Locking up

my mind is a sieve. we returned from our time at the pool today and i saw our front door wide open. at first, i thought, oh, is Phil home early today? and then it hit me - oh my gosh, i forgot to lock our door! read further and you'll find out why i'm such a stickler about locking doors, but anyways, i am and so it was a bit of a shock to see the house WIDE open. not only did i leave the front door which is the enclosed porch door open, but the second door open too. there was just the screen door between our house and whoever wanted to enter. fortunately, no one came in. or if they did, they didn't take anything. the first thing i checked to make sure was my laptop - that really is the only valuable thing we have in the house and it was sitting where i'd left it. phew! it's nice to know we live in such a safe neighbourhood. the only danger i've encountered since we moved here is a schizophrenic old lady who lives several houses down from us. she has a tendency to want to run people over in the street with her car. i'm glad we don't live right next to her because then we'd have to deal with getting poop smeared on our house in the middle of the night or get run over in our own driveway. i sometimes wonder if this kind of neighbour is better than the kind of neighbours we had in Durham? you be the judge.

in Durham, we lived in a neighbourhood where i learned that if i hear something that sounds like fireworks, i shouldn't look out the window to see the sky - i need to get on the floor. shootings and police cars were all too common. we've had people break into our garage and crazy people try to come into our house because i'd left the front door unlocked. fortunately, we had really good neighbours who looked out for us. the time a crazy man walked into our house, i was home alone with Skye. our neighbour, Mac, was sitting on his porch across the street and came running over to yank the man out of our house. ever since, i've been really good about locking doors. i must have been really distracted this morning to forget to do such an important thing!

the evenings these days are beautiful. the fireflies come out and they are fun to watch. tonight, before putting Skye down for the night, i took her to the back of the house to show her the fireflies. she refused to look at them. i'm not quite sure what she is afraid of about them and she can't tell me yet. it has something to do with the colour - she wishes fireflies were blue or pink. the child's mind is a complicated thing. i'm trying to understand because i never had some of the fears Skye has. i hear it might also be a first child syndrome. i'm a second child, so i don't think i had as many fears as Phil who was a first child. he and Skye seem to have similar fears. i'm trying to help Skye overcome them, but not sure how. i'm trying not to belittle her fears and help her talk about them, but who knows? sometimes, i guess she'll just outgrow them as she gets older.