Gung Hay Fat Choy..... maybe

www.nolanpchak.blogspot.com

We took the kids to the Asian Plaza for the New Years Lion Dance. We had fun, well, until the actual dance started. I'll post pictures later. Maybe. Right now I'm too upset to do that.

Allow me to digress....

You see, Bill and I were on a "date night" tonight. (Yes it is the Saturday before Valentine's Day and you'd be correct if you remember that Bill and I don't usually go out for this day, but we had sitters, so you go with the flow, you know?) We'd finished up a nice dinner at Dante and were having a nightcap in Downtown Willoughby when the phone rang. I had just checked in an hour before and everything was A-OK, so I was really surprised to see "home" come up on caller ID.

The first words out of my mom's mouth were, "Reagan's barfing."

Check, please.

So we rushed home and found an already calmed down girl (who probably had herself so wound up from excitement & Valentine's candy and didn't want to go to bed) and a mostly clean house (Thanks Steph!!! Way beyond the call of duty!!!!)

That part isn't what is bothering me. That is not the reason I am blogging at midnight after scrubbing the kitchen floor. (Which needed cleaned anyway, just not at 11:45pm on a Saturday night!)

What is bothering me is that we took the kids to see a Lion Dance this afternoon to celebrate Chinese New Year. We had a fun time (well, until the loud music started and the lion started dancing). While scrubbing the floor, I hear the news story that a man was robbed and forced into his car at gunpoint at the Asian Plaza this afternoon. He was shot in the back while trying to escape his car as the robbers tried to get him to an ATM.

This is the exact same place I blindly took my kids to.

The same place Bill walked alone down the street to get the car to come and pick us up.

The same place I plan to go back to and take pictures. Alone. Wrapped up in my own little world, oblivious to what is going on around me.

Have I really lived in the 'burbs that long that I've let my guard down? When we lived in an inner ring suburb my guard was always up. With kids it should be up even more, but you know what? It is not. So many people talk to my kids and we talk back. I'm distracted and looking in two different directions all the time. I'm an easy target.

My purse.

My camera.

My kids.

It scares the shit out of me.


http://www.newsnet5.com/news/22559187/detail.html