Someone just broke into our house and robbed us blind. I’m only writing about it because whoever burglarized us stole my computer, including all of my blog posts that I had written out for the next month or so. So now I don’t have anything. I’ve been doing this every day for over a year, always with a hefty surplus of essays in my pocket in case I have a day where I can’t think of anything to write about or I don’t have any time to sit down at my computer. I usually back up my work every once in a while, but I guess I grew a little complacent.

This is crazy. I spent the whole morning at work. I came home around six-thirty and everything was fine. My wife was out all day and came back at around eight. It was a really nice night out, so we decided to take the dog for a walk to the park.

We were out a little over an hour. We stopped for ice cream and started making plans for what we’d do for dinner. We made it back to the house and I put my keys in the front door, but it only opened up like an inch before getting caught. On what? It was that chain lock, the kind you find on every hotel room door, a chain that I didn’t even know existed, it came with the house but we’ve never used it, but it’s something that could have only been hooked from the inside.

It didn’t make any sense. It was one of those actions that I do so many times throughout the course of the day, I put my keys in the doorknob and open up. And when it didn’t open my brain just couldn’t provide me with an immediate answer. I was just staring at it for a good ten or fifteen seconds, not really thinking about a break-in, not really thinking anything at all. It was just, “does not compute, does not compute,” in my brain, over and over again until …

And then it was obvious. Someone broke into our house. I said it aloud to my wife, “Someone broke in the house,” and I reached my hand inside that crack, I couldn’t make it to the chain, but I could flip on the lights which, once turned on, they illuminated our living room, totally ransacked.

I immediately thought about my laptop, all of my writing. “It’s not there,” my wife saw our kitchen table, empty. I started thinking about what else might be gone, the XBOX, my guitars. Again, my mind started freezing up, I was paralyzed, and when I finally realized that I wasn’t doing anything, I made it a point to act, to do something, even though I didn’t know what I should have be doing.

Let’s get inside first, I thought. I had never done anything like this before, but I decided that I had to kick the front door open. It shouldn’t be too hard to break the chain, I thought to myself, I’ll just take a step back like they do in the movies and try to put all of my body’s weight into the middle of my right foot as I – KICK. Thud. Nothing. It didn’t work. That was frustrating.

Let’s try this again, I wound up, harder this time and, bingo, the chain came off. I immediately ran upstairs to check if anybody was still inside. I came back down and headed out through the back yard, right past the garage, out into the alleyway that leads to the next street. Nothing. There was nobody around. I started running. I was running down our block, then down the next one.

I’m a good runner so my body automatically shifted into distance mode. I covered all three adjoining streets in every direction, but still nothing. What was I looking for, a bunch of guys running away holding our stuff, right? That’s what I was thinking, I think. We were only gone for like an hour, how far away could they have ran?

But nothing, nobody, nothing. I made it back to the house and got on my bike. But the further I extended my search outward, the more futile I realize my actions were. Maybe these guys were in a car. Maybe there ere a bunch of them and, what was I planning on doing exactly if I did somehow run into anybody?

I made it home, I took a more measured look around the house. They must have jumped the backyard fence, climbed up the gutter, and busted through the bathroom window. The cops came, they filled out a bunch of paperwork. The detectives came, they told us that we can’t clean anything up until someone shows up before Tuesday to dust for prints. All I can do is sit here. That’s it.

Whatever, a couple of laptops, an XBOX, all of my wife’s jewelry, yeah, that sucks, but it’s all just stuff, we’ll replace it eventually. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway as I sit here writing this all out on my old desktop computer that was probably too big and out of the way for the thieves to make off with. It stings though, having had stuff and now not having it. I like to think of myself as this enlightened progressive guy, but stuff like this shows me that I’m just as materialistic as anybody else. But what really hurts is my work, my writing. I was like thirteen thousand words deep into a novel I was trying to write. Like I already said, my blog posts for the next month are gone, and I’m going to have to sit here and wing it every day until I can slowly build back up enough reserve posts. What a setback.

This sucks. I want to find out who did this. I want to kick down their door and steal all of their stuff. Fucking assholes. But what am I going to do? That’s the worst part about all of this, the sitting and stewing, the impotent rage as I wait here totally helpless, I’m not Batman, I’m nobody, and some other nobody just broke into our house and stole all of our shit. Fucking assholes.