Techincally, No Breaking. Just Entering.

As many of you know by now, our home was burglarized Sunday evening while we slept. I'm slightly annoyed by the whole sitch.

1. Partially our own fault. While I didn't dare some pot-head to sneak in after midnight and see what he could find, I also neglected to ensure my garage door was closed. So essentially, I layed out the welcome mat.

2. I'm not the only idiot in town, as three other houses were also robbed the same evening. All with doors unlocked. Luckily, the punks were novices, and made off with only a few items. The worst was someone's car, which was only used for joyriding before police recovered it. We lost an ipod, a blackberry, an archaic cellphone which I planned on taking to the grave with me, my purse, and Skip's bike.

3. The downside of all that is that my purse had my keys in it. So we had to rekey the entire house AND both vehicles. I'm pretty sure no one would come back for the minivan, but Skip's Jeep is SERIOUSLY awesome. And very recognizeable. Also, I had to cancel all my bank cards and other pertinent items. I wasted hours on the phone doing so. I frown on wasting time.

4. SOMEONE WAS IN MY HOUSE. I'm betting they didn't first remove their shoes, as I like people to do. I'm also betting they broke our sobriety policy. I'm also kind of annoyed because *EDITED BY PARENTAL CONTROLS*, and what if they were hanging around listening? Seriously, how rude is that.

5. Lots of people have asked me if Skip kicked their asses. (What. People have asked me that. I'm only quoting what people have asked.) We were probably asleep when they came in. So we didn't even hear them. But I will say this. Had they been caught, they would be lucky to be upwardly mobile. Skip has impeccable self-control, along with the ability to seriously maim. Combine the two, and I'm almost a teense disappointed we slept through it all.

6. Skip and I are like Nancy Drew and One Of The Hardy Boys. We make a great team. Neither one of us freaked out when we discovered what had happened. We immediately began taking care of everything. It was kind of cool to work in tandem with him like that. Between the two of us, I think we thought of everything that needed to be done, and we rolled right through our day handling it.

7. I think the kids did fine. No one seemed scared, and we were able to laugh about a lot of it. We discussed some changes we would need to make, reassured them, and hopefully educated them a bit in the process. No one freaked out at bedtime last night, which frankly I was expecting.

8. As weird as this sounds, I think God prepped us for this.
a) As I've mentioned in the past, when Skip is out of town I like to send him HAPPY SMILING pictures of myself. I recently learned he stores said pictures on his phone. A few days before this incident, he decided he should just go ahead and delete them for saftey's sake. So I'm relieved to know that if you google "HAPPY SMILING" you will NOT find my picture, uploaded by a teenage pothead.
b) Earlier last week I decided I did not want to carry around the key to the school I work at in my purse for the summer. I did not want to be responsible should something happen to it, and I wouldn't be needing it. So I brought it back to the school.
c) Last week I had the idea to transfer all my numbers from my cellphone into a backup location. I told Skip I should do that. Then, of course, I didn't. I should've listened.

So it could've been a lot worse in a lot of superficial AND serious ways. We are thankful we were protected, and we were able to learn some lessons in the process. But if you happen to see a twitchy meth junkie riding a $700 Gary Fisher bike around town, with a black leather Tommy Hilfigger bag slung over his shoulder, talking on a Blackberry and shuffling through the playlists on an ipod... please be sure to let Skip know. An ass or two could still be kicked.