Musings of a chick: Cookie, cookie, cookie starts with "C"...or, from "That's the way the cookie crumbles" files and Yahoo! News...

(I commented on this case in a previous blog entry, and apparently the Valentine spirit is a bit...well...skewed in Durango. Read on, with my comments, of course, in bold italics...)

Restraining Order Filed in Cookie Case
43 minutes ago

Strange News - AP
DURANGO, Colo. - A hearing on a restraining order was scheduled Thursday for the family of one of two girls ordered to pay $930 in medical bills to a woman who claimed the delivery of a plate of cookies scared her to the hospital.
(I'm still trying to figure that one out...)

Dick Ostergaard, father of Taylor Ostergaard, 18, filed for the restraining order Feb. 4 against Wanita "Ranea" Young's husband, who allegedly made harassing calls to the Ostergaard residence.
(Wonder if those calls were taped..."Hello, is your refrigerator running?" This is truly a strange world.

Both families said they would try to mediate the matter.
(You know what? There's really nothing to mediate! The girls, misguided as they were, were trying to do a nice thing, and when a court of law decides that teenage girls who really have no dispensible income of their own need to come up with almost $1K, something's rotten in Durango. This woman needs to get a grip. I mean, if it were me, and I was kind of freaked about it, would probably calm down once things were explained to me.)

Taylor Ostergaard and Lindsey Jo Zellitti, 18, knocked on the Youngs' door and left a plate of cookies on the porch late one night last July.

Young, 49, said nobody answer when she asked who was there and she could see only shadowy figures that ran away to a car parked outside the gate. (It's called a "surprise"? You know? ) The incident happened at her isolated country home where she was with her teen daughter and elderly, ill mother, while her husband was out of town.

Young said she hasn't returned to her part-time job at Wal-Mart and might have to give up the presidency and her seat on the board of the local food bank, a post she's held for 16 years, because of the negative attention she's received.
(You know what? A part-time job at Wal-Mart is nothing, salary-wise. As far as the presidency and seat on the board of the local food bank, if she doesn't understand the meaning of kindness in the first place, she shouldn't be in that position.)

She's received hundreds of crank calls, along with truckloads of +strange+ packages — some containing cookies or cookie crumbs.
(She's lucky it was just cookies and /or crumbs...some panda may have gotten wind of it and left her something else, and then she could have some expert inspect the contents to see how far he was from home...read previous entry for clarification.)

"All this over cookies," she said. "Our home is like a funeral parlor. They've robbed us of our laughter. My spirit, my soul, is damaged."
(Well, you have to HAVE a spirit for it to be damaged, you damned grouch-ass...)

Despite that, Young said she believes going to court was the right thing.

"I don't know how to change. I don't know how to compromise my principles," she said.
(You said a mouthful, sister...I guess I don't understand what kind of principles include suing two teenage girls for medical expenses when you {unless I'm mistaken} have insurance?)