Well, as seems to be the theme around here lately, it’s been another helluva week! Spring break ended, which is always bittersweet – I have a bit more time in the day to get stuff done around the house, but I miss my kid terribly and spend the day feeling pretty darn sad. But even worse, Monday was an absolute downpour. And my kid was outside all day, which is fine, but a little less appealing in torrential rain! But even that was about to be eclipsed, because when I parked (in a long line of cars coming and parking belonging to teachers and other parents), I decided just this once to leave my bag in the car. I was only going to be gone for five minutes, I thought. There are tons of parents around, I thought. I can nearly see the car from where I’m going, I thought. A few minutes later another parent comes over to me to ask if I knew about my car window. Yep, in probably a maximum of a one minute gap between parents arriving, someone had smashed my car window and stolen my purse, which had EVERYTHING in it. ID, wallet, earbuds, my medications… even the old phone my kid used to listen to audiobooks in the car. All of it, gone. So I spent a whole day on the phone cancelling cards, adding fraud alerts, making police reports, calling back to give info from one to the other, ordering replacement meds, booking appointments for ID to get replaced… it was a gong show. Even worse, my husband, in the middle of an extremely busy work week, had to basically take the rest of the day off to get the car window fixed, because I couldn’t drive as I had no license. Then came three hours waiting at the Canadian equivalent of the DMV to get said license replaced the following day. It was a pretty horrible and stressful week. Hundreds of dollars gone between the car window repair, the cash stolen, credit card charges – not even thinking about replacing anything that got nicked.
But the worst part of the whole experience, I think, is the feelings it left me with. I went from feeling relatively safe to feeling like I need to be looking over my shoulder all the time, even when I’m dropping my kid off at school. And it’s not just about things being stolen from me, it’s knowing that it could have been worse and feeling like I’m vulnerable. I feel almost violated picturing some random person pawing through my personal stuff in my bag with no concern for anyone but themselves – I mean who takes a bag with multiple medications in it and just heads to the nearest shop to start using the credit card? After watching said person climb out of a car with a young kid? Who does that and feels like it’s just no big deal? I don’t understand that. I don’t understand feeling like you’re entitled to destroy someone’s property, take what isn’t yours and just walk away with no consequences. I could have died without those medicines, and clearly that made no impression whatsoever. They could have dropped the bag and just taken the wallet, but no. They took every single thing. I’ve been trying to be circumspect about it. To think, well, maybe it’s someone who was desperate and had no choice. Maybe it’s someone who lost their job and has a family they can’t feed any other way. Maybe it’s someone who’s struggling in any of a variety of other ways, and their life has gotten to a point where they don’t have options, or feel like they don’t. Maybe they’ve been traumatized in the past and the world has become a dark place for them, and that’s made it feel normal – even inevitable – for them to add to the darkness. I’ve tried focusing on feeling fortunate that we weren’t hurt, that though we definitely feel the loss of what was taken and broken (money is not growing on trees around here), we are not in a situation where we can’t eat because of it. But the reality is, it probably was someone who just didn’t care about anything except getting what they could for nothing. They most likely didn’t think twice about what effect their theft would have on my life, or on my family. They probably didn’t even think about the meds they found and what the consequences of being without them could have been for me. They saw free money, and they took it. And that has been the worst part – feeling less able to assume the best in people.
The one silver lining is that, after all of that, someone found my bag and the few things that were left in it, and went to a lot of effort to track me down and return it. Someone I’ve never met drove to my house to give me my bag so that I’d at least have my ID back. So while the theft left this dark cloud in my feelings about the world, this other family who found and returned my purse created a bright spot that has nearly eclipsed it. Because while the thief did what they did only for their own benefit, the people who returned my bag got absolutely nothing out of the effort they went to, but they did it anyway. So it’s been a week of downs and ups, but by the end of it I got to spend a day visiting the library with my kid, chatting to librarians about how many books are checked out to our family right now (38, nearly all my kid’s), then heading home to read and lie on the grass next to our newly restored fish pond counting goldfish. All 12 along with the two koi have now been accounted for, and there are still babies occasionally visible cruising around in the depths. It was a lovely day, and felt like even more of a gift after the terrible beginning to the week!
Just Shelved
Nothing this week. I just didn’t have it in me.
Currently Reading
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
The first four are carry-overs from last week. And Emily Wilde has now gone back to the library half read, so I’ve renewed my hold to finish it later. I just didn’t have it in me this week, unfortunately. After my horrible Monday, I decided to listen to Between the Stops when I was able to get back in the car again, because I’ve listened to it before and mostly it’s a comforting, entertaining read. Plus because I know it, it doesn’t matter if my attention wanders. Stress makes me more distracted, and in the car I need to focus on driving. Having something I already listened to playing calms me and allows me to do that, but it has to be something that I can tune into only when my attention span is not fully used by the task at hand. It’s been working well. Raising Hare I have out of the library in digital format, so I’ve been pulling it up on my phone and reading it in the odd spare moment. I’m interested in it so far, but only a few pages in!
Up Next
In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
Long Island by Colm Tóibín
Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd
Sipsworth by Simon van Booy
I’ve cleared my TBR for now, because I’m going to be judging the fiction section of The BookTube Prize for the quarterfinals which started this week, and these are the six books on my list. I won’t be able to talk about what I think of them until my ballot has been submitted and judging for the round is closed, so I’ll be giving reading updates as to what I’ve read, but that’ll be it for these books!
Well, that’s it for this week! Of course my kid is sick again, so this next week likely won’t come with a whole lot of spare reading time either!
A weekly post that encourages bloggers to share what they have read in the past week, what they’re currently reading and books they’ve recently added to their TBRs. Originally started by Sheila at Book Journey, it is now hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date. I also link up with The Sunday Salon post each week hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz (and sometimes include some of her content prompts).
I was pickpocketed in the Paris subway. A man took my phone. He engaged me in conversation and stole my phone out of my purse when I wasn’t looking. I understand your feelings. I am so sorry this happened to you.
That is horrible! I am grateful that at least it happened where I live, because I know how and where to go to replace things, and I speak the language. I imagine it’s that much harder abroad! I’m so sorry that happened to you. I remember being warned about pickpockets when traveling. Not fun at all!