Thieves are mean!

Remember that “funny” burglary story? The one where someone broke into my apartment, ate ice cream and fled? Not actually what happened at all.

I got home Tuesday feeling exhausted and emotional. I was so sad to leave my friends in New York, and I just wanted to relax. Then I saw the huge mess in the kitchen. There was a ton of mud on the kitchen floor, not to mention melted, molding ice cream. The ice cream was also pooled and molding on the counter. Then, I glanced in my room and noticed that it had clearly been tossed.

My jewelry box had been dumped on my bed. My drawers had been dumped. Storage boxes had been pulled out of my closets and from under my bed and dumped. The box containing my financial info and my checks was open, and the checks had been disturbed. They had even taken the time to pull apart my decorative martini shaker to see if anything was hidden in it. In other words, the story I heard did not match what happened.

I called Todd to ask him again what the story was. He was not happy to hear that we’d been mislead. I could see that a box of checks had clearly been disturbed in his room, too. I’ve since found out that the burglary actually happened Christmas Eve. As I cleaned, I discovered that the thieves took the opal ring I Mom and Dad got me for Christmas when I was 13, the ruby earrings I got for my 17^th birthday, the digital camera I they got me for graduating from Buena Vista, the fabulous Nikon N50 they got me for graduating from Fordham, my old cell phone, my tape recorders, all of my DVDs and my credit cards.

Our landlord thought he was being nice and not spoiling our holiday by waiting to tell us, but he could have destroyed us financially! The thieves could have emptied our bank accounts and run up our credit card bills! Since I got back, I’ve been cleaning up the mess and trying to protect my finances. I opened a new checking account and ordered all new credit cards. I stopped using credit cards a long time ago. I only had the cards stashed for a major emergency…thus I don’t really remember what they were. Oops. I’m just so afraid that I may have missed one! On a daily basis, I’ll probably miss the DVDs most, I’m most worried about the financial stuff, and I’m most upset about the sentimental items I received as gifts. I’m working on coming to terms with it, though. I remind myself that I’m lucky for all the things they didn’t get, lucky that the thieves hadn’t yet used my checks or cards, and lucky that they can take my mementos, but not my memories.

Now I’m trying to get ready for school on Monday. I’ve been buying textbooks, writing, getting my laptop worked on by the techies (it’s not dead, Hooray! Just the battery’s kaput.), and tweaking my syllabus. I’m so nervous to get my new classroom and my new class! Wish me luck.