Grab your beverage and snack because I can tell this is going to be a long one. You have been warned.


I had the best visit with Michelle over the weekend She seems wonderful online but somehow she’s three trillion times better in person. She is the only person I know who has experienced the same level of 24/7/9 month pregnancy nausea I had with Sesame. She would understand exactly what I mean if I say something like “I would rather have slept on a bed of nails with a blanket of thorns if it would give me 24 hours sickness free.” 


After ten minutes for driving around her apartment complex and almost knocking on the wrong door, we found Michelle’s house. I wasn’t sure if she’s a huggy person so I should have kept some space between us but all the sudden I felt like I was throwing myself into her arms. Poor girl didn’t know what was coming. I was so mortified. She was too polite to send us packing then and there. We sat around chatting while Annabelle ate the cord on her blinds, tried to pull books off her shelf and smushed half eaten puffs into her clean carpet. Welcome to your future life, Michelle! I don’t have many friends with babies and I’m thrilled she’ll be joining me when her little girl arrives in a few months.


Michelle spent all evening praising her town and giving me reasons why we should move there. Safe! Friendly people! Very safe! Lots of stores! Nice people! By the time we were heading out to Panera, I was ready to pack my bags and hightail it out of Tennessee. After all, we need to be close so we can have play dates. Panera was in a crowded plaza (important information!!!) but I thought it was as good a place as any to show Michelle how to turn off the child safety lock on her car door. Instead I broke the door. Thank goodness Mom is a car door expert (how???) and fixed it. I was sure Michelle would never want to see me again after I grabbed her and broke her car. Annabelle was tired and getting grumpy (and dumping an entire bag of chips on the floor) but I tried bribing her with different foods to give us more time to visit. Eventually we had to say our goodbyes and walked down to our cars. Mom walked around to the drivers side, stuck her arm through the window and said, “Sarah! Your car has been broken into!” 


Well. That was unexpected turn of events in a safe city full of friendly people.

Mom called the police but they said they wouldn’t come down. In what world does that make sense? Is stealing no longer a crime in America? I called Christopher so he could contact insurance and told him we’d have to call somebody to tow the car. He asked why I needed a tow truck. Why was he asking that? Wasn’t it obvious that a broken rear window meant that the engine must have stopped working? In defense of my brain, I was thinking I didn’t want to drive the car because too much cold air would blow on Annabelle.  You know what type of situation I lose 98% of logical reasoning? The situation where my car window is in three million pieces and someone has stolen my gps, Moms computer and my camera. I was upset about the camera but I knew I had almost all the pictures on my computer. But turns out they stole my computer too. I can’t even talk about it. 

We put the baby in Michelle’s car and went back to her house while we figured out what to do next. Annabelle went to sleep in the pack n play in Michelle’s bedroom (she’s breaking in the room before the new baby arrives) and we filled out the online police report, The following is an actual sampling of things you can report from your stolen car- llama (is this a frequent complaint?), empty beer can, cocaine (I’d like to see how much sympathy the police give when that’s stolen), hair, and a cow. Nowhere did I see “582 pictures from your baby’s first Christmas” or “videos of Daddy reading books for Annabelle to watch when he’s gone” listed.


Michelle and James were complete saints. They let us use their computers to change our passwords, hang out in their living room for a few hours and probably overstay our welcome, and taped a trash bag over the broken window. I was watching James tape the window and attempting to make some small talk when he paused in the taping and said, “You don’t have to wait with me out here.” I think it was polite code for “You’re being useless so please remove yourself from the vicinity.”


Three hours later we said our goodbyes for the second time. Michelle and I have to be friends forever now that we’ve had such a bonding experience. We had to get gas before driving to the hotel and due to a series of unfortunate driving errors, FOURTY MINUTES LATER we were sitting in a parking lot across the street from Michelle’s apartment trying to figure out what road we needed. I reached back to get trail mix out of the snack bag and discovered they stole my snacks too. NOBODY STEALS MY SNACKS. We finally got to the hotel at 11:48. I was unpacking our stuff and low and behold, the bag with all AB’s food, bottles, formula and my breast pump were missing . People. I was so mad. Poor Annabelle wanted a snack and I didn’t have anything to give her. I still nurse her so it’s not like she was going to starve, but she loves her snacks. When I told Christopher they stole her food he said, “Maybe they have a baby and are struggling to feed it.” That was a much more Christian statement than when I thought, “I HOPE THEY GET LOST” upon discovering that they didn’t steal the gps after all.


And so our lengthy Christmas vacation came to an end on Sunday after we drove seven hours across the country with a clear shower curtain duct taped over the window. Within the space of four hours we lost almost all our electronics, paid $17.80 in toll fees, and made a new friend. The robbery won’t stop me from visiting Michelle again (if she’ll let me), but I won’t come to her in a car. I’ll be riding my llama. At least we know the police will pay attention if I say Larry the llama is gone. Plus, who would try stealing a llama?