The Smithsonian is on the task of covering heinous crimes. They have compiled the…

“Top Ten Reasons to Beware the Ides of March

2. A Raid on Southern England, 1360
A French raiding party begins a 48-hour spree of rape, pillage and murder in southern England. King Edward III interrupts his own pillaging spree in France to launch reprisals, writes historian Barbara Tuchman, “on discovering that the French could act as viciously in his realm as the English did in France.”

4. Czar Nicholas II Abdicates His Throne, 1917
Czar Nicholas II of Russia signs his abdication papers, ending a 304-year-old royal dynasty and ushering in Bolshevik rule. He and his family are taken captive and, in July 1918, executed before a firing squad.

and, worst of all:

8. CBS Cancels the “Ed Sullivan Show,” 1971
Word leaks that CBS-TV is canceling “The Ed Sullivan Show” after 23 years on the network, which also dumped Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason in the preceding month. A generation mourns.

That one is harsh.  Ed Sullivan…though, I hardly remember thee.

 

Today is pretty rough, and reading random lists is kind of helping.  Remembering the Ides of March is helping get my mind off things for now.  It’s a little break in the storm, so to speak.

 

This morning was another lovely morning.  Outside it was a cold, but sunny day on the island in the Sound.  I was greeted with wispy fog commuting through the trees on their way to work this morning, as I and the kids dropped Ben off at the ferry, and unfortunately they were stuck in a little bit of traffic at the round-about, as well.  The sunlight was filtering through the towering pine trees, and everything just seemed so peaceful and quiet.  It was a beautiful morning on the island.

 

This morning I was going to do some cleaning around the house, and I was going to start by mopping downstairs, but I don’t have a mop.

I wanted to vacuum the bedrooms today, but I don’t have a vacuum.

 

I am in the middle of all this right now, and I still don’t know how to process everything.  I am trying to keep busy, stay on our daily schedule, and not break open the bottle of wine in the kitchen (I’m saving that for later).  But the waves of emotion keep washing over me, and my stomach is in knots when I think about it.

We got a call from our agent from our previous home last Thursday just as we were getting dinner. The front door to our old house had apparently been open all day, and a neighbor had called her to let her know.  They said the bathroom upstairs was flooded and pooling into the kitchen.  So, that’s not good news.

Ben flew down Friday morning, which we were planning for a while already, and he was originally going to pick up what we left in the garage.  Mostly stuff that couldn’t fit in our moving van, bikes, lamps, treadmill, etc. But now we don’t know if there is anything left.

We called the police and had them check out the house, and they said it clearly appeared to be a forced entry through the side garage door, but no one was inside, and we have an official police report saying it was breaking and entering. The kids are upset, and I’m getting worried about Ben going down alone…but there isn’t much we can do about it, and we are trusting that things are going to be okay.

I just couldn’t shake it all Friday.  On one hand, we called our insurance and they were incredibly helpful.  They said this was covered, and they were going to dispatch a clean up/repair crew to the house.  This was such a relief, since I don’t know how much it is going to cost to repair the house.  I don’t even know where to begin on something like this.  I don’t even know how safe the house is now.  This house that we were just living in, two weeks ago.  My kids slept in those rooms.  I taught at my desk in that house.  I made birthday cakes in that kitchen.  We enjoyed fires in the winter in that living room.  We just lived there.

I am so furious that this happened, and some dude has been sleeping in our home and flooding the bathroom and no one on the street thought it was weird. We lived there for 7 years…where were any of the neighbors who I gave Christmas cards to? Or to whom my daughter gave Valentine’s cards?  Or even the next door neighbor who I gave a spare dog crate to, when their puppies were outside in 110F degree sun all weekend?  Nobody is around?  Anyone?

When Ben finally got to the house on Friday, we were able to see what the real damage was.

It was a lot worse than we thought.

The stuff in the garage is mostly gone. Everything was torn apart and stomped over.  All of our bikes, vacuums, lamps, shelves, tons of stuff. The treadmill is gone.  The vacuum is gone.  The Hoover Floormate is gone.  My sewing machine is gone.  My daughter’s sewing machine is gone.  The box of cables is gone.  The patio set is gone.  The hamper is gone, and the clothes are gone.  The toys are gone.  The tricycles for the kids are gone.  The Radio Flyer wagon is gone.  I still have to go through the pictures we took before we left to itemize what was stolen.

The door to the garage was definitely busted in. They kicked the door so hard, it broke the entire door frame off.  They made a mess of the garage, and I didn’t think there was anything in the empty house to take…but I was incredibly wrong.

They also took all the cabinet doors off all the cabinets in every bathroom. The shower doors are gone. The closet doors are all gone in every room and in the hallways.  The refrigerator that was supposed to stay with the house is gone.  The microwave is gone. They were apparently “in process” because there were two huge mirror doors in my bathroom that were already dismounted, and a sink was in a hallway.

They were in the process of taking a toilet, but the bonus to that one is that they unscrewed the toilet upstairs and flooded the house intentionally.   The kitchen ceiling is ripping apart, there are huge, 3foot holes in the ceiling and waterfalls were soaking the kitchen cabinets and the living room carpet, and they will all need to be removed now.

There is more, but that’s just the bulk of it.

Our realtor is going to sell it as is after some repair, and insurance will pay us for the losses.  That’s the plan, as far as I know.

This is pretty hard to swallow, and while I am trying to keep my mind on life here…the waves of nausea hit me when I think of all of this, and I don’t know what we can do.  There is nothing else to do, at this point.  Ben brought home what was left, and that should be the end of it.

 On one hand, I am so extremely grateful that we are safe.  No one is hurt, and we didn’t have to defend ourselves from anybody while we were in that house.  It’ll take a little while to get some things we need, but it’s all stuff.  It’ll just take time.

On the other hand, that was our home.  And it has been so thoroughly gutted and ruined, it is a skeleton of what we knew.  All the happy memories we had have been replaced with theft and destruction.  The purple walls I painted stand across pools of water on the floors that once felt the bare feet of my children.

 

I’m just trying to breathe through this. But I kind of want to crawl in bed.  I have been seriously conflicted with whether or not I should even write about this, since this level of violation is deeply invasive and this is a very personal trial.  I don’t even know how to process what happened.  I thought we were going to move, like we have always moved.  We just go from one house to another.  The invasion into our home was so thorough and so disgusting, it makes me enormously thankful we weren’t there when it happened.  I can’t even think of my children having been there with such horrible people near by, and we thought we were in a safe place…there are a lot of “what if” thoughts going through my head, but right now I need to think through this, and I need to think beyond it.  I know we are going to be okay now, I know we are all safe now, and I am so grateful we have a home far away from the mess.

I know all this, and I am trying to stay positive. But this sucks.