Well, This Is The “Other Thing”

I came downstairs this morning to find what I first thought was water drops all over the kitchen floor. A second glance revealed what I saw was glass shards, not water. At some point during the night “person or persons unknown” had thrown a chunk of concrete through one of the kitchen windows. The only thing that is missing is my purse, which I kept on a chair behind the breakfast bar, so it was invisible from the kitchen door.

I woke The Squire and called 911, and then we sat and waited. And waited. I called a little after 7:00 and the officer didn’t arrive until close to 9 o’clock. The damage had been done and there was really nothing the police could do, so it wasn’t an emergency, but we couldn’t use the kitchen until the police had viewed the Scene of the Crime.

This is the chunk of concrete that was thrown through the window. It is slightly over 6 feet from the window to the sink, and it was thrown with enough force to shatter the colander that was in the sink. (See Sept. 23, 2020)

It’s rather hard to see the broken windows in this shot because of the “shrink wrap” we had over both side windows. There was glass EVERYWHERE – from one side of the kitchen to the other – and the kitchen is sixteen feet wide.

Several mysteries about this business. I keep my purse on a chair between that window and the breakfast bar, so it is not visible to anyone who comes to the door. Was this a crime of opportunity, or did the person know it was there? And how did they know? How did they manage to reach it? The officer was slightly over six feet tall, and he could barely reach the windowsill from the outside. Besides, anybody who tried to crawl in through the window would have cut themselves seriously. There was a good bit of glass on the outside, where they had pulled it from the frame and tossed it aside, but there was still plenty of jagged glass along the bottom of both the inside and outside windows.

This is how they managed to take my purse. It was on the seat of that chair, and partially covered by my jacket, which fell over when they grabbed it. As I said, somebody had to know it was there. That black spot on the paneling is mud – don’t ask how that got there! – and the white spot on the floor is glass.

And of course, this had to happen on a day when the entire house looked as if the Devil had had a fit. Not only was the kitchen a mess, but we were working a jigsaw puzzle in the living room, and the dining room table was piled with stuff, including things I had been using to work on a dollhouse.

Let’s face it, I’ll never pass the physical to subscribe to Good Housekeeping.