Urban Living

Well, once the wind died down it got a lot more bearable. Now it’s just cold, but it’s a dry cold it’s all right.

I would bet that this shit doesn’t happen to office workers in the private sector.

So not only am I cold, I’m also tired.I was awakened in the middle of the night and for a change it wasn’t The Kitty’s fault. I woke up to the sound of pounding, pounding, pounding. At 3am. At first I thought that I was dreaming but then it started again. I lay there trying to figure out what of mine was being pounded on. It wasn’t metallic so it wasn’t Minnie and if it was the door, I think I would be feeling in the wall and almost for sure, Dogger would be alarmed. I would hope.

And then it stopped.

And I said, Okay. It stopped. I will go back to bed.

And then it started again.

This time I got up. There is a limit to my fear. I have a hardcore burglar alarm and I set it before I went to bed. It did not make the pounding less alarming. At the dog park earlier in the evening, I spoke with a couple of other dog owners who were on their way to a neighborhood watch meeting and they shared fun stories about crime in their neighborhood. I mentioned the Drug Dealer and they raised me a home invasion and a cathouse. I was a little unsettled.

So. Pounding. My first thought was, should I turn every light in the house on? Do I want “them” to know I was awake? Would this make them try harder to get in? (Even scared and in the middle of the night I don’t use Bushspeak – “embolden” is not a word) . I got my flashlight and made absolutely sure it wasn’t The Kitty. It wasn’t, he was asleep in the futon. The banging stopped, again.

Since the banging had stopped, I went down stairs. I opened the door to the office to see what Dogger was doing about all this racket. She was sleeping, curled up in a little dog ball. . This seconded my idea that the banging wasn’t being done on my house. Dogger doesn’t like people coming around her house in the dark. If people had been close enough to bang on my house, she would have been upset or at least not sleeping.

After checking on Dogger I very carefully looked out the front window and then the others. Nada. The security lights hadn’t been tripped in the front or back yards. I turned on the side light and saw nothing amiss.

This isn't the first time I had been startled awake like this, right after I moved in someone thought it would be a good idea to chop wood in the middle of the night. Scared the bejesus out of me.

I also started to think about the nature of the banging, and I decided it wasn’t mere “banging”, it was hammering. Some son of a bitch either next door or behind him was doing construction work at 3am.

I thought about calling 911, but what was I going to say? Yeah, a while ago some SOB was framing something or putting up wallboard. He stopped, why don’t ya’ll drive by and see if he has a permit..

I was feeling pretty good when I took Dogger out this morning. There were no wayward bad guys nailed to my fence and Mini was fine. The only think out of the ordinary was the helicopter hovering over head.