Sometime in the last month, Fuzzy took the trash out before coming to bed and inadvertently left the garage door open. Now, our neighborhood is normally fairly save, and we do live on an interior street, but an open garage door is still in open invitation. The next morning, he noticed that one of the boxes was removed from the stack of Christmas stuff, but we didn’t notice anything missing.

Until today.

What happened today? Well, I was killing time waiting for Christine the pet sitter to show up for an interview, and I started putting the Christmas lights on the hedges. I don’t normally decorate this early (and they’re not turned ON, and won’t be before Thursday, except to test the timers), but we’re going away this year, and I want to enjoy my house all lit up. Besides, our neighborhood is very gung-ho about such things, and it’s fun to be part of it.

I’d purchased three new net lights to replace those I knew were damaged, but had planned to use last year’s one more time, along with the several strings of white lights and trunk wraps for the trees. The new stuff was all in place of course, having just been purchased on Friday.

The box with the old lights was gone. Missing. No sign of it.

Now, I’m grateful that nothing else was taken, because whoever took the lights (half of which didn’t work – we were keeping them for spare bulbs) didn’t take the $400 Santa collection or the three huge boxes of heirloom ornaments, but still, I hadn’t planned on replacing ALL the lights this year.

And so, when Fuzzy gets home we’ll be running to deposit a check, and then to Target to get more lights, and then we’ll come home and have grilled salmon and a nice salad and watch Heroes.

But that’s not really how I’d planned to spend the evening.

Well, not the Target part.