inside :: outside

little details. in the living room and in the garden.

the title of today's inside :: outside post gets another layer of meaning this time. someone broke into our house the other night. i woke up at six with the littlest, sat on the couch and looked at the open window. wondered who'd left it open without the net (we need nets here to keep out mosquitos, flies, snakes, mice, rats, cats...you name it, this is farm land). anyway, it took my numb morning brain a few seconds before i instinctively looked towards the laptop usually placed on a small table by the wall, the shelf where i'd left the camera the night before and the bag with my work laptop by the door. all gone.

the person came in while we were sleeping. the windows weren't locked in the living room. which i never really bothered much about, because, well, i just felt safe.

the morning it happened i had mixed feelings. i was sad since i lost a lot of photos, as in most of those taken ince october. they were on the laptop and i'd been too lazy to save them on our desktop or the external hard drive. what i have is what i have here, on flickr and on facebook. i sent a few to my brother and D, but that's about it. those up there is from a few days before, and i'd already uploaded them to the blog.

the other feeling was relief. that they didn't take more, that they didn't take our bags, iphones, go through our stuff, enter the guest room where my mom was sleeping and take some other cameras, her laptop, passports, take... i don't know, that little jewlery i have, old silver ware, nothing too valuable, but impossible to replace for me. it seemed like a quick break in and out.

then later i started to freak. the feeling that you're not safe in your house. that we were lucky. what if someone had woken up. me, my mom...the kids. maybe that was the case. maybe they didn't take more because they heard little D calling like i did around 3, where i went to get him water. maybe they heard when J came to our bed around 5. maybe they were interrupted in the darkness when my mom went to the bathroom. D wasn't even home that night. just me, my mom and the children.

someone was in the house while we were there. what if it had been someone that panicked when i half asleep walked to my child's room? what if it had been someone full of hatred, ready to hurt, capable of violence? this country has more than its fair share of hate and violence.

i went through the house the following evening with my mom. made sure everything was locked. and hated the fact that i will now worry about this. which i probably should have worried about before, but hey, at least i got a few years feeling that i could go to bed without locking my doors or windows. that's more than most. and i will continue to lock the house in the night, but i hope that sooner or later i will no longer glance into the dark corners when i'm going to get one of the kids a glass of water in the night. or just quickly look over the living room when i get up in the morning to see if anything is missing or broken.

Luckily the kids never really got to understand what had happened, and luckily we didn't lose much, nor had our house turned upside down. the worst part about what happened is all those "what ifs". which i guess is lucky too.

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on another nicer and happier note, thank you so much to those of you who still find their way in here, even if i have not been commenting anywhere myself. i'm visiting blogs now and then, but time has been limited. so thank you, i really appreciate that.

wishing you all a wonderful weekend.