Hello Loyal Blog Readers! I'm sorry it's been so long since my last entry. You might be wondering where we've been. Questioning what sorts of English shenanigans we've been up to. I'd like to say Josh and I have been involved with London life, ya know, striking against the budget cuts, protesting the Libyan government, sitting outside Buckingham Palace hoping an invite might drop out of the window. Alas, I have no idea about that stuff. I don't even know who's designed Kate's wedding dress! I'm shamefully out of the loop (and haven't watched Super Nanny USA in weeks), and it's basically because I got a J-O-B. No exotic, adventurous explanation here. I got a job, got busy, and my Life as a Londoner became just Life.
The good news is that we've acclimated enough to say that life in London feels fairly routine. We get up, go to work, run at the gym (sometimes), make dinner, leave the dishes in the sink and catch an hour of Two and a Half Men before falling into the deepest realm of REM sleep humanly possible. Not exactly the most exciting schedule, but I guess it means that we've made it. On March 25th we hit our 6-month mark here and it officially punctuated the day we went from being "foreigners" to "locals". We no longer need a map to get to the grocery store; we accept the likelihood that a transit strike, signal failure or planned engineering work will screw up our commute; and we know that when a menu boosts pancakes we're likely to get a short stack of crepes. I even find us saying things like "let's take the lift" and "cheers" in place of thank you...
Then came the robbery! And with that horrific act of injustice, I instantly felt like I had been transported back in time. Back to those first few months of chaos and calamity. To the days when Starbucks was the only place with a functioning Internet and IKEA was truly a 4-letter word. While Josh thinks the robbery was our final rite of passage (get robbed, get respect), I've come to think there's some sort of English Poltergeist trying to scare us into going back home.
But after the instantaneously feeling of dread and despair, I actually felt rather calm in a rather short period of time. Maybe it was the Gemini in me or maybe it was as if all the crazy experiences we had in the first 6 months trained us to deal with just about anything. Perhaps everything we'd been through was just practice for the big game. I've come to expect the unexpected and accept the unacceptable. As they say, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Not to dwell on the details, but for the sake of the blog, here's how it went down: I was at work. It was 6:10pm. The sun was still casting a strong stream of light through the city - the best part about a "spring ahead" time change. I'd forgotten to put my phone on silent, so when my ringer went off I immediately dropped what I was doing to mute it. Of course I had to rummage through my purse first, spilling out lipsticks and receipts and mixed currency until I found it buried underneath my arsenal of supplies. In the process of paralyzing the volume I also managed to hang up on Josh, who I noticed had called and texted me several times in a fifteen-minute period of time. I took a moment to ponder why he was so desperate to speak with me (I guess I really am that cool)… then my phone rang again and I answered it before anyone in the office located the source of the disturbance.
"Josh?" I whispered in a low raspy voice. To be clear, it wasn't a sexy, phone-operator rasp, but the kind of hushed tone you use when you have your head under your desk so no one knows you're on your cell phone taking a personal call. "I'm still at work. What's up?" I expected him to ask what we were doing for dinner or tell me that he missed me so bad it hurt (well, maybe not in those exact words). Instead he said, "Did you hide the computer?" Of course I didn't hide the computer! I left the computer exactly where I always do: in the living room on the couch near the radiator - right where one would expect to find an expensive piece of modern machinery. To that he replied, "Oh, well, don't panic... It seems like the laptop is the only thing missing and nothing's messed up, but I think we've robbed." Though it wasn't so much as a "thought" as a reality. The busted door frame and crowbar dent were evidence that I wasn't playing hide-n-seek with our Mac Book Pro and we had officially been burglarized.
When I walked in I hugged Josh and then went about accessing the damage. Looking through as much of my things as I could without actually touching anything. The police had informed us to sort of float about and use our magical powers to open draws and such until they were able to dust for fingerprints.
The assessment yielded the following positive results: The TV was still in place (thank God), the PC was hooked up and our new plants were shaken but unharmed. The place was indeed a mess, but that was our fault. I was actually kind of worried the police would walk in and think the bulgars threw our clothes around and left toast crumbs in the hallway so they could easily find their way out. But they didn't seem concerned by the mess and, unless I'm being paranoid, I really don't think they were concerned about any of it. They didn't so much as shake our hands, give us their names or extend an apology. It even occurred to me that they might be the robbers! I've seen Home Alone. A fake badge, a couple of walkie talkies and you're a cop.
The next day the SOCO man arrived, aka is the Scene of Crime Officer. On a side note, I think SOCO sounds like the name of puppeteering school that teaches people how to entertain with hosiery. "CSI" is way cooler. Anyway, he came and dusted for prints and found none. This surprised me because he never took our prints nor did he take anyone else's who had been in our flat. How did he know that the prints he found didn't belong to the robber? It was all smoke and mirrors as far as I was concerned. I knew, as well as the police, that the odds of cracking the case was as great as our odds of getting a FedEx package.
And that was that. Within 48 hours life went back to normal. I didn't (and don't) feel scared. I'm not mourning over my things. And I'm genuinely happy that no one got hurt. In fact, I find it rather ironic that when we first moved in I complained via blog that we had way too much stuff - and one too many hats - anyway. So maybe on some level this was the universe's way of sorting out the clutter and letting me know it reads my blog... and if the universe is reading your blog, you'd better write something.
