Reemerging

The product of having way too much time on my hands this weekend

Well, for all of you that live in New England, I hope you were able to enjoy your snowed-in weekend , watching plenty of movies and eating delicious comfort foods. Brent and I finally escaped the apartment yesterday and headed to the mall for a few hours. I wasn't even totally bummed this morning to have to come in to work. It feels good to be out of the house!

I did a lot of cooking this weekend, and therefore, I have lots of good recipes coming your way over the next few weeks...some healthy, some not so much. Everyone deserves a splurge every now and then, right?

The rest of my weekend consisted of watching House of Cards, cleaning, and running (seriously, I'm so sick of the treadmill right now). Oh, and Saturday turned out to be pretty craptacular. Is that even a word? It is now.

I went back and forth on even including this in a blog post, mostly because I'm still really freaked out by the whole situation. But I decided to share because it's been constantly on my mind since.

On Saturday, the frequent yelling and banging we typically hear from our neighbor above and her boyfriend transitioned from typical to alarming. Through most of the morning, we sat at our kitchen table trying to do work over the yells and slamming of objects from above. We really try to mind our own business but it gets to a point where enough is enough, and we decided it was time to make a complaint with property management this upcoming week. No more than an hour later, I looked out our front window to see the boyfriend with a large liquor bottle, completely smashing the windows of our neighbor's car and discarding the objects within it all over the banks of snow. Now, we live in a very nice apartment complex, full of families, pets, children, and people pay a pretty penny for the security it brings. This man is not a resident; he is a guest. It was broad daylight, and many of the other residents were outside shoveling out their cars. People stared silently on as the boyfriend continued to bash in the windows, shattering glass everywhere.  This crazy man had a broken bottle in his hand and was destroying anything he could in his way. People were afraid to move. I grabbed my phone as fast as I could and called 911. For anyone who has ever had to call 911, every bit of silence on the other end is deafening. All I could do was hope nothing progressed before officers arrived.

Then, our worst nightmare happened. The boyfriend re-entered the building. We heard more aggressive banging from above, yelling, and then in an instant, all noise ceased. We looked back outside to see him hurrying down the street, trying to escape. I was still on the line with the 911 operator, and I remember just screaming that the noise upstairs stopped, and he is going to get away. A moment later, we saw a police car speeding up the hill, and with it, a rush of relief. Brent went to go downstairs to let the responders in. He was back in a matter of seconds, warning me to stay inside. There was blood all over the walls and railing in the stair well and someone might be seriously injured.

Uhm, quite frankly, I freaked out. Especially when two ambulances showed up and three more police cars. All I could think is that we waited too long. Fortunately, it turned out there were no serious injuries, and the blood was from the boyfriend's glass-breaking stunt. He was arrested, but not without a fight.

Since Saturday, we have been sleeping with one eye open, in constant fear he will come back. Needless to say, we are pushing the housing search forward at a faster pace now.