Cops and insane people.

So, I've had a little time off and the subsequent excitement hasn't been all that I had hoped. We have this crazy lady living down the street from us. She's young-ish, maybe in her mid-30's but from the number of kids she has (maybe 5?) you'd can never tell. She lives in a house about a block away from us and the house has nothing to offer in the way of a backyard. I assume they noticed this before they moved in. How could you not? In any case, she allows her children, all of them, to play in the street. I first noticed this quite a while ago when she was outside on the porch smoking and I drove by and she screamed "slow down!" at the top of her lungs as I passed. I, of course, looked at my speedometer to see a display of a miserly 15 miles per hour. I responded my yelling back "stop reproducing!" I was a little annoyed but justified my stance by the mere fact that we never speed on that street because it's only a block long. I forgot about it until a couple of weeks later when I came around the corner going the other direction and her kids were in the street again. I slowed down to like 2 mph and waited for them to clear out. No mommy. They were out there alone. The youngest looked to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 or 4. I immediately started wondering how a good mom could let a toddler play in the street with only the oldest, maybe 7 or 8, to supervise. Especially when the 7 or 8 year old was merrily riding a bike around instead of paying attention. That was the first in a long string of observances of these children frolicking in the road with no supervision. The other times she yelled at me to slow down she was usually out there by herself. The last time she actually got down by the street to yell at me. She was, at the time, piling her children's toys in the middle of the road. I shit you not, people. She had laid their bikes, scooters, big-wheels and so on right smack in the middle of the road the purpose for which I assume was to slow us speed-demons down. I finally just lost my temper and yelled some ill-chosen obscenities at her and went home furious. My darling hubby was there to greet me and I vented my ire in his direction. He got angry and got in his car to go find out what her problem is. He spoke very calmly and diplomatically and she screamed obscenities at him pretty much the entire time. Her very large husband came out and by the end of the conversation was agreeing with my husband. She screamed at him too. My husband pointed out that their vehicles were constantly parked over the sidewalk yet we had such amazing restraint that not only do we not scream at her we hadn't filed a complaint as that is in fact illegal and that we do not ever speed on that street. He told her that we have a child of our own so we do not desire to run her kids over but perhaps the street is not the best place for them to play. She told him that she felt sorry for our son as he doesn't get to play in the street. She said that she played in the street throughout her entire childhood and loved it. To bad she lived through it. In any case, we'd had a little break from it all recently and I'd hoped that was the end of it. After my husband's little conversation with her she put a sign up in front of her house that said "Slow, children!" and although I wasn't sure if she was referring to mph or her kids (forgive me) I assumed that she had thrown up the white flag and that we could resume our peaceful lives.

Oh, I was soooo wrong.

Yesterday after picking up my little monkey from preschool I came around the corner to see her backing out of her driveway, passel of brats in attendance. I stopped to give her room even though I had the right of way. She was again yelling at me through the window and proceeded to get her ugly 1990's Suburban as close to my car as humanly possible without hitting it. Well, that was it for me. The straw that broke the camel's back. I checked my mail to give her time to vacate the neighborhood and then turned around and drove to her house. I wrote down her address and went home. And called the cops. I told dispach what the problem was and they said they'd have an officer call me. They did and I gave the guy the entire story. He, being the upstanding public servant that he is, went over to her house to talk to her. He assured me that he would call me back after the fact and fill me in on what to do next. He said it would be anonymous and I wasn't to worry. By this point I didn't care. But he did call me back.

It was kind of funny, really. His voice contained the same baffled outrage mine did the time I came home livid and vented to my hubby. He assured me that he was quite positive that we had done nothing wrong as he had driven up and down that road and couldn't see how anyone could speed on it. He was even sure that if you took the corner at more than 15 mph you would slide a bit and squeal the tires. He was quite perplexed by the sheer glut of contradictory statements she made, such as "I've never yelled at anyone, but I won't yell at anyone from now on" and "I won't let my kids go to the park alone because it's too far away and I can't watch them but I shouldn't have to watch them if they are playing in the street right in front of the house." He agreed with me that she is, clearly, insane. He informed me that by the end of the conversation she was crying hysterically about how the rest of the world refuses to be responsible for the safety of her children. He also directed me to refuse to deal with her shit and that any run-ins I have with her after this are to be referred directly to the police department. He did tell me that, unfortunately, he's pretty sure that she has singled me out for her attention and that he's pretty sure that she knows that it was me that called. I don't know if this will result in and egged car or if she will decide to leave well enough alone. I somehow doubt that as it would be the reasonable, adult thing to do and hey, lets not break a perfectly consistent track record. She could surprise me, but I don't see that happening. The great thing is, if and when she does up the ante, she's documented at the police department and won't have a fat, dimpled leg to stand on.