Whatcha gonna do when they come for you...

So, we had a pretty interesting night last night. Jon and I were both home with the kids around 7-ish and as I was walking from the kitchen to the living room we heard a sort of scratching noise at the front door knob (which was locked). I pressed the door back a couple of times to let whoever was out there know that I knew they were there, but they continued to fiddle with the door. At this point, I figured it may be Jon's brother Jacob trying to play a prank on us, so I loudly asked, "Can I help you?" When I got no response, I told Jon I didn't think it was Jacob and Jon jumped up and told me to move away from the door.

He unlocked it and opened it to find a Hispanic woman in her early 20s bending over our electrical outlet just outside the door. As soon as he opened the door, she stood up and said, "Oh, good. I'm home," and tried to walk in the door. Jon stood in her way and told her, "No, this isn't your home. You need to leave." Later, he told me she reeked of alcohol. She didn't believe him and argued that this was her mother's home not ours. Jon reassured her that it was, in fact, our house and our property and she needed to leave. She swore and walked down the sidewalk so he shut the door and locked it again.

A minute later, we heard a scraping sound on the porch and Jon opened the door again. This time, she was trying to pry the screen out of our front window like she was going to break in. He was much more forceful with her then, telling her that he'd already asked her to leave once and she needed to leave now or he would call the police. She swore at him some more and told him again that this was her mother's house and property, but she still walked away. When she got to the end of the driveway, she turned back around like she was going to come back up to the house and Jon called, "Keep going!" She walked to our neighbor's driveway and said, "I'm off your @^%#!-ing property!"

All the while, during this second intrusion, I was in the background dialing dispatch on my cell phone. I turned off the living room lights and leaped onto the couch to watch her through the blinds and describe her every move--my very own stake-out. ;) She never did come back up to our door. Instead she walked, or rather stumbled drunkenly, down around the bend in our street and out of view. A few minutes later, three police cars pulled up and picked her up. Jon had to give an official statement to an officer later. And I gave the officer cookies while he waited--not trying to be June Cleaver, but I didn't want to be rude and not let him have any of the cookies I was baking!

We felt really lucky that Jon had actually been home and that I hadn't been the one to answer the door. And we were also very glad that we almost always keep our front door locked. However, from now on, we'll keep the side door locked too. We're relieved that she didn't give up on the front door and try the side instead. All in all, it was an exciting little blip in our usually uneventful lives here on the south-west side!