It's funny...hey wait that's my bike.

Yeah, well, its still sorta funny. This morning while getting ready for work, I was standing half dressed talking about, of course, impending relocation or something related to it when there was a commotion outside. From the bedroom window we heard someon yell, "Put that back!" and then Andrea saw a white haired guy run across the street and I saw him running behind a black guy in a bike, holding onto the bike rider's shirt, yelling "Stop! Stop!" AH, I thought, never a dull moment in this craphole neighborhood. Then a minute later our doorbell rang. Huh?

It was the white haired guy. I noticed that something was missing from my front porch. Specifically, one of the wooden spindles on the railing, even more specifically, the cheapo $60 bike I bought from Target a couple years ago that had been locked to the railing all last fall, winter, and this spring. "A guy just sto9le you bike!"
"Oh." I said. The older guy was dripping with sweat.
"I tried to stop him but short of coming to blows he wasn't going to stop."
"Thanks." I said.
"You can get in your car and chase him down! He went down that way. A bald guy!"
"No, that's ok," I said, still covered in shocked amusement, "It was a cheap bike. It wasn't in great shape anyway."
"I think the tires were flat." he said.
"Yeah. Hey, sorry for the trouble."

So, that's how my day began.

I don't really care about the bike at all, but the feeling of personal invasion is hard to escape. I mean, he damaged my house a little bit and he took something that was mine. It wasn't his. What made him think it was OK to just take something like that? That little bit of psychic disturbance has had me off-kilter all day. That on top of the stress of the impending decision about where Andrea will work (definitely New York now) as me feeling like I'm on the verge of a breakdown. Literally.

But I think I just need to focus on the stable, on the known, and things will be ok.