Friday

So David is out of town til Monday and the Check Engine light was on in my car when I left for my monthly meeting at the call center in Concord this morning (it's still on tonight and the car isn't running as smoothly as it usually does). This isn't hugely alarming because all I have to do this weekend is one schlep down the hill to Walgreens for a meds refill and I don't have to go to work again for another month, but on the other hand, David and I are driving to Ashland, Oregon next weekend and were planning to take my car instead of his -- it's more comfortable and in slightly better condition. Or it was. Perhaps more to the point, though, in my car we can share the driving. In his 5-speed stick I'm going to get a whole lot of knitting done. (That idea is not without charm, but only from my viewpoint.) So now we need to work in a car repair sometime this week.

Anyhow, the car and I got back to this side of the Bay and up the hill, though it was sort of stumbling and it's usually fine with the hills. I can't get it completely out of the street and into the driveway right now due to construction-in-the-basement chaos but I'm not incredibly worried about that because, hey, this is San Francisco and *everybody* parks with their cars' backends out in the road, however I *am* sort of concerned because it's a Camry and one of the topics of conversation at work today was how many Camrys are being stolen and what a convenient car it is to strip. Normaily it spends its time snugly out of sight in the garage. Not this weekend.

Oh, and when I got myself to the front door tonight, I couldn't get it open. The knob, yes, my key went right in and turned and the knob moved like it was supposed to, but the door wouldn't open. I didn't lock the deadbolt when I left this morning, but it was evidently locked now. Probably Mal's doing -- he lives in the basement but might have come up through the house to check the mail and then locked up. After a few cranky minutes (come on, it's a 45 minute drive and I had stopped at Michael's on the way home for some new drawing pencils and fun stuff like that, so I really seriously wanted to get in and get to the bathroom) and wondering why not a single one of my keys fit the deadbolt tonight, I scampered for the gate to the side yard, my plan being to run around back and upstairs and in through the back door, which is often unlocked so that Mal can come and go freely from the basement apartment.

The side gate was blocked shut, evidently with a pile of bricks on the other side. We don't usually keep bricks there, but it was either bricks or -- no, it was bricks. So I'm standing there kicking the hell out of the gate trying to get it open and thinking how very very screwed I am if Mal's gone out for the night, especially when the only other people I know in the entire Bay Area went camping this weekend (I opted out). So I can't even go crash at anybody's house (or boat) and besides, there's that urgent bathroom issue.

It took awhile, but finally I heard Mal yelling from the basement and I yelled back that I was locked out and he came up through the house and let me in. Now comes the best part:

He caught someone trying to break in through our garage today and whoever it was got the garage door open a foot or so before Mal got out there. So he had piled those bricks against the gate, yes, and then he discovered why my key wouldn't work on the deadbolt. Someone (probably the Same Someone!) had also tried to get in through the front door and something had broken off inside the lock. Whatever it was, it's still there.

I called David in Texas and told him it's time to get that huge dog I'm always talking about. Of course, we have no place to put a huge dog and no one to walk him several times a day. What we do have as home defense are four (five, counting Mal's at the moment) Fierce Watch Cats who will shred one another without mercy or a backward glance while trying to jam themselves under the bed all at once if anyone comes to the door, but if cornered by an intruder will, I feel certain, definitely shed all over him.

I'm not comforted.

All the doors are bolted tonight but I may still sleep with the lights on.