On Getting Woken Up By the Cops at 2am

I wasn't sleeping very well last night for no known reason, but I still nearly pissed my pants when someone started pounding fast and loud on the door in the wee hours last night. The first thought that went through my head was that the house was on fire. Terrified.

Our room is at the back of the house, so I ran to one of the front rooms, where a bright spotlight was blazing through the open window. Both freaked and dazed, I yelled down to the two figures below, "Hello?"

The good news is that the house was not on fire and that the two individuals were members of Madison's Finest. I stumbled downstairs, getting tangled up in the dog in the way down, to find a number of people milling around on the sidewalk.

Turns out the next door neighbors had heard breaking glass, and when they looked outside, they saw the interior light of my car on and some people poking around inside.

The policemen had me look in my car and see if anything was missing...unfortunately, my car is a *bit* cluttered so it would have been hard to tell, but I could see that Violet's car seat and my Sigg bottle were still there, which--as replacement costs go--were the only things I was really concerned about.

One of the cops took my info, basically said that I probably wouldn't be hearing from them (well, yeah...), and apologized for waking us up.

Lying in bed, I kept thinking about the door that I'd left unlocked after sweeping the deck and that there was no phone upstairs and what Jody and I would do in the event of a home invasion and throughout it all I was thinking about Violet.

I don't know if I ever fell back to sleep.

The police seemed to think that it was just a bunch of young punks looking for trouble than actual thieves, which I guess is comforting, but it makes me crazy that a bunch of thoughtless teens can set off such a chain reaction of insecurity and fear.

I guess we'll be leaving our exterior light on from now on.