Would you call the police?

In the past few days, I have read in the paper/saw on the news two heinous acts against children. A boyfriend of some woman beat her 11-year-old son over the course of a nine-hour period, and the boy eventually died. I won't go into any more details, other than to add that the mother waited over an hour after she got home before calling 911, because what I just wrote is so disturbing as it is. Then last night, I saw on the news (and read this morning) that another boyfriend of another woman sexually assaulted a three-month old.

I am so incredibly sickened and angered by this. What normal person would not be?

And that is the thing: these people cannot be normal.There are lacking something, but what I do not know.

In the first horrendous crime, some neighbors who were interviewed cried, saying they should have done something.

This made me wonder, how many people hear screams or crying down the street or down the hall and actually call the police. Would you?

I am one of those people who has done just that on multiple occasions. I first called the police back in 1997 or 1998, when I lived in an apartment building. I heard the teenager upstairs crying/screaming, and it sounded as if she was getting pushed around. The police came, and I later discovered that it was the dad who was disciplining her (one can only hope it was just that). The dad knew I called, but at least I never heard anything like that again. Who knows what ultimately happened to those people.

In my current neighborhood, I have called the police when I have heard the sounds of people fighting or screaming after dark. It is scary, but I would rather be safe than be sorry, not only for the people involved but for the welfare of the neighborhood in general.

I realize it may just be a couple arguing. Or a parent could be spanking her kid (it is not illegal). And there is the risk that if it is a man (or woman) beating his (or her) partner or child, it could get worse after the police come and leave. But I just cannot help thinking that if you do not err on the side of caution, you might end up reading about your dead neighbor in the paper the next day.

Yeah, pretty sobering, scary thought.

Let's build something together!

That is one of my favorite slogan's (Or is that a tagline? Over a year removed from a design firm, and I can no longer remember). It belongs to Lowe's, although I am more of a Home Depot gal. But suffice it to say if someone handed me a $5,000 gift card to Home Depot (or Lowe's), I would be ecstatic. If I had $10,000 to spend, you could hear my shouts of joy from miles away. The things I could do with that money. Well, the things I could have Brian do with that money anyway. I love walking around Home Depot and admiring the fancy bathroom sinks and tubs. I look at the lighting and think about where I would put each fixture. I touch textured and colorful tiles and wistfully look at the fancy kitchen cabinets. I admire the various carpet styles and blinds. I look at the fancy front-loading washer and wonder what it must be like to have a steam dryer. I even look longingly at the vacuum cleaners because I can no longer buy a replacement filter for my eight year old mo...

If only I had taken pictures of my detoured drive

When I moved to the Burgh just over 14 years ago, I had a lot of anxiety about getting from "here" to "there." I found the city, which is triangular, and even some of the suburbs quite confusing. On top of that, a lot of the signs were of little help. Clearly they were put up by either natives who had no need for directions or people with a sick sense of humor who thought it would be funny to put signs in random places, leaving off important roads. At some point, I got over that fear of driving to a new building downtown. I don't recall when it happened, but eventually I just figured most of the city out; and when I had to head to a new place, I just drove around, no longer with a feeling of dread, knowing I would eventually get there. But on Sunday morning, that awful, long-ago feeling returned, thanks to the closure of the outbound Fort Pitt Tunnels. I had to pick my mother up from the airport, so there was no avoiding it. (For some reason, my family think...

Summer in review

This summer I made it a point to try to take at least one pic of Jordan whenever we went somewhere, which most often was a park. I wanted to capture all the great, fun things we did this summer, knowing that it was probably going to be my last summer not working for quite some time. So here goes. I have expressed my love of Frick Park, particularly Blue Slide Park, in other posts ; it really is one of our favorites. And this summer marked the first one I did not feel the need to follow J around like a little puppy dog. I actually let her run around and explore, though, admittedly, I would panic if more than three minutes went by and I had not seen her. In the pics above, J is at the end of the blue slide, and then hanging several feet above concrete (which scared the crap out of me). We also visited another section of Frick Park, the area on the corner of Braddock and Forbes, a few times. There is not as much to do as Blue Slide, but we go there to mix things up a bit. In the p...

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