Our house is a one-man crime wave. Oh, and fuck metaphors.
We had a break-in a week ago. Late Sunday night. We were out
like the proverbial LED fixture, maybe 1:30am. Jaxson started barking. This is
not unusual, he’d been squabbling with the cats earlier, but he’d gone
upstairs, Sweetie and I were vaguely conscious now, so she went up to let him
out or yell at the cats or let the cats out and yell at him or it was 1:30am,
who the hell knows.
Sweetie got to the top of the steps and noticed the door
from the house to the garage was open. Her first concern was the cats getting
out so she checked the main garage door, it was closed, phew, she could get
some treats to get the cats back in.
Then she noticed one cat was still in the kitchen and the
passage door from the garage was propped open with a gallon jug of distilled
water. Very uncatlike behavior. Her brain was defuzzing now, and she checked
the other house doors, a light was on in the living room but the door was
closed – the back door of the house, out to the yard, was wide open, yard
lights were on. She came down and got me, said “I think someone’s been in the
house”, suddenly now I’m quite wide awake, I grabbed a bat*, we went upstairs,
Jaxson staying with us, house is devoid of bastard, into the living room, both laptops were
gone, she’s already calling the cops. I, in retrospect stupidly, alone, went
out to check the vehicles. Both were fine but my truck was unlocked, I suck at
life, by the way, fuck me, the garage door opener was gone, along with an old
iPhone I was using basically as an iPod. My wallet had been gone through but
only about $15 in cash taken, the wallet was left with all cards and ID,
another $20 taken off the counter. Jaxson is a goddamn hero. He has been
treated and treat-ed really damn well for a week. It was pretty clear Jaxson
had chased he/she/them off and they just grabbed the most obvious shit. Why
didn’t Jaxson react immediately? He/she/they did have a couple minutes, to open
a second door, turn on some lights. Our guess is that because we have a rather
jangled family lifestyle, someone coming in at 1:30am is not always
particularly unusual, at least, it used to be not particularly unusual, and he
wouldn’t go nuts immediately, but he undoubtedly dragged hisself up and went upstairs
expecting skritches and found it was not someone we knew. Jaxson is a goddamn
hero, is what I’m saying. He was up there with Sweetie while I was still trying
to figure out what socks are. Goddammit.
So the police came, I used my phone to change every password
for every site I used for my laptop, I didn’t do any business on it thank FSM
because I don’t trust electronic business practices, and hers was password
protected, so I’m not extraordinarily worried, just ordinarily worried, about
ID theft. So very angry at myself.
Many steps are being taken, we are getting a monitored
system and I’ve done some security upgrades and doing more, but mostly we have
to use caution. How do we do that without feeling like prisoners within our own
homes? Don’t know. I have had a week of poor sleep, paranoia, savage revenge
and booby-trap fantasies in my brain, and I don’t like it, really don’t like brain
right now. It could have been infinitely worse, I’m under no illusions, there
is some #privilege speaking, I know, we have good lives. By the way, you can’t
buy razor wire commercially. Life continues, we’re relaxing some. Watched a
movie called ‘Ogre’, so our sense of humor is returning. She’s been through
this before, many years ago, I have not, she’s hardly overjoyed but I’m taking
it worse and angrier, she’s just pushing the solutions. I married well out of
my league.
Dammit.
*I work with any number of gun-nuts, and haven’t told them
about this, because I don’t want the conversation with them that I had with a
friend who CC’s, but he’s not a sociopath. I don’t have a handgun. Still ain’t
gonna get a handgun. Hate the filthy things, don’t want them in the house. The
furthest I’ve even thought in that direction is getting a beanbag barrel for
the shotgun, still not entirely out of the question, but she really doesn’t
like the thought. A big part of the reason I don’t want a goddamn gun in the
house is exactly the situation we had that night. Sleep-fuzz plus confusion
plus sudden adrenaline burst plus artificial penis equals fucking disaster. And
suppose the other party had a gun as well? With them wide awake, alert, and
having the, to use a stupid term, ‘drop’ on me? To my friend, I started to say “When
you have a gun, you have to be prepared to-“ and my friend finished “-use it.” “No”,
I said, “to kill.” I’m not prepared to kill over a couple old computers, and if
he/she/they had hurt my wife or pets, I don’t care what they are armed with,
with my last breath I would have shown them their own throat. This
criminal was just looking to grab and go, it seems there is a (professional?) ring
of these bitches hitting the TCs right now, people in the house, people not in the
house, always looking to go in through the garage, and there are detectives
working on it, we’ve found out, so they’re taking it quite seriously, our stuff
is long gone but everyone is safe. A gun would only have escalated the
situation to very conceivably deadly proportions. Fuck that and fuck gun-nuts
and fuck guns.
