Our school district has never had “late start” as far as I know. “Late start” means the roads are terrible in the morning but the weather is supposed to warm up so they delay the start of school for a couple hours. I don’t have anything to do with the public schools here any more except that I walk through the schoolyard all the time but I have had three Tuesday Late Starts this month. It’s winter and this is Michigan and it snowed a few inches overnight and there were traffic accidents everywhere this morning. I emailed my group and said I was starting out at home and would slodge over when I started feeling Cabin Feverish. That happened in the late morning and I rolled over to work. By that time the temps were over freezing and the roads were just wet and I had a lovely Zen Drive. The schools were open today. I think Superintendent Jeanice made the right decision. It wasn’t all that bad out this morning and it was gonna get better. I just decided to not add to the early morning traffic. You’re welcome.

Hello neighborhood parents, do you know where your hoodlums are? For months and months now, our normally safe* neighborhood has been experiencing petty crimes. Stealing change from unlocked cars (I knooooowww), scattering belongings from said cars all over the neighborhood, stealing RATS from a beloved Halloween display. Recently things have escalated just a weeeeee bit as young men are knocking on doors late at night asking for money. Reportedly “cute, friendly” young men but still…

I have not been too freaked out by this although I *have* been ultra-vigilant about locking our cars at night and making sure the front door is dead-locked. It got a little closer to home today when Shuggy’s Dad, a neighbor we have known as long as we’ve lived here, told the GG that *he* had found footprints near the cars in his driveway. Pretty stoopid to case out people’s cars after a snowstorm when you think about it because you leave footprints. Duh. If it hadn’t snowed, no one would have a clue that anyone had been in their driveway.

Despite that, I am still not very freaked out. My *hunch* is that this is a teenager who is out of control. Telling mama he’s going to the library (or his girlfriend’s house) to study (so he can go to Harvard hey, this is The Planet Ann Arbor, roight?) and prowling the neighborhood instead. A neighborhood friend of mine once had a teenager a bit like that, except that he was actually breaking in to neighbors’ houses when they weren’t home, stealing stereos and stuff. This vibrant, extremely extroverted, positive-force-of-nature-type woman was at her wits end and tried to get the police to arrest him (yes, really) but they hedged because they couldn’t figure out that he was the person doing any of that stuff.

That kid grew up into a good citizen and now has at least one child of his own, a child who may be a teenager by now (I think dad is in his 40s now). I’m sure that dad is hoping his kid doesn’t take after him in that respect. In our neighborhood, we need to be vigilant about who is scouting out our vee-hickles and [possibly] homes. Webcam on the driveway? Let’s move ours there. If whoever is doing this is truly just a non-violent kid, I want him (I suspect that’s the correct pronoun) to be punished but I also want him to grow up to be a productive member of our society.

*A neighborhood is only safe until somebody/something makes it unsafe. I regard my neighborhood as safe despite the recent troubles but I ALWAYS watch my back, no matter where I am.

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