The Afternoon Caper of the Pansy Thief

Saturday afternoon I found myself struggling to get my two girls down for naps. My husband was on an overnight Scout camp out and I was starting to lose it after so many hours alone in my house with three kids and no car. So I let Charlotte scream and cry in her bed while I tried to rock Jocelyn to sleep in the front room. I had almost drifted off myself when I heard a car door slam nearby. Fearing that some unannounced buyers were about to ring my doorbell and ask to look around, I shot a quick glance through the slats of the vertical blinds.

A white minivan was idling on the curb. A man ran distractedly up the sidewalk towards my house, bent down to retrieve something and hurried back to the car.

"That's strange," I thought, still squinting in the direction of the road. "I wonder if he lost something out of his window? But there's not really a strong wind today and he can't have been going fast enough in our cul de sac for something to blow all the way up to the house. Maybe he was after one of those stray dogs that is always running around the neighborhood? But I didn't hear any barking. Perhaps he was sent by the HOA to pull our weeds? We did get a notice this week, but the kids and I spent an hour out there just this morning. There shouldn't have been anything left for him to pull. Hmmm...."

The more I thought, the more suspicious I grew. Now that Jocelyn was finally asleep, I got up from the rocking chair to have a closer look. Nothing out of the ordinary. He hadn't even made it all the way to the front door to leave a pamphlet or flier.

"Oh well," I thought. "I guess I'll never know."

So imagine my surprise when I walked my brother out to his car this afternoon, and noticed that two of my potted pansies were missing! Seriously?!?! Some stranger ran all the way up to my house to steal my flowers? I don't know what is more irritating: to know that some jerk would "rob" me in broad daylight or to know that I watched it happen and didn't do anything about it.

And even though I didn't actually buy the pots or the flowers myself (they were a gift from my mother) and thus it is not a huge monetary loss; and even though it's getting too hot for pansies anyway (they are more of a cold weather plant - my mom has already ripped hers out and replaced them with a summer specimen); and even though we are moving in a few weeks and now I'll have two less pots to load up in the truck (so I should probably be thanking the guy for doing me a favor); I'm still pretty irked. Wouldn't you be?