her cry in the backseat of the car on the way to school and later on that afternoon when we found it smashed in the street around the corner from our house. I felt defeated as both a mom and as a human being. What’s next to steal, my porch furniture or my valuables inside my house?!?!?! After school we came home to pack up the remaining things we had outside, so they couldn’t be stolen.

We did have a nice evening despite our morning. Clare played outside, the VW was towed away to be fixed up, and we went out to Moe’s for some dinner. We came home, Clare was sent to get ready for bed, and I curled up on the couch with a blanket, and my laptop to settle down for the night with a drink, and some TV. I had just logged onto Facebook when I heard voices outside. I threw the laptop on the ottoman, and flung open the shade to see people outside with pumpkins. My first thought was now what is someone trying to steal? I opened the door to see about 10 people on my steps, and they all had pumpkins in their arms. They told me that I wasn’t seeing anything and that I needed to go inside, my response was “Shut up, No WAY, stay right there!” “It’s a present from Twitter they said.” I went inside to call for Brad, as he was upstairs tucking Clare in. He came downstairs to see what I was so excited about (although he thought something went wrong). Apparently we had been Pumpkined by some Pumpkin Ninjas, also known as a great group of people we’ve been talking with on an online app called Twitter for about the past 6 months.

More to come tomorrow on our attack…so stay tuned!