Flashback Friday

Can you believe these photos??? Someone just posted them on my Facebook wall. They are from last spring/summer when B must have been about three or four months old. I didn't even recognize him at first! It's amazing how much he's changed, and how much more he's going to change in the next few years - hell, the next twenty years! 

Now for the not so fun stuff - I am completely beside myself with fear and worry. Last night while a babysitter was here someone had the gall to slip in through my front gate (I know because they left it open) and pry the top off my locking mail box, just feet away from a fully lit house with a TV on...! Nothing was in it, of course, but I am absolutely terrified. Between this and my neighbor telling me about the recent break ins, I feel like our neighborhood is experiencing a mini crime wave, and I don't know how far it's going to escalate before it stops. I just don't understand why someone would try to break into a mail box, at night when it's bound to be empty, and when someone is obviously home just feet away and could easily see you. It's one thing when criminals are stealthy and just want to get in and out when no one's home...it's another when they don't care if you're home. I have been completely consumed with fear the last twelve hours. At least now someone - either me or a babysitter - is always home at night. But during the day when the whole neighborhood is empty the place is a target, and again, if they don't care if I'm home...shudder the thought. I keep trying to tell myself of all the homes mine is the least likely to be broken into because of my alarm and the bars on all the windows, which none of the other houses have. You would think any thief would just pass us by and go next door instead. But you'd think anyone looking to break into a mailbox would wait until nobody was home, too, and they didn't. So I just don't know what I'm dealing with here. And I have to leave for a week a month from now. Ugh!

I'm going to call today to get bars put on the upstairs window and the bathroom window which, even though it doesn't open, could easily be broken and slipped into. I also took my gun out of the safe. Don't worry, it's in a place B could never get to in a million years and the bullets are in a separate location. But if there is an emergency in the middle of the night, having it locked away in a very inaccessible safe which is hard to open pretty much defeats the point of having it. 

I hate that the world has to be this way sometimes, but it is what it is. Nobody escapes crime, even petty crime. Not to sound overly dramatic, but if someone broke in here and stole everything I need to function in my life and my work and I had to go through the rigamarole of filing a police report, filing an insurance claim, replacing everything, plus then having to still sleep here alone every night, etc etc, I don't think I could take it. I think I might have a nervous breakdown. As I mentioned before I never really recovered from my last two break ins (which were ages ago and not even in this city). There's just something about home burglaries that pushes every button I have. Some people are angry and sad when this happens to them but then they move on...I don't know if I could move on. I'm so afraid. And I hate that I'm made to feel afraid because I'm alone, and that I need a man around here to protect me from other men.