Adventures in Baltimore

I have been meaning to scan and post the ultrasound picture we got at our last visit to the perinatologist, and since I have been delinquent in doing that, I have been delinquent in posting, as well.

So, since I can't get my shtuff together, I guess I will just tell you about yesterday's "adventures in Baltimore."

When I got home after work, Michelle was out back with the boys playing with a ball and blowing bubbles (not at the same time; she's good, but not that good). We decided to take them for a little stroll through the alley behind our house and down the street, back to the front of our house. It's a short walk, as our house is two-thirds of the way to the end of the block, and we thought they'd enjoy really walking somewhere, as opposed to just toddling back and forth from room to room in the house.

Here are the things we encountered on our short walk:

• A pit bull, barking menacingly at us from behind a not-nearly-tall-enough fence.
• The inviting scent of people's garbage emanating from the trash cans strewn all around.
• A woman in leopard print just about from head to toe (literally) in her car, at whom Dean waved and waved and waved and then blew kisses. She is in LOVE with him now. Lord, help me teach this boy to have better taste in women.
  
• A fire truck inexplicably backing up down our one-way street. (The firefighters kindly blew the horns for the boys when we told them that it was their first time seeing a real fire truck! The boys nearly jumped out of their skin. That horn is LOUD.)
• A woman ( I suppose she's technically my neighbor) talking on her cell phone -- no -- SCREAMING on her cell phone at someone about how "J.P. is f----ng with her f----ng car and somebody needs to f----ng get his sh-- because this sh-- is getting out of hand!!"
• While this lovely woman was exposing my children to words they have never heard before, her little angry dog comes running across the street, yapping frantically, and heading straight for my babies.
• Thank God for Michelle, who has dogs, because she used the stern-dog-owner voice to get him to turn around -- just in time for him to dart spastically out in front of a truck that was barreling down our residential street at breakneck speed! Awesome!
• Again, thank God for Michelle, who yells at the truck to stop, and then yells at the potty-mouth woman, "Is this your DOG?!" To which the woman comes padding across the street in her slippers, still screaming into the phone, and proceeds to scream at the little hyped-up dog to "Get on over here!"

This was on what was supposed to be a short, uneventful, pleasant little walk. Instead, it was straight out of the Book of Bad Baltimore Behavior.

This, my friends, is just one of a million reasons why I want to move.