surprise!

Well, I like surprises. I like gifts that I am not expecting, seeing people randomly that I haven't seen in a while, or class getting canceled out of the blue. Unfortunately, my most recent surprise was a bad surprise, and one that I have experienced once already. After wheeling my bike out the front door yesterday morning I looked up to an empty street. Well, it wasn't quite empty, empty. In fact it was quite full except for an elise's-car-shaped spot right at the end of the curb. My car was stolen! Yanked! Snatched! Borrowed indefinitely! Sad day. Some of you might remember back in 2003 when the same thing happened to my trusty old Buick Century that I inherited from my grandmother. This was back in the days of my culinary career and among the more frustrating things to be stolen with the car were my knives and some irreplaceable photos and letters. It was an irritating ordeal, and even though the car was finally recovered everything in it was wrecked when the thief decided to christen the by then ripped up upholstery with urine and beer and who knows what else. In the middle of a hot August. With all the windows shut for days. It was pretty gross. This time around I knew what to do and after a brief moment of brow furrowing and disappointment in humanity, I called the police to file a report, my insurance to file a claim and my sister for some indignant outrage. I'm not really sure why I haven't been more upset about the whole thing. Maybe it's because this summer I had so few possessions, and even those I did have weren't too relevant when I was reduced to the basic needs of simply eating and sleeping through ridiculous exhaustion. Maybe it's because I didn't have many things in my car that aren't replaceable, and I am so glad that was the case. I mostly just feel weirded out picturing other people in my car, probably drinking in it, hopefully not peeing in it, and generally being in my space. It's a disconcerting feeling. I suppose I will just have to wait and see how it all pans out.