My Own Wisteria Lane

I wasn’t planning on blogging again until next Sunday, but Monday was sort of crazy. Actually, it wasn’t crazy until after I finished teaching aerobics at 7:30. I got home and found Lee resting on the sofa looking a little disheveled. He told me he’d had a good day but he’d had a “rough night”. Since he’d gotten home at 6pm, I was interested in what had gone awry in an hour and a half. According to Lee, he took all three dogs outside when he got home. The two big dogs went out to eat and Trudie went out to use the ladies room. In the middle of all of this, Lee received a phone call from a client so he had to go back inside to use the computer. Twenty minutes later he realized that he’d brought the two big dogs in but had left Trudie outside. He immediately went out to get her, but Trudie was not there.

There are two big problems with this situation – 1. Trudie can’t see and 2. she can’t hear so if you call her, she’s not going to come running. I can only picture Lee, flashlight in tow, running up and down our street and back alley screaming her name all the while trying to figure out how he’s going to tell me he lost my highly-immobile elderly dog that I am admittedly very weird about. He finally found her 15 minutes later in a bush, still in our backyard. Crisis averted, but I’m quite sure he’s never been so glad to see those little white eyes and hairless butt caused by a recent skin allergy.

Then weird thing #2 happened. Living in a big city, I pretty much never know anyone in the news. I got in bed to watch the ten o’clock broadcast when they went into this story about a murder-for-hire scheme where this man had hired someone to kill his 8-months pregnant wife. Then they flashed up a picture of the guy and I knew him. I was stunned. I’ve known Al for five years because I teach aerobics with him. I have a conversation with him every Tuesday night since he teaches the kickboxing class after my step class. In fact, he teaches the most well-attended class at the gym. I guess it won’t be now. I wouldn’t say I know him well, but if I called him, he’d know who I was. Allegedly, he hired someone he knew to break into his house and kill his wife while he was out of town. The guy broke into the house, but instead of killing Al’s wife, he told her Al’s plan. She’s fine and living with family. Al is now charged with two counts of criminal solicitation of capital murder – one for his wife and one for his unborn child.

It just goes to show you that you never know what’s going on in other people’s heads even though they appear seemingly normal. What strange thoughts are running through our co-workers’ heads? Our neighbors’ heads? What drove Al to do this? We may never know but if I had to guess, I’d bet Al hired a man to kill his wife because she lost his blind/deaf dog.