Last night we had to call the police to our house because of a possible intruder.
…
Let me explain *said in the voice of Indigo Montoya*
I had a hard time falling asleep and it wasn’t until about 12:15 that I finally put my Kindle down and closed my eyes. So I was in kind of that hazy not-asleep-not-awake stage when I thought I heard the doorbell ring. I looked at my clock and it was 1:01 AM. “Hmmm” a foggy thought came to me “I must have dreamed that someone rang the doorbell…Or did I hear the doorbell for real. Why would anyone be at the door at 1 AM?” So I lay there for a moment – I’m not sure for how long since I was still in a hazy state. It may have been 20 seconds or 2 minutes. I finally decided I should just go check it out to satisfy my curiosity. When I got half way down the stairs I heard a buzzing and I started to freak out.

See, we live in an old house and we have a wired doorbell. There is a button at both the front and back doors. But the back button almost always sticks when it gets pushed, and when that happens the doorbell buzzes after it chimes. I knew as soon as I heard the buzz that someone had pushed the button and I knew it was the back door.

I ran upstairs and woke Mark up (he is a deep sleeper and I hadn’t heard the bell or me get out of bed). He woke up and was in a dazed panic. He ran downstairs and started going from window to window to see if he could see anything, I followed. Of course the doorbell was still buzzing but we didn’t want to open the back door to unstick the button because what if someone was out there? The way our yard and windows are, there was an area someone could be lurking and we wouldn’t know.

So I ran back upstairs to get my phone and called the police – they sent 3 squad cars over immediately. (side note: I first went to grab our landline downstairs and realized I had NO IDEA what our city’s no-emergency phone number was but knew it was in my cell phone. So instead of calling 911 I went back upstairs to call and it took forever because I was shaking and kept hitting the wrong thin in my contact list. I need to put emergency numbers by the phone!) This is when living 3 blocks from the police station comes in handy. A police SUV came down our driveway to the back of the house and we had cops at our backdoor by 1:05. They also had a car at the house behind us and the 3rd was cruising on our street looking in side yards.

The officers were really nice. We explained our sticky doorbell and how we know someone had to push it to get it stuck. They circled our house, checked our garage, checked our neighbors yards and spent about 20 minutes circling the surrounding blocks looking for anything suspicious. The one thing that struck me as funny was they asked “Where you expecting anyone tonight?” They actually asked that twice. Yeah, we were expecting guests  at 1 AM on a Monday and when they arrived we called the cops!

Anyway, we were back in bed, with hearts still racing at 1:25. I don’t think I fell asleep again until about 3:00 AM; every creak of the house settling or ping of a radiator had me jumping. I hate the feeling of being scared in your own house.

Today the police called to check on us (so nice!). They never did see anyone or have any reports of other disturbances. However, they did say that this could have been a thief scoping our house to see 1) if anyone was home and/or 2) what we did. I’m so glad we called the police because they arrived swiftly and stayed in the area for awhile. I’m also glad we have a house alarm, and that both our storm doors and inside doors were locked. Oh, and that both kids slept through it all. It also reaffirmed the expense of hiring a house-sitter when we go on vacations.

Have you ever had anything that made you freak out in your house?

(Remind me sometime to tell you about how at our old house the fire department nearly broke down the door while we were on vacation.)