On Thursday night/ Friday morning, our area was vandalized in a major way: http://marysville.komonews.com/news/805696-vandals-slash-tires-more-100-cars-marysville
Over 480 tires were reported as destroyed. But that wasn't quite the extent of the damage. Some people lost Christmas decorations and had other property damage, too. Of course, the news didn't report all of that, but I can tell you that I know for sure. Why? Because this happened in our neighborhood!
When we first moved into our house from our little apartment in June of 2010, we had the advantage of having a 2-car garage. However, like most people moving into a new home, we had to leave both vehicles outside for a couple of weeks while we got settled in the home. Boxes occupied the garage until we cleared enough space to put one vehicle in. Either vehicle could fit in, but only one. Since we've lived here, I've always said I worried about vandalism to our home and especially our vehicles, since one resides outside while the other is in the garage. I knew it wasn't really a big priority for my husband, and since he has to do a lot of the heavy lifting around here, that wasn't a job that I could tackle, so I tended to not bring the subject up often. But occasionally, we talked about it. It just seemed like there was always something more important to do.
Until this week.
On Friday morning, at 4:11am, I woke up, startled. Those of you who know me personally know that I typically don't wake up during the night. But I got up to use the restroom, and the baby was moving around a lot (something I haven't felt a lot yet!) So, I was awake. I got up and walked the house, checking the doors and windows, and even opening the front door to make sure everything was okay outside (obviously, I was in a half-awake state - normally I wouldn't have even gotten out of bed for fear I'd meet a robber face-to-face, and I'd have woken Robert up!) But there wasn't anything wrong, that I could see or sense.
Friday was a weird work day for me, as I usually don't work Fridays, but I had agreed to work on a special project with some coworkers, and it was off-campus, about 20 miles away. I had planned originally to work a 4-hour day. At any rate, it was out of the normal routine for me. Robert was working a double-shift on Friday, something unusual for him also, at least for a Friday.
I couldn't fall back asleep, and at 6am, I got up to shower and get ready. As with every morning, after my shower, I checked my email. But I decided to check Facebook, too - something I typically don't do in the morning, because it is very distracting. I saw my mother-in-law's status. This is what it said:
"You know mean people suck but this is ridiculous! Someone came through our neighborhood last night and slashed the tires on every vehicle that was outside. We have 12 slashed tires at our house! HAPPY FRIDAY! It's not just the financial loss - including the fact that my husband, now, can not go to work, or the fact that we have to replace tires on 3 vehicles(Ashley's car just had new tires this summer)... but, now he will be behind at work, which impacts LOTS of people. Now I have to figure out how to get to the places I have to go today... which will most likely inconvience either my father or my sister. We can't get to our horses, without walking... which is an option but will take a while. But, it is not just about us... they did this to our WHOLE neighborhood. It is probably around 50 vehicles. Some of our neighbors are barely making it as is. So sad that some person could cause so much damage and impact so many people. I think I will pray for this person, they need help!"
I woke Robert up immediately, and told him he needed to get his parents on the phone while I hurried to get ready to go to work. I was already formulating a plan in my head to allow his parents and/ or sister to use my car, since I really just needed to get to work and home on Friday. Robert ended up driving me to work, and taking the car back to his parents' house to use for the day until they could get things figured out with their vehicles. We saw a cop parked outside our house when we left, and thought they might be trying to track down the vandals. He got a ride home from them, and planned on taking our Trailblazer to work.
When he and his dad drove into our development, however, they saw several cars along our street that had many tires slashed. And the vandals didn't just puncture the tires; they stabbed the sidewalls on every single tire in order to ruin them all.
I got a text from Robert that said, "Our neighborhood got hit. Our truck is fine, Heidi's (my cousin, who lives 3 doors down) cars are fine." It was enough to scare me into figuring out what to do to prevent us from being a victim. I was refusing to be the next victim.
Friday, most of my day was spent cleaning and decorating in the house so I could focus on moving stuff in the garage to make room for the second vehicle to be parked inside from now on. I didn't get very far, and only had the energy to really pick up smaller stuff. My in-laws texted me and told me they would come over and help move stuff in the garage so we could get both cars into the garage, and Robert texted me saying he'd he home earlier than expected.
Between the 5 of us, we got the garage reorganized enough to fit both cars into the garage.
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Yes, that is both of our cars, safe and protected in the garage! They're about 2 inches apart, lol. So tonight when I requested hot chocolate with whipped cream (not realizing that the whipped cream was in the refrigerator in the garage, which is basically 2 inches from the truck), Robert smiled and said, "Sure, sweetheart." He was in the garage for a good 10 minutes before he emerged and said he'd be starting to make the hot chocolate for me, lol! But he still made it.
The plan now is to rearrange quite a bit more, and transfer more stuff that we don't use on a regular basis to the shed out back. The armoire on the north side of the garage will eventually move to the "house" (west) side of the garage, and the pantry will be a bit more spread out. But, until then, we'll just squeeze those vehicles in, and keep them safe.
Needless to say, something that was not really considered a priority previously was made a priority, based on the severity of the situation with the vandalism. I think we've been pretty lucky until now, not having had our gas siphoned, tires slashed or windows broken. But we're not taking any more chances. I'm sure that Robert will get fed up with it eventually, until we can get everything moved around some more, but neither of us really care about that - we care about the 8 new tires on our vehicles that we work hard for, and keeping ourselves and our home safe. This is the best solution we can think of.
But, my in-laws and Robert are happy with the solution, knowing that we're safe, and so am I. It's too bad that the situation happened in the first place, and we're the first people to say that we'd just as soon not have had all the damage occur to our family and their neighbors! But our priorities changed, and we just dealt with it as best we could.
Needless to say, I'm looking forward to solid nights of rest and less worry now. :)
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