Last Night

Okay, here's what happened last night. 16 hours after the fact it all is starting to seem silly, but the paranoia and the pissed-off-ed-ness is still there.

We put the kids to bed a little after 8:00pm and Jen and I stayed in our room, sitting on the bed, each with a book. We call this a reading date. We both love to read and we both love being in the same room with each other, so we read together.

At about 10:00ish there was a knock on our door. I got up to answer it. It was the neighbor in the apartment next to ours. He said he just saw some one in our driveway, possibly messing with one of our cars. He said there was a woman in a car parked on the street in front of the house and when he (our neighbor) came out of the front door she yelled to the guy in our driveway and he started walking toward her. Our neighbor confronted him and asked him what he was doing. I don't know what he said in reply, but he jumped in the car and he and the woman drove off.

We checked the cars and they seemed all right. The locks weren't tampered with, no windows broken, no signs of mischief. I checked the back of the house, the back door, and all of the rooms and windows. Again, no signs of foul play.

We called the police and told them what happened and they said there was nothing they could really do about it based on the tiny amount of information we had for them, but they would send a patrol car into the area. That was really all I wanted them to do. If they were still around I wanted the cops to come and wave the flag a little and scare them off. Within minutes I saw a squad car drive up to our house, slow to a crawl as the officer driving took a look around, and then slowly move up the road. Thank you very much. It's a small thing, but it was seriously appreciated.

So what was this pair-o-twits doing in our driveway? I suppose there are a few possibilities. The innocent hippie in my thinks he might have been cutting through our yard to meet up with his lady friend. Doubtful, but possible I guess. Maybe it was a teen from the apartment building behind our house sneaking out for some non-parental-approved Sunday night fun. Maybe we were the first (at least I think it was first, none of the houses around us seemed to have anything out of the ordinary happening) stop on a smash and grab spree. Maybe, as our neighbor (who once told me that he was a police officer in his native country before moving to the United States. I suddenly see that as a plus) suggested, they were looking for car parts. He said their car looked similar to ours. Again, it's possible. They weren't trying to steal the car as it was parked on the inside of the driveway with another car behind it. Who knows.

What I do know is that Jen and I both reached a level of paranoia that neither of us has ever reached before. Even though nothing actually happened we still felt pretty violated. There was some definite freaking out going on. It was quiet, we didn't want to wake the kids, but it was there. We did a lot of walking through the house looking out the windows. We did a lot of quietly listening to whatever was going on outside. Jen got to sleep at about midnight. I was up until maybe quarter to one, and when I did finally sleep I didn't stay asleep for long (partly due to my fricken teeth, but that's beside the point).

We both felt better this morning. Jen decided to sleep a little later than usual so we didn't get a lot of time to talk about it prior to getting to work. Still, our house shopping plans that we had put on hold for a couple of years or so may now be back on the table. I also think any home shopping we do might be in more rural neighborhoods. Both of those points are paranoia talking, but that doesn't make them any less there. We've asked our landlord for a few security upgrades. Basically more lights on the side of the house. I would have liked to have been able to flood the hell out of the driveway with light last night, but we really couldn't.

When we come right down to it, nothing happened. We'll relax a little as time goes by and prepare ourselves a little better to handle something like this in the future. We live in a fairly urban area. There is a city with a bad reputation not far away. Neither of us ever thought that something like this was impossible. There has always been a healthy dose of paranoia to begin with (it's not uncommon for me to check the doors a few times a night, just to make sure everything is cool).

Nothing has actually changed except our level of freaking. There will be more vigilance on our part, that's for sure. I still feel safe in the house, just not quite as safe as I felt 24 hours ago. We're not going to move out any time soon... but at this point it's possible that we will move out sooner than expected. Who knows.

I thanked our neighbor a few times last night and I will thank him again now.

We'll have to see how this situation affects our attitude in the future. I honestly don't know how it will go.