Ah. I am home from my trips, my laundry is done, the Easter decor has been put away, and my husband has gone back to work. That man has been sick for ten days with a horrible cough, fever and an ear ache. He lost his hearing in the affected ear and every time I spoke to him he looked at me with complete incomprehension. That got old pretty fast I tell you.
It wasn't that I was completely unsympathetic, but he refused to go to the doctor in spite of indications that it might be a really good idea. What is it about men and going to the doctor?
Here is a close up of the quilting, which I think is so pretty. My roses are going nuts, so I sacrificed one for the bud vase. It matches perfectly!
I am so glad to be home. Did I say that already? I am a creature of routine and it just was too much to be gone to Palm Desert, home for a few days, then off to Lake Tahoe. I have no plans to go anywhere for the foreseeable future.
I have a story to share. Our son Ahren lives in Dublin, Ireland, as many of you who follow me know. Well, last week, his house was burglarized. While.he.was.home.
He had worked late and didn't get home until nearly 9:00. He'd had a long stressful day, and had over an hour commute on public transportation to get home. His habit is to come in, disarm his alarm, and re-lock his front door. He thinks that is what he did that particular night as usual. He threw together a light dinner and went upstairs to sleep shortly after 10:00. He took his laptop upstairs with him to look at something before he fell asleep. He sleeps with his bedroom door closed and locked (kind of weird, I never knew that about him). So, obviously sound asleep after a long day at work, with his door shut, he wasn't really hearing anything that transpired downstairs.
At some point during the night, someone either used a pick on his front door to gain entry, or (if Ahren forgot to lock up, which would have been very unusual) just opened the door and came into his house. They didn't seem very professional, just stepped in, probably looked around for a purse or car keys, grabbed his bag from the foyer and ran back out. What they took was Ahren's messenger bag that contained just about everything that meant something to him. His eyeglasses, his iPhone, his Filofax (with all kinds of personal information), his wallet, his cash (only 20 Euro thank goodness), his house keys (!), his ATM card, his writing journal (with all his stories he had been writing for the past year), a sterling silver fountain pen his ex had given him that he treasured, and an expensive leather pen case his sister had given him for Christmas. There may have been more things in the bag, but those are the major losses. The main things they didn't get were his laptop and his passport which were elsewhere.
He got up in the morning, came down stairs, saw his hall table drawer ajar, a book on the floor and his bag gone. And his door unlocked. It took all day to go to the bank and report his missing cards, go to the Gardai (Irish police) to report the break in, acquire a new iPhone, try to get new glasses, a new National ID, a new public transportation pass, new wallet, new FIlofax etc etc. He also had to go buy a new lock for the door and install it. The Gardai were real interested that the crime had been committed while the resident was on the premises, but so far nothing has been retrieved and nothing really done about it.
He is going to put a deadbolt and chains on his door, and will be setting his alarm while he is in the house, which previously he had not done. He feels pretty shaken about the whole experience but is being philosophical about how lucky he is. "At least they didn't take my favorite Staub Dutch oven, or my Baccarat wine glasses". As if the typical thief would know the value of those items.
Have any of you been robbed? What is your story? The most memorable one that has stuck with me over the years is the woman whose house was broken into and her husband's guns stolen. She didn't give a hoot about the darn guns going missing, but the fact that they stole the last quilt her dearly departed mother had made to wrap the guns in was a very hard blow to take.