Someone broke into our home yesterday. A couple of laptops/electronics around $2000. Except for the digital pictures that were on the computer the rest were pretty much replaceable. It took MoCo 20 minutes to arrive after the 911 call and we waited outside but the cruiser drove right past us! We had to flag it down!
What I vastly underestimated were the psychological costs. K1 and K2 seemed okay at the time when the police were around but by bed time they were feeling insecure and that is not a pleasant feeling. The feeling that we were unsafe even though the chances of the thief returning are virtually nil. Even more so, the feeling that our house is no longer our home.
Ah, the joys of living in Washington. Perhaps it’s a sign. Or that I need to develop higher tolerance. But small town living ain’t all it’s cracked up to be either:
In the small towns nestled throughout the Ozarks, people like to say that everybody knows everybody’s business — and if they do not, they feel free to offer an educated guess.
But of late, more people in this hardscrabble town of 5,000 have shifted from sharing the latest news and rumors over eggs and coffee to the Mountain Grove Forum on a social media Web site called Topix, where they write and read startlingly negative posts, all cloaked in anonymity, about one another.
And in Dee’s Place, people are not happy. A waitress, Pheobe Best, said that the site had provoked fights and caused divorces. The diner’s owner, Jim Deverell, called Topix a “cesspool of character assassination.” And hearing the conversation, Shane James, the cook, wandered out of the kitchen tense with anger.
His wife, Jennifer, had been the target in a post titled “freak,” he said, which described the mother of two as, among other things, “a methed-out, doped-out whore with AIDS.” Not a word was true, Mr. and Ms. James said, but the consequences were real enough.
What I vastly underestimated were the psychological costs. K1 and K2 seemed okay at the time when the police were around but by bed time they were feeling insecure and that is not a pleasant feeling. The feeling that we were unsafe even though the chances of the thief returning are virtually nil. Even more so, the feeling that our house is no longer our home.
Ah, the joys of living in Washington. Perhaps it’s a sign. Or that I need to develop higher tolerance. But small town living ain’t all it’s cracked up to be either:
In the small towns nestled throughout the Ozarks, people like to say that everybody knows everybody’s business — and if they do not, they feel free to offer an educated guess.
But of late, more people in this hardscrabble town of 5,000 have shifted from sharing the latest news and rumors over eggs and coffee to the Mountain Grove Forum on a social media Web site called Topix, where they write and read startlingly negative posts, all cloaked in anonymity, about one another.
And in Dee’s Place, people are not happy. A waitress, Pheobe Best, said that the site had provoked fights and caused divorces. The diner’s owner, Jim Deverell, called Topix a “cesspool of character assassination.” And hearing the conversation, Shane James, the cook, wandered out of the kitchen tense with anger.
His wife, Jennifer, had been the target in a post titled “freak,” he said, which described the mother of two as, among other things, “a methed-out, doped-out whore with AIDS.” Not a word was true, Mr. and Ms. James said, but the consequences were real enough.
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