The Break In

Now that there is a fair amount of time between us and the break in, my perspective has completely changed. For the couple days following the break in, I was very fearful, very tense, quite a bit angry, and generally very frustrated. Frustrated with the police, with the burglar, with myself for being to cheap to get a security system before this happened.

I meant to write out my thoughts on the break in while they were still fresh in my mind, but I didn't, and perhaps its for the best. Now, I just think about how much we were blessed despite the break in.

First, no one was hurt. We were all away from home, even Marge.
About a week after the break in, I discovered that the burglars grabbed a knife from my kitchen knife block. I own cheap knives, so I can only imagine they grabbed it in case they encountered someone in the house. Praise the Lord, no one was home.

While the house was a mess, it was oddly easy to clean up. And I was blessed with awesome help. Between my family, and friends from our church, the house was back in order very quickly.

My least favorite part of the mess was in my bedroom. I hated to think that someone had been in there rummaging through my stuff. But, they left Papillon's room almost completely untouched, for which I am hugely grateful. Someone making a mess of my little girl's things would have been much worse than the mess in my room.

They only stole 3 things: a knife from the kitchen, my work laptop, an expired credit card, and milkways from the fridge. The knife was unnerving, but the laptop had literally nothing saved on it since it is only for work and I just connect to a remote server, and it was a dinosaur of a machine - really no loss there. The credit card company is taking care of the couple fraudulent charges so no problems there. The milkways were the biggest tragedy (you don't steal chocolate from a pregnant woman!!), but I am also grateful that that was the worst of it. They left behind: another laptop that is also a dinosaur, but has personal pictures on it, a set of antique silverware that belonged to Mon Amour's Grandmother and a Rolex that belonged to Mon Amour's Grandfather. All of these things were amongst the mess that the burglars had created, but obviously something (or Someone) kept them from seeing them.

They took meat out of my freezer (I guess to see if it really was meat, and not solid gold nuggets or something) and chocolate out of my fridge, but they closed both before they left, so nothing else was ruined. The loss of a freezer full of food would have been hard to take.

I kept finding glass pieces from the broken window for well over a week (including two big chunks waaaay out in the back yard...don't know how that happened) but the only person who has cut themselves so far was the guy who came to give us a quote for replacing the window. You would think he would be better at handling glass since that is what he does for a living....oh well. He had a bandaid with him.

The break in has prompted us to get a home security system, which in the long run, is probably a very wise decision. A minor break-in, that prompts us to prevent a more serious one is a good thing.

As a result of all the commotion at our house, I have gotten to know our neighbors much better. I am not very good at having or being neighbors, or at asking for help. The break in has forced me to be better at both.

In summary, our house was broken in to and we are incredibly blessed.