It's been a while, and thank crazy goodness for that?!
So. Where to bloody Begin...
Once upon a time, while setting up for a garage sale just over 5 years ago, my dad brought over boxes of clothes (which I specifically asked him NOT to bring) and a plastic bag full of old magazines. Yes, THOSE kinds of magazines. He's got his goofy grin on his face, and says that maybe I'll be able to sell some of them. Who knows?
"I can't sell these!" I exclaimed scandalously. I think my first real objective thought was that my grandma, his own mother, was going to be helping me out. Then we both thought about it, and decided that ebay was the way to go.
So, my husband and I stuffed them in this old cabinet in the garage, laughing about it. We felt satisfied that the cabinet was fairly safe as the door was stuck and hard to open/close. We only had 3 kids at the time, the oldest being a 6-year old boy. That perfect age of "ew, girls are gross".
Well, about a year after that, my dad passed away in his sleep. We added another boy to our brood (making a total of 3 boys, 1 girl) and that stack just kinda stayed in the garage. On one hand, it was my little laugh of, "Oh, sweet! My inheritance! Check!!" On the other, like I said, it's an old cabinet, when even when I stuffed some painting stuff in one of the shelves once upon a time, I figured, "Yeah, no way any curious kid is going to be THAT determined to get this stupid thing open. Oy!"
This past weekend, we celebrated our youngest's 4 year old birthday. Crazy weekend trying to clean the house, baking a cake, flipping out over just a simple family birthday. Kids were great helpers for the most part (we won't go into how they were driving me nuts outside of the party.)
Oldest kid is now 11, and a couple older boys (14-15) in the neighborhood have been hanging out with him quite a bit. They have their ups and downs, and on the good foot, they play ball outside or play video games (ok, they've introduced some games that I'm not entirely happy about, but I digress, that's another rant). However, on the bad foot, the boys have clashed a few times with my son. One of the most recent was that one of these boys learned the code to the garage door and have been coming into the house while I'm not there, and it also happens that this same boy had previously stolen some video games from us (he eventually returned them). Ok. So, my first reaction was to, Duh, change the code. Done. BUT.
On Monday, during one of my breaks, I came home only to notice, "Oh, Shit, where's my inheritance!?" The cabinet door was open wider than usual, and sure as shit, only the old painting trays and rollers were right where they were left before. The shelf below was empty. I jerked open the cabinet door with all my force to peek in further -- nothing but dust bunnies and other dust-related things that I really didn't want to identify.
Fucking Panic.
Of course, you know, it -- first thought in my head was the boys. Who Else would possibly take a sweet fat stack of old mags? To be fair, I did ask my cousin and another friend who had been in the house recently on if they had seen anything. Nope. Nada. I went down and checked the 11-year old's room. I think in some sick way I really wanted to find them in there, because at least I could keep the conversation in the house, and deal with it. But no. My husband's been away and there was no way that he could have moved them, so emails with him don't really help much.
After talking with a couple other completely un-related-to-the-situation fellow parents on what they would do in the same situation, upon coming home that night, I approached both of the boys' parents as I noticed when they were home as well. I tried my best to 1: not accuse; 2: please be aware that your child might have these or seen them; and 3: admit that I wanted them back if they should happen to come across them (fearing that perhaps the magazines might have been recently tossed out by a freaked-out mom). Everyone was completely cool about the situation, and I am utterly grateful for that.
A couple days pass by, and I cannot for the life of me get these missing magazines out of my head! What was I thinking, keeping them in the house? Why, oh WHY didn't I catalog them so I knew exactly how old or even what magazines they were? Were there some good ones featuring Pamela Anderson or Madonna? And with these thoughts come waves of paranoia - who's been in my house? what else might be missing? I'm just SICK. I've corrupted other people's kids about sex and pornography, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Social Services come knocking on my door. Oy Vey!!
Finally it dawns on me last night to ask my mother-in-law. We had been talking about so many things over the past several days that I really don't know how it didn't come up in conversation. For the record, my mother-in-law is really an awesome person, and especially that my husband has been away for a bit, she's been absolutely phenomenal with the kids (I trust her about 80 million times more than my own mother).
"So, did you happen to move anything in the garage?" I asked tentatively.
"Yes," she answered very cautiously.
I think at that point all stressors I'd been battling for the past few days just bubbled out with my exclamations of relief. She explained that she had assumed that I might not have even known they were there -- that perhaps they were there since we moved in the house, and she just didn't want the kids to find them, especially the neighbor kids. It wasn't until the other night when she actually went through them (don't ask, I'm just glad she didn't toss them!) that she realized they were my dad's.
I don't think I could have put the phone down fast enough before I'm running across the street and knocking on doors just to inform the parents that All is good - mystery solved/ thank goodness!/ I feel so bad!/ I'm so sorry!/ Thank you for being so great about this!/ Both households were grateful that I had kept them informed of the situation, and obviously relieved that their sons were not guilty of anything. We all were in agreement that for something of this nature that it's good we can be open with each other. I can finally breathe.
However, I'm afraid that the damage is already done. After I get home, and am tucking kids in bed, my oldest tells me how the boys were giving him a hard time after school, calling him names and such. Also, one of them claimed that he had stolen my son's rip-stick (kinda like a skateboard), spray-painted it blue, and for $50 he can have it back.
Seriously? I'm soooo hoping that I have better news on this later.
reposted from hooch-rants.posterous.com
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.