the night before

Since I am having trouble with the photos today, I will catch you all up with the story of the night before we left...I don't have any photos to accompany that one...though I thought the RCMP might have some for me.
I know it will be a rambling tale. Sorry about that.


Okay, so the night before we left on our trip, we were loading the vw...out the back door in the garage. So I was taking the bags downstairs to Michael and he was taking them from the basement to the van. In the 30 seconds it took me to deliver one backpack to the basement and walk back upstairs, there is some f'ing guy standing in our livingroom going through the shit on the cabinet!!!! Michael is in the garage...I don't want to scream cuz I don't want this guy to freak out...who knows what the fuck he will do...so(and I don't know why THIS is smarter than screaming) I charge right up to the guy and get right up next to him. "What the fuck are you doing in my house?!?" I say in my best imitation of the Billy Goats Gruff. He had the nerve, er, not the nerve, but the incoherence to keep telling me he'd been invited!!! He was actually arguing with me about being INVITED and where was his backpack? Lordy, a crazy loon, I think. How do I get him out? He is standing there arguing with me about it! Eventually, I have manuevered him to the door, we're still YELLING at each other, Michael has finally heard just as the guy is taking off down the street. We call the police. 45 minutes later, (since there is no emergency, I guess) the police arrive. Did I mention before that we live three blocks from the RCMP station? If they had arrived in the first five minutes, say, they might have got the guy but then there is all that paperwork to do, forms to fill out...yaddayadda. Anyhoo, I give my descriptionto the officer...it is a thorough description, I was extremely close to the guy, after all. We point out that sometimes, across the street, several people often arrive empty handed and leave with new backpacks so maybe, just maybe, this guy did have the wrong address and that they(RCMP) should maybe, just maybe watch what's going on over there...and we head out of town for our trip, thankful for our great neighbours who will watch our house and water our plants. Yesterday, my first full day home, the RCMP call to ask if I will come down and look through some photos, they may have a suspect in custody. So, hey, wow, they are doing something...making an effort, right? (An aside here: One of my neighbours was verbally threatened with bodily harm and property damage for approaching/confronting a pimp last week. The RCMP were provided with license plate numbers and a vivid description by 6 neighbours and no arrests were made!!!!) So I go down there and wait around 25 minutes, even though THEY called me. I am led to a room with a video camera filming me, a detective who knows nothing about my case, has not read the file, shows me the photo lineup... uuummm, my description was a white guy...white guy, blond hair turning white shoulder length, kinda curling, blue-grey eyes...older-ish like55-60, or a real hard livin' late 40's kind of look, know what I mean? We flip through about four photos and I said to the detective..."Did you get the right photos? Is this the right file?" Page after page of younger, crew-cuttish native men...the only resemblance was that hardliving look to the faces. Eight more pages like that...all younger, all native. So the detective sends in another detective to talk to me...she says "sometimes in the stress...bad lighting...the whatever"...C'mon. I said, "did you read the file?" Nope, but there had been a rash of b&e's that night, same m.o., the suspect was native. As if that explains how my white guy can turn into their native...and are they then only looking for natives? ARGH. However, as she walked me out, she asked about that night, and did he say anything? I reiterated how he really seemed to believe he had been invited and that we were supposed to have a backpack for him...then I told her about the house across the street(whose address is one number higher than ours). She asked my address and then looked me in the eye and said..."the white house?" So they know, right? They know.
So next entry is about camping and fun times.
until then.