The boogie man

And now for the latest in my dumb life......

I think someone tried to break into my garage and possibly my house last week.

I drew y'all the most awesome picture in the history of ever to try and explain all of this.  You are welcome.

 

My property is completely fenced in.  And unlike my incredible picture above, the fence on the right side doesn't curve.  It's straight.  Anyway, when I get home I drive down the world's skinniest driveway and have to pay close attention because if I move approximately two inches too far to the left I will hit the side of my house.  If I drive approximately two inches too far to the right I will crash into some columns or into my fence.  (This drawing isn't accurate enough for you to tell all of that by looking at it.)  Then I get to my two crappy gate doors at the back edge of my house and I can't move 1/2 inch too far either way or I will crash my car.

I've had problems with those gate doors since I bought my house.  I had some guys work an entire day on them to try to put extra support on the posts holding them up because they were sagging so bad they dragged on the ground.  And now they are sagging so bad again that I can't close them because one has sagged more than the other so the latches on each door don't come close to lining up with one anther.  So I leave them open all the time and I have to prop them open with bricks because they swing all willy nilly.  After I get through the willy nilly gate doors, I pull into my detached garage.

I didn't draw this in my beautiful picture either (I'm starting to wonder why I drew a picture for y'all at all), but my garage is a two-car garage and it has a storage area in it.  There is the big rolling door that you drive in and out of and you can access the storage area from inside the garage or there is a regular door with a dead bolt and door knob you can use to access the storage area from outside.  I think I've opened that door about 3 times ever.  Which is why I have a giant trash can sitting in front of it.

When I left for work last Thursday, as I was backing out of my garage I noticed the handle of the trash can was visible in my rear view mirror and it's normally not.  I got out of my car to check things out and the trash can had clearly been moved and there was a cigarette butt on the ground in front of my garage.  I know I haven't taken up smoking so it's not mine, and I haven't had anyone over recently who smokes.  When I got to work, I immediately contacted my awesome neighbors who have been after me for two years to contact their guy to get a remote put on my crappy gate doors so that I can close them other than when I'm driving in and out.  They've also been after me to put cameras around my property.  My brother the cop has been after me to do all of this as well.  Because I live in the 'hood and we have a lot of crime.  I called their gate/remote guy and he said he could come out on Saturday to look at my property and give me an estimate.

I had to work late that night so it was dark when I got home and I didn't notice anything else.

On Friday I had to leave work early because they have started coming down on us about overtime so I got home when it was still light out and I decided I was going to work on a couple of spray painting projects.  I walked out to the garage so I could get some cardboard to put under my stuff while I spray painted my little heart out.  I have a keypad to open my garage door and when I went to it, the cover was open.  I never leave the cover open because I had to pay good money to have a new keypad put in last year because the cover was missing from the prior one when I bought the house, and the whole thing had corroded from rain, etc.  I put my code in and the door wouldn't open.  I put the code in again and it still wouldn't open.  I then hit the star key and it opened but I have never had to hit the star key before.  So I think someone had been trying to hack their way in using the key pad.  After that, it seemed to work fine with just my code.

A little later I went back up on my deck and was about to open up one of my french doors to go in my sun room when I saw a partial hand print on the glass.  The reason it stood out to me is because it was about 3 fingers worth in a white powdery substance.  I really don't ever touch the glass when I go in and out of the door and I knew I hadn't had white powder on my hands.  Luckily when you look in that door, you would probably see the motion detector from my alarm system up in the corner of that room (especially if you're a criminal looking for stuff like that before you possibly break into a place).  And if you look in the other french door on my deck you can see an alarm system control panel.  After seeing all of this stuff, I was feeling really glad that the gate/remote guy was coming the next day.

He arrived at my house Saturday afternoon and I walked down the driveway with him to show him my existing crappy gate doors and as soon as he hit the corner of my house and could see in my back yard the conversation went a little something like this:

"WHAT?  THIS IS HORRIBLE BACK HERE!!"

"Um, I know I need to cut the grass and weeds.  I'm planning to do that next weekend."

"NO, NO, NO!" he yelled.  "That's not what I mean.  Look at all of the blind spots back here!  I HATE BLIND SPOTS!  We need to fix this and fix this soon! Someone could be hiding behind your garage.  They could be on the side of the garage.  They could be under your deck, down this little "alley" running down the side the house.  THIS IS TOO DANGEROUS!  The garage should never have been built where it is.  It should have been put in the very far back corner so no one can be hiding around the side or back.  Why would anyone put a garage here?  You live here alone and come home to this every single night by yourself??"

