Why Am I Awake at Shit-Thirty in the Morning?

It's almost 4 in the morning.  This will probably be jumbled, and sucky.
I am too tired to care.

**********


In the light of day, I was irritated.  I was angry, and wanted answers.
In the deep dark of night, however, I'm furious.  And frightened.  And I want answers.  And revenge. In the form of a bloody person limping toward a police car, with a defeated look on his face...

Last night, in the dead of our sleep, my family was ripped awake by someone slamming themselves into our front door.  Someone who must have thought it would be funny to break into our house.  Or someone who must have thought it was funny to try and scare an entire houseful of people.  Or someone who thought...whatever the fuck they thought.
My daughter was terrified.  I held her trembling body against me, as we sat in the dark, waiting for the police, and watching for the return of the creeps who invaded us.  We reassured her, as she voiced her fear of both the potential invasion, and the guns her father, brother and I were toting.  We reassured her that the police were on their way.  We reassured her that the assholes were long gone, and that we were safe.
And then a shower or rocks pelted our windows, and three nondescript people ran across our yard, disappearing into the dark.
Once the police arrived, questioned us, and set out to hunt for the door-busting, rock-tossing, running away-ing dickbags, my husband started out the door to check on our car.  He came immediately back inside, telling me to call the police again, because the people were hiding in the bushes across the street from our house, shouting obscenities at him.
What followed was three hours of hiding in the darkness, police surrounding our house, searchlights scalding the landscape, and trying to convince our daughter that it was safe to sleep again.

We think they caught one of them.  We listened to our police scanner as they searched the area, as they chased the group of them on foot, and apprehended one of them.  That person was later taken home by the police, so we are assuming it was a minor.
I don't care if he is a minor.  I sincerely want to pull his balls off, by way of his throat.

This is the second time this has happened.  I don't want to believe that it's the same group of people, and I don't want to believe that we're being singled out.  But I do.

And now, at ass-thirty in the morning, I'm awake, I'm afraid, and I'm furious.  The sleep I did get was peppered with nightmares, about flocks of people gathering in front of our house to do harm, and me trying to protect my family inside, as my gun malfunctioned.  As 911 malfunctioned.  As my goddamn mini-blinds malfunctioned.

Every noise I hear suddenly becomes a violent prowler.  The cat meandering lazily thru the kitchen becomes a murderous burglar, high on PCP, and hoping to gnaw the faces off of my whole family.

Ugh.

Our kids opted to sleep together last night.  Or tonight.  Or whatever the fuck "now" is.
They set up the big tent in our son's room, and hunkered down together in the relative safety and silence of our concrete basement.

My husband, who lived thru this ridiculous shit all the time as a kid growing up in a crappy neighborhood with crappy caretakers, finally dozed off about an hour ago.  About the time I started waking up from these asshole nightmares.

We are hoping to take a trip to the city this weekend, to visit a stray pitbull in need of a home,  in hopes of bringing home a dog, so he can patrol the house while we sleep.  Preferably while wearing a cape, and carrying a baseball bat.  Shut up.  He's my dog, and if I say he can carry a baseball bat, then by golly he can, and will carry a baseball bat.  Mother effers.

The whole thing has made me irrational.  The mother bear in me wants to protect her cubs.  Wants to find the scrotum sacs who did this, peel them like onions, and hang their skin from my fucking tree, to ward off other potential predators.
Part of me wants to pack up and move away.  To a secluded beach.  To Amish country.  To a crowded apartment complex.  To Jamaica.
Part of me wants to ignore it, and tell myself that it won't happen anymore, that we'll get answers from the police soon, and that our happy little lives will return to business as usual.

I want our daughter to feel safe inside her house again.
I want our son to be able to feel as if he can just be a kid again, rather than having to help us patrol our house like we're in some kind of goddamn apocalyptic movie.
I want my hard-working husband to rest peacefully at night, and not fear repeats of his wretched childhood invading his grown-up world.

And I want to sleep.  Without being awakened with fear and nightmares and paranoia.  Without feeling like a bad parent for sleeping, when there are lunatics on the loose, who hope to wreak havoc inside our house.


The way I understand it, once the official report is filed, and all the pencil pushing is finished, we will receive more information from the police, we will find out if we can press charges, and we will, I hope, have some answers.
In the meantime, I'm unsettled.  And I resent these motherfuckers for making me feel that way.  I resent them for the vengeful and upsetting thoughts I've thought in their favor.  I resent their parents for giving birth to ugly, inconsiderate dickheads.
Fuck those fucking fuckers.
Bah.  I'm tired.  :p