Thief in the night.

So this morning we awoke to a new little nightmare – someone broke into our house during the night, stole from Mimi and Hea, and robbed us all of our sense of security. At least the “perp” was caught quite handily by the local sheriff’s department. Mimi and Hea figured out something was amiss at about 6:15 am. The sheriff’s department arrived at 7:30 am, and the thief was on his way to the pokey by 10:30 am.  So big, huge props to our local sheriff’s department.

The person who broke into our house is a neighbor kid (in his later teens) who is going through a lot – his mother is hospitalized and his father was diagnosed with cancer recently. He broke into a door in the garage, came into our laundry room, where he heard the dog.* He then headed into the downstairs. He stole some electronics from Mimi and Hea, as well as beer and an Arbor Mist (it had to be a teenager, right!?!).  Oddly enough, he bypassed a dozen bottles of hard liquor. He did leave clear footprints and an open fence door, which handily is right across the street from his house. In an indication that his parents did a have good rules, the would-be criminal mastermind left the shoes he wore to break into our house outside his house, and in plain sight of the officers…

                *G and I thought the dog needed to go out to pee. He was a little understated in the warning. We’re working on amping up his drama.

I will be honest and say that we spent the day upgrading the security for the house. I feel like we weren’t careful enough, and were perhaps too complacent. Since we live in a “nice” neighborhood, surely we wouldn’t have problems… I mean, no one can find our house. Well, unless you live next to it. Foolish, foolish. In any case, we are much better “secured.” Unfortunately, we’re physically better off, but the emotional side of things is a little more sticky.

The thief was 10 feet from my sleeping sister, sister-in-law, and nephew. That isn’t cool.

I have been trying to be more flexible with the boys since Big A is getting older, and after this morning I have to say that I’m fighting hard to not hunker down and refuse to let the kids out of my sight (let alone out of the house).  I also am being really strict with the kids and telling them things like “Breaking and entering (as well as theft) is illegal. It is also really, really bad.” I figure that parents tell their kids 100 times a week to not wear shoes in the house, but we rarely say “It is wrong to steal. It is wrong to break into a house and scare the sh!+ out of people.” So I’m going to tell my kids not to steal, just in case they don’t get it.

The boys seem to be having a bit of a hard time with this. Let’s be honest – I’ve reiterated “bad guys don’t live in our town” like two billion times.  And, well, a bad boy broke into our house, stole stuff, and scared the adults. Big A thought he would need to stay up all night to guard the house. Little B wants more bows and arrows so that he can “dong!” the bad guy.

A few things we’ve realized/implemented:

•  Put pocketbooks away and out of easy line-of-sight. I sometimes leave my pocketbook on the shelf in the entryway, which is really easy to walk up and see. Not smart, M.
• Put the home electronics away – out of easy line-of-sight.
•  For laptops, a password – it’s nothing complicated, but make it hard for idiot kids to snoop. Further, maybe no saving internet banking/otherwise financial passwords on the laptop. Because again with making things difficult for an idiot thief.
•  Well, I would say don’t keep beer in the fridge, but there is no sense going crazy.