"Well, um, yes.  Yes, I do."

"I would never allow my wife to get out of her car into a situation like this even if I was inside the house," he told me.  "Aren't you scared?"

"Not really.  Until now anyway."

"I don't understand why you young ladies live alone in neighborhoods like this."

"Because these are the neighborhoods we can afford houses in when we're buying house on our own," I mumbled.

So we talked for a while and I told him I was fully expecting him to tell me that my crappy gate doors need to be thrown in a trash heap and that I need a new door.  And he told me he's glad I already knew that and he said he could put a remote on the existing doors but he would just be stealing money from me if he did that because I would then be calling him every couple of months to come out and fix them.  So we agreed I need a brand new gate with a remote because it's better to do things right the first time.

He then asked me if I've thought about installing cameras around my property and I told him I've been looking at them online and asked if he does that too and he does.  So I told him to include that in his quote.  We discussed how cameras are one of the biggest deterrents for crime you can have because criminals do not like them.  He said between cameras, my alarm system, signs saying I have an alarm system, and the closed gate, someone would really have to want to get in my house rather than going to hit an easier target.  He's going to put in the same camera system he has at his own house and that he just installed in his neighbor's house.  So for those of you who come to my house for Pie parties, don't pick your underwear out of your butt or pick your nose when you're walking up to any of the doors because I will probably see you doing it.

He then asked if he could come back by on Sunday with his welder so the welder could take some measurements and see the property and where the gate would be installed, etc. and I told him that would be fine.  About an hour after he left, I was in my kitchen when I heard something repeatedly whacking against the bay window in my living room.  I looked in the living room and saw a bird flying into the window over and over again and then it disappeared.  I ran over to look and see if it had been hurt and fallen on the ground, and as I looked out I saw that the fence on the front corner of my house was pulled away from my house and the side fence.  It's not something I would have noticed because you really have to be looking at a certain angle to even see that section of fencing.  (The bird was apparently fine by the way.)

When the gate guy came came back on Sunday with his welder, I showed them the fence that had been knocked away so they suggested I add another gate on that side in the scary "alley" running down the side of my house so that if someone kicked in that fence again they still won't be able to get in my back yard.  The alley is not really an alley.  It's just a very skinny strip between my house and the fence where the a/c units, gas meters, etc. are located.

My brother, the cop, came over Sunday night to help me put my new deck furniture together (LOVE) and then I took him out to dinner as a thank you.  He nailed my fence back to my house for me and I showed him everything else and then I told him I need to get a job as a detective because I think I know who was messing around behind my house.  

There was a crew putting in a driveway next door to me on Wednesday.

They would certainly have had a white powdery substance on their hands.  They were also working right next to where the fence was knocked down at the front of my house.  Also, they saw me leaving for work that morning because they had just arrived and had parked on the street in such a way in a large truck that I had a very hard time getting out of my driveway without hitting them and they all stood there and watched as I inched and inched out.

When I got home that evening they were still working and I walked over to see the driveway and check to see how close it is to my fence.  They would hardly look at me.  I was very friendly and told them how nice their work was looking, etc. and they barely glanced at me.

Anyway, I am going to live in Fort Knox by the time all of this stuff is done to my house.  Unfortunately I will have not a penny left to keep inside of it because all of this is going to cost me a small fortune.  So it will be more like Fort Poor.  But I really do think it's going to give me so much peace of mind, that it's a great investment in my house, and that if I ever sell I will get my money back for doing all of this.  But I may be eating ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches for a while.  (Luckily the fake kids left three huge things of ramen noodles when they moved out.)

Yesterday I negotiated the cost of the gate down by $200 from the quote and felt a tiny bit bad-ass for doing so.  And they should be installing everything next week.  I'm glad because after that guy came to my house I was completely terrified when I got home at 9:00 last night because I took a little trip to Ikea after work.  I was running up my driveway so whoever might be hiding in all of the blind spots wouldn't grab me.  And I'm horribly out of shape so I couldn't breathe by the time I got inside.  And the gate guy called me about 3 minutes after I got inside and I had to try and not be huffing and puffing while I was talking to him because I didn't want to have to tell him he scared me so bad that I ran up my driveway when I got home so the back yard boogie man/men wouldn't get me.