Mother's Day Gift

As Kristin and I sat on the couch Friday night, we realized we had nothing going on for the weekend.  Well, we had just finished up a short, but very enjoyable visit with this guy and his wife. By the way, I love having friends that you can see for the first time in like 18 months and just start to hang out like you were just together a week ago.  The power of the internets can really keep people connected, it was weird when Mrs. November 1973 felt like she knew my kids even though it was the first time she met them.

Any how...so we decide to head out to the Burg and see my Dad & Step-Mom, let Ben & Caleb have a play date with cousin Alaina, etc.  We leave after the boys take their naps on Saturday, for the over night.  Anytime we decide to leave right after naps, they tend to take longer naps.  But whatever, not a big deal, we didn't have any specific time we HAD to get there, just a ballpark figure I had given my Dad.  So, after we figured we'd leave about 2pm, they slept til 2:30 so by the time we were getting in the car, it was close to 3pm.  We leave, go home for a very enjoyable time with the family.  Fast forward to Sunday night about 6:30 when we pull back up to our house.

Pull in the driveway, get the kids and a couple bags of stuff and approach the front door.

Kristin, "umm....did we leave the front door WIDE OPEN?"

Me, "uhh...I don't think there would be a reason we would have done that, stay here I will check it out"

Now for those that have been to my home know, you enter my house and are in the living room.  So I walk in the door, surprisingly my heart is not beating a mile a minute and I feel pretty confident nothing is wrong.  I scan over to the corner where our computer sits, it's there along with my Nikon D70.  Phew.  But you never know, the big ticket item is in the back family room, so I scoot back there.  Sweet jesus, the TV is still sitting on the TV stand.  Circle back to check the bedrooms to see if there are any bad guys hiding in closets.  Keep in mind I have no weapon, thankfully my Blackberry is a little more substantial than the average cell phone and I might be able to knock a bad guy out with it.  Peep the closets, no guys in ski masks in there.  Crisis averted.  Over 24 hours of the house wide open.

I signal "all clear" for Kristin and the boys, but she is still not convinced and suggests I check the basement.  I do and report to her the washer, dryer, and oil burner are missing.  She does not see the humor and gives me a look.

The rest of the night, we didn't really talk about how fucking lucky we were.  Especially considering just last week we received an automated voice message from our town's police department urging us to lock our vehicle doors, as there has been a rash of vehicle break ins in the town lately.

I should have ran out and bought a lottery ticket.  Although maybe we used up all of our luck for a long, long time.  It could have been really bad.

CLARIFICATION: Thanks Jeff for asking for an important detail that I apparently left out.  Blogging while multi-tasking is not a good idea!  I guess we left the door open.  It was weird in that neither one of us could remember the circumstances of leaving.  Although as you can imagine, any departure with a 1 and 3 year old in tow can be chaotic.  Often times, we'll get in the car and one of us will remember something and run back in, but we didn't remember if that was the case.  And not that we wanted to point fingers, but we couldn't remember who went out last or what happened.  But I can confidently say that we definitely left it open, not wide open but we probably just went to pull it shut and it didn't click like we thought and the wind blew it open?  We need to make a policy to lock the deadbolt anytime we leave for an overnight from now on, that will eliminate any chance of this happening again.

Comments

[Jeff]

Unreal.... so you did leave the door open? Or did somebody get in and not take anything?

[Kull]

Thanks for asking. I put a clarification above.

[brisson]

Phew! Wow. That could have sucked. And I guess your neighbors aren't that perceptive eah? Thanks for lookin’ out.

[Kull]

Well our front door is a dark cranberry color and the way the shade from a tree hits the front entryway, sometimes it is difficult to tell if the door is open. Saying that, perhaps that was part of the reason the house went untouched!

We have a few old timers across the street. Neighborhood watch with bad vision I guess!

[Krissy]

And at work I also forgot to lock up my laptop as I usually do every night. It was in the drawer, just unlocked. And I left my Blackberry blazing in full view on the top of my desk at work all weekend too. My bet is that I didn't close the door. So strange fer sure.