frights

This morning, the Sober Husband opened up a letter from the IRS which asserted strenuously that we made a mistake on our 2004 taxes and, with penalties, owe over $12,000. The man's blood pressure skyrocketed, and he found himself unable to read the multiple-page letter further. If he were a Victorian maiden, we'd have said he had been taken by the vapors.

I pulled the letter from his weakened hand and quickly figured out that the IRS was obviously completely wrong and that a review of our records should prove that. (The IRS got it into its silly little head that we only paid about $300 in mortgage interest that year but claimed oh-so-much more. Would that our mortgage interest was only $300 a year, would that it were). The Sober Husband was then able to perk up and resume an interest in life, incidentally emailing our tax lawyer/accountant.

Then I took Lola to her preschool, which is located in a large park in the city. Her school is located a third of a mile off the road, up a dirt pathway in a forest. This park is relatively obscure; most people I know are not familiar with it. As we walked in, we saw four police cars parked by the side path into the canyon. I hesitated, and we waited for some time to see what was going on. A police sergeant came by, and although I asked her repeatedly whether it was safe to take my child in to the preschool, she failed to answer. She did tell a man we slightly know that it was okay for him to walk his dog in the canyon, so I took that for a green light. We walked in. The school was eerily quiet, with no children or grown-ups outside, and I had to satisfy a nervous voice with our bona fides before we were admitted.

It turned out that the police had been chasing four men with guns, two of whom were apprehended, but the other two had managed to escape into the canyon. We were supposed to be "on lockdown", and the doors were literally barred. One parent had a serious asthma attack, and there were no inhalers or meds on hand as the parents had not expected to be closed in indefinitely at the school. I tried and tried to reach Anton by celphone, but his phone was malfunctioning.

After about an hour and a half, the police advised us that it was safe again outside. The parents were a bit shaky, but all the children were unperturbed.