52 New Things -- Week 10 -- The Po-po

My new thing of the week was going to be skiing at Mt. La Crosse, the local ski hill we have yet to try. I was all prepared to write about how tiny it was compared to Colorado, but how much I love skiing so it doesn't matter . . . but instead I ended up filling out a police report. Stinkin' thieving bastards.

When I went down to our basement storage area to get my skis, they weren't where I'd left them. I stared stupidly at the spot where they were supposed to be, then started moving boxes, wondering if Kevin had set them somewhere else. I called him to ask, hopeful that for some odd reason he'd stuck two pairs of skis and four boots behind several boxes. Nope. He hadn't touched them.

Here's the thing: you need a key to get into the basement. Here's the other thing: we have a padlock on the storage area door. But here's the crappy thing: the storage units are just wood frames encircled with chicken wire. Someone pushed the chicken wire in on the unit next to my skis, then pulled the chicken wire off between the two and snagged my stuff.

Silly me, thinking my stuff was safe behind two locks when the frickin' chicken wire makes stealing stuff oh-so-easy for some idiot in my building. When Mr. Cop came to check it out, I suggested a unit-to-unit search of the other five apartments in my building, but he said the chances of finding anything were slim. Most likely my skis had been pawned already.

Pawned.

See, that's the thing with being a non-thieving citizen: I hadn't even considered that option. I went on Craigslist while waiting for the police to arrive, hoping some stupid criminal would have posted my skis and envisioning justice being done when the guy meets me in a parking lot to sell me my skis and suddenly ten cop cars surround us and the thief realizes it's a sting. Because the police have the time and man-power to make my skis a priority . . . in my dreams.

Long story short, the cop said there is little to no chance of ever seeing my stuff again. As far as we can tell, that's all that's missing, but then again, we didn't even know the skis were missing until I wanted to use them and they were gone. There might be other things we just haven't missed yet.

Kevin said he's never seen me so mad. I was even tossing out swear words here and there while yelling about the stupid idiot that took my stuff. I think he had to try hard not to laugh at me, which was smart; it might have been cute and funny to see me so out of character, but I probably would have punched him. After letting me yell for a while, he gave me a big hug, and then I might have started to cry a little. The one pair of skis, though more expensive than the other, were just given to me last year by a teacher friend whose friend didn't want them anymore. The ones I was really upset about where my old Colorado skis. I spent a lot of time on a lot of mountains on those skis; I may be able to replace the skis, but the sentimental connection to Colorado is gone.

So now we're trying to figure out insurance stuff . . . we have renter's insurance that will get us some of our money back, but I want to know first if that will make our premiums go up and make it worse for us financially in the end. I'm also trying to figure out the forgiveness piece, 'cause right now I'm just really bitter and angry that I work hard to pay for things I want while other people steal from hard working people to get what they want. I'm not feeling especially Christian-like quite yet. Instead of turning the other cheek, I'd like to kick someone in the face.

Hopefully next week's new thing will be more fun . . . or at the very least, less costly to my bank account.