"A utility pole was smashed up pretty good..." [and we clearly harbor stellar journalists in the Steel City...]

Ah, the excitement and glamour of city living.

Last night a cavalcade of police cars, ambulances, firetrucks, and tow trucks raced up my street at 2 am, sirens blaring and lights flashing.

I ignored it as long as I could (although I did have to go pat Terzo who was crying and muttering in his sleep, "Peece cars, peece cars...") until I heard several neighbors outside in the street, speculating about the noise. Ever the nosey parker, I went outside. (Lemme tell you, you haven't lived until you've seen your neighbors in their sleepwear. Oy.)

It seemed the entire city police department was parked at the crest of the hill up my street. Four of us sauntered up the street to the action, because you KNOW police like nothing more than nebby neighbors getting in their way and standing around watching them work.

The car involved was unrecognizable, beyond totaled, yet people who live on the corner said they saw TWO people crawl out of the wreckage and be taken away in ambulances. A utility pole was snapped in three, the bottom part uprooted from the ground and the top piece tilted crazily against the brick duplex in which my friend O lives (she was apparently not at home).

"Witnesses said" (read: people who live on that corner) that they heard first the car, the sirens, gunshots, and then the crash. Terrific. I wonder if this will spur another episode of "We need to move to the 'burbs" in H? I hope not. I love my neighborhood, having written odes and love sonnets (no, not really, at least the sonnet part) to it in the past...and I love it more every day. And even this - well, it was oddly - fun - to hang out with my neighbors in the middle of the night and then go back to sleep with the police car lights still flashing in the distance and reflecting off the stop sign on the corner. I had an exciting email to write this morning to H, who slept through it all. And I'll be the first to admit that we city dwellers hold a strange pride (might I say hubris? I might...) in the idiocies and dangers we put up with to reap the benefits and cosmopolitanism of living amidst crime, poverty, and an iffy public school system. Hmmm, when I put it like THAT....

"The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook.”*

Is there anything more delicious than a freshly washed baby?

With a sprinkle of salt, and maybe a dab of butter?

Although, after reading Cormac McCarthy's horrifying and haunting The Road, I find myself somewhat reluctant to make my usual edible-baby jokes.

Is it just me?

*********

* Julia Child

The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat....

Stupid Red Wings.

We'll get you next time.
(And, you know, congratulations, n'at.)