When the Ill Winds Blew

The weatherman said there would be bad winds on Tuesday. Very late Monday night (really early Tuesday morning) I heard the gusts come in. I had a fleeting thought that Native Americans thought big winds brought evil. This morning when my husband kissed me goodbye, I was very cozy and everything was good. I went back to sleep immediately and woke up with a start when the bedroom door opened. It was my husband. I jokingly said, "I'm glad that was YOU!" Then he said that he had talked to a neighbor and a lot of cars had been broken into. He wanted my keys to check my truck. He came back and said everything was fine. I went right back to sleep. The next thing that woke me up was a really weird sound. I couldn't figure it out. I thought either someone was torturing a dog or someone was running a motor with very bad belts. It stopped and I went back to sleep. I heard it one more time. At 11:30 the phone rang. It was my neighbor from two doors down. She asked if I knew about the break-ins on our street. I told her what I knew and then she told me more details and said she had forwarded an e-mail from another neighbor. Here's the breakdown of the thuggery:

On Saturday, the man in house #1 discovered that the glove box and center console were open and had been rifled through. He thought maybe his wife was looking for something. Later she (his wife) found a flashlight on the sidewalk between her house and house #2. He then brought up the other thing and she said she had not been in their SUV. My Sweetie and I also saw that flashlight on our way home from our walk on Saturday. I thought some kid had dropped it. Monday night when the people in house #3 got home from a trip they found a garage remote by their mailbox. It belonged to the people in house #2 whose car had also been broken into. And some equipment was stolen from the garage of house #4. Then last night (Tuesday night), the stereo and speakers were stolen from a car at house #5 and an SUV was stolen from house #6. I don't know if anything happened at the other houses but I know why we were untouched. We have windows across our garage doors and we leave the lights on at night. If the thugs looked in there, they would have seen a bunch of junk. Probably the most valuable thing in our garage (besides my husband's car) is the fridge and that's not the sort of things these criminals grab. The creepy part is they are doing it at night when we are all at home!

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Oh yeah, the rest of my morning. I heard that weird sound again and went through the garage and out the side door. Apparently our neighbors got a dog. The wind was howling (we had gusts of up to 58 m.ph. today with grassfires and airport cancellations) and I could hear this dog doing this crazy whining and I peered through this broken spot in the fence and he had his little nose stuck through a small space in their fence that faces the street and was biting away the wood with his teeth! I called my neighbor's cell and told him and he said he was near the house and would swing by. About 20 minutes later I heard what sounded like a person running across my roof. I figured a branch had broken off a tree. Then about 15 minutes after that, I decided to step out there to see if he had put something there by the little hole in the fence. I saw something out of the corner of my eye, turned to look and it was a skylight! I ran back in the house and sure enough, there was a big square open hole in my bathroom! There were leaves on the bathroom floor. After that hailstorm in April, my husband had chosen our neighbor (the guy in house #6 up there) to re-roof our house. I wasn't crazy about that at first, but it sure came in handy today. I called his cell and he was home. He walked right over and fixed it.

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Now on an oddly related note, I watched "Oprah" today. Her guest was Gavin De Becker. Ten years ago, he wrote "The Gift of Fear" and Oprah wanted to remind everyone to listen to that little voice. I listened to that little voice in a big way once. I was thinking of that when I watched the show. Then I remembered something else. Last night around 3:00 a.m. (okay early this morning), I wanted one more beer before I went to bed. I did not have anymore beer inside and would have to go get another beer from the (well-lit) garage. For some reason, I was creeped out about going out into the garage last night so I just went to bed. And today I find out thugs were out there last night being evil. What if I had walked out just as one of them had looked in? My instincts told me not to go in the garage last night although I've done it hundreds of times. As Oprah would say, "Always listen to that little voice." I'm glad I did.