Alarming

I am up early and writing because I had a scary event this morning and I need to purge.

Gabriel woke me up with, "MOM we have to get out of the house there may be a fire." I jumped out of bed and asked him what he was talking about. Our neighbor had warned us that he had called the fire department after he smelled something in his townhouse (next to ours) and his smoke alarm went off. I threw a jacket at Gabe and sent him outside, grabbed Asher out of his crib and realized I was pantless. I slipped the nearest pair pants on and ran down the steps. (I did take the time to snatch an enormous booger from Asher's nose with a tissue.) My neighbor across the street came over and took the boys inside out of the morning chill. (We actually had frost on the windshields of cars). I walked with her since I've actually never been in her house before. As soon as I turned back around I saw a group of firefighters going into MY house. I ran back across the street to see if they would find anything, which of course scared the crap out of me because I FORGOT TO PUT THE BATTERY BACK IN MY SMOKE ALARM AFTER MY LAST COOKING DISASTER. I was just a weee bit scared that I very nearly died in my sleep.

I worried for nothing. They couldn't find anything and it taught me a lesson - I should never cook again.

Ok, I'll NEVER take the batterries out of the smoke alarm again.

Second scare of the morning:

Remember the sex offender in my neighborhood? He was going to our bus stop until I checked the registry and realized it was him? Well, Fatima, the one who pulled the boys out of the cold this morning, told me that his daughter was on her soccer team! The whole season (she coached) he was showing up to games.

She said he and his wife or mother of the child or whoever she is, were acting very strangely and the woman said that he didn't live with her, which is clearly a lie. Fatima has had this girl over to her house, the sex offender was making friends with other parents and, Fatima feared that one of the little girls was playing at his house with his daughter. I shook my head in shock.

She is planning on speaking to the girl's mother and asking her why they were never told of his status as a registered sex offender. And to think I was aprehensive about spreading papers with his face, charges and address to my neighbors.

Lesson number two. I will never hesitate or second guess myself with sharing this kind of information. I will always check the registry. I can only think that telling the neighbors about this guy, at the risk of him knowing I was scoping him out, is worth it. So many people were interacting with him that didn't know, all with children. That it's appalling.

Need I tell the Oprah story? Of the sex offender she caught by blasting his face on her show? He was caught by a neighbor who was helping TAKE CARE of him since he had an injury and couldn't work. This woman and HER DAUGHTER were spending a lot of time at his house cooking, cleaning and caring for a convicted sex offender. There's a reason they have registry lists. Check yours and if there's one in your area, for goodness sake, tell people! We have to take care of each other.