All Alone

The dogs and I dropped Ian off at the airport this evening so that he could fly down to San Diego for a conference. On fish, of course. And math. He's going to be presenting something, and so he spent most of the weekend and a couple evenings last week working on it.

I'm not scared to be here in the house alone, although when I arrived home I discovered that the back door not only hadn't been locked, it hadn't even been closed all the way. If we'd had a strong wind (as evidently happened last weekend when we were in Idaho), it would've just swung open—an invitation to all the crooks and baddies in our neighborhood. But the house looked completely undisturbed.

It has actually been broken into before, maybe five years ago. We had left around noon to drive to Kamloops for a ski week at Sun Peaks (fantastic resort! Highly recommended!), and our housesitters, who arrived after dark around 9:00pm, found glass on the floor in the guest bedroom. There's an exterior door into that room (which is now my office), mullioned from top to bottom, which opens into the backyard. The glass was from the pane next to the handle (of course), and was the only sign of disturbance, and as evidently no one had opened the door, the alarm hadn't been tripped. If only the would-be thief had known, he or she could've saved themselves the trouble and noise of breaking glass. At the time, the handle and lock system on the door was simply broken, and they could've taken it apart with a Q-Tip.

The two things about that experience that gave me the willies were that it seemed like someone had been watching us pack up our car, because we were clearly going on a trip and not going to be around for awhile, and that maybe the housesitters scared him or her away. I don't like the idea of people we care about surprising crooks who might be violent.

Anyway, contrary to the tenor of this post up 'til now, I'm not actually worried about anyone breaking in or otherwise disturbing my sense of security. What I'm worried about is the fact that Ian, for a few months now, has been getting up every morning at 7:30 and feeding the dogs, then himself, then taking the dogs on a walk and putting them outside, and leaving me in peace to sleep for another 2 hours. Dogs have uncannily reliable internal clocks, and I am not—I repeat I AM NOT—intending to take over Ian's schedule with them, even though I will be taking over their feeding and exercise.

They seemed to be aware after we'd returned home and they'd eaten dinner tonight that one of their parents was missing. They'll be really aware tomorrow morning at 7:30 when I growl at them and go back to sleep until 9:30, ignoring their bladders and hunger pangs. Friday evening when Ian comes home, they'll be in raptures. And so will I.