The Case of the Gold Flannel Pillowcase

It was not a dark and stormy night; it was a lovely, balmy, California evening, spent with a particularly delightful group of local sewing mavens....   I arrived home at about 11:00, & realized that one of my cats was not only not there to greet me, but wasn't responding to any calling.   After 15 minutes of calling & searching, he finally showed up ... OUTSIDE the front door (this is an indoors only cat most of the time - how on earth did he sneak out - was it when I left earlier that evening?).... a few moments after that I found myself staring at the empty space on the desk where my laptop usually resides, and the pieces started slowing falling into place.

Yup - we had been burglarized.

 It wasn't until the police (possibly the NICEST cop in my local police force!) showed up that I finally saw the naked pillow on my bed - the pillow that just a few hours earlier had been nicely dressed in gold flannel....and then realized that the jewelry chest on the counter nearby had indeed been rifled through.   I think in my initial shock and denial I was SURE no jewelry was missing, but then I realized that every.  single.   valuable.  piece of jewelry that had belonged to my darling Mother was gone.   All the diamond rings (from 2 marriages and her own inheritance) - gone.  Anything silver, gold, or a valuable gemstone.   Gone.     Plus a few silver and gold necklaces of mine, which I could honestly care less about.  For the next few days I kept thinking surely there's ONE ring somewhere else, just ONE piece that belonged to her.....   nope - Gone.

I'm still reeling a bit, and noticing that I'm going through various stages of loss & grief  - yesterday I finally felt the anger that made me wish I could kick the friggin' dweeb in the balls....HARD!

I know that people do this, but I'm still mystified about the fact that it actually happened to me!

Bear with me - the silly cartoons actually make me grin,
and I can use all the grins I get right now!  :D

So.....The grand plans I had of sewing, reading, and blogging during the evenings this week have been mostly taken up by sleepless nights  re-doing all of my passwords, researching a replacement computer, dealing with software & old peripheries that don't work with the new system, denial, anger, browsing craigslist and eBay in the ridiculously unlikely hope that I'll see one of her rings, or my computer....uh huh.

Sorry for dumping on blogland, but I realized that I just need to unload publicly as part of the process of release.   I usually move through trauma pretty quickly; actually, this has only been 3 days, so I guess I can cut myself a break, but it still hurts, and the  hours that are being eaten up by realizing that I need to replace my printer (a perfectly nice printer that worked just fine with my older computer - which, btw, was also working just fine!) because it's not compatible with the slightly newer computer (rolleyes), set up a whole new email system, figure out how to transfer data from the 10-year old dinosaur backup computer, hours with online support "experts" some of who, as it turns out, know less than I do....etc, etc.....well... I'm just allowing myself to bitch and dump for a bit here.   Getting ripped off sucks.

I will move through this.

Oh, one bit of good news is that I will likely get an insurance settlement that covers only a pittance of the jewelry loss, but it's enough $ to replace the computer!  Insurance companies do come through sometimes (assuming they actually will, of course).

And of course, it's only "stuff", and it really could have been much, much worse.   :)   I did lose a lot of pictures that hadn't been backed up - I'm thankful for my blog in that sense, because of the shots that are saved in Picasa - yay to web picture programs!   And hey, all that clutter-clearing of excessive files stored on the computer?   Taken care of by the universe, thank you ;-)

I feel better already.   Thanks for being there, dear readers... :)