Anyone who reads my blogs clearly needs a good laugh. (I know I do.) I'm going to try to keep a sense of humor about this post.

Tonight my amazing husband came home from work, took one look at the scene, and scooped up our two children. Out they went on a stroller ride before I could so much as plead for my sanity.
This is why I married him.
Poor guy. I think before he met me, he went to theaters for drama. Now he gets plenty of that at home. I have this guilt complex about it. No, I didn't directly cause the dramas in the family we built together, and in fact I prefer romance over drama every day of the week, but I do come from a long line of drama, and so I'm afraid it might be in my DNA.
Come to think of it, it seems brazenly naive that I ever presumed to make undramatic babies. My husband might have laid back genes, but they didn't stand a chance in the mix, did they? Clearly, drama is dominant, calm is recessive.
Anyway, our first born has drama written all over him from the word go. He had quite an intense birth, setting records, even. My mother and grandmother came from the East coat for the big event and stayed in the hospital for all 32 hours of labor, including when my mom strayed in the wrong direction looking for a smoke break (I know, gross) and wandered inadvertantly into a gang pushing in to the ER looking for a shooting victim. No wonder the rooster didn't want to come out to greet the world! I had to push so hard that my mom, holding my legs, clenched her jaws and out came -- her filling. She cracked it. Finally the rooster decided to come out, too (once he was coaxed by a vacuum).
And then came our departure from the hospital. I am not making up what I am about to tell you! Not a single word! Go ahead and steal it for your screen play or novel; just expect a speedy rejection from your editor, with this note: "Not believable!"
So the rooster is two days old, and we get this little bundle of screams all checked out of the hospital, ready to go home. We get wheeled down to the hospital's front doors, and my husband goes to get the car. As I'm waiting for him, I notice the security guard sitting across from me gets a strange call on the walkie talkie and leaps in to action. Up drives my husband, and he loads us into the vehicle. We pull slowly out of the parking garage, and big gates come down behind us, closing the entrance to the hospital to all traffic. How strange! We are inching forward, nervous to drive with this red-faced, shrill infant hollering and flopping around in his too-big car seat. Just as we officially cross into the street, we are met by none other than the SWAT team, and what looks like the entire LAPD staring us down, pointing loaded weapons, yelling in to megaphones. "You cannot drive here! Drive the other way! The other way!" The other way means that we are being ordered to head the wrong way on a one way street, but, of course, we do not hesitate to do as we are told! At every turn, road blocks; we made our way home for the very first time by inching through a treachorous maze of drama, drama, drama. Took us two hours to get our baby home for the first time, just 15 miles from the hospital. Turns out that a gunman had fired at police, who had chased him, and he ran, armed, into the mall a block away, halfway between the hospital and the school that my kids now attend where I have worked for many years. If it sounds like a very dangerous part of town, you should know that, in fact, it is nearly in Beverly Hills.
Drama follows us, even into the hills.