Monday Disaster

I am finally in a relatively calm state of mind to describe what happened on Monday.

I took Monday off because my many years of cookie shipping taught me that there is not enough time to pack and ship, especially when it comes to international shipping, and I end up having several sleepless nights and late shipments. This year, I decided to face reality:)

There was one more thing I planned to do on that day: as usual, I bought several gifts for the families in the transitional living program at the Night Ministry, but this year, there were multiple heavy items, so my plan was to Uber them to the Night Ministry in the middle of the day. Then I realized that I am running out of time to be able to do both mailing and Ubering to the Night Ministry, and besides, there were so many so heavy things that I started to doubt whether I would be able to load them into Uber. So I emailed a person with whom I coordinated the donations and asked her whether possibly someone from the office would be driving in my direction. She replied that she can pick up things and that she will message when she is close to me.

About five minutes before her arrival, I started moving things down because I realised I needed at least four trips.

I made two trips down with the heaviest things, met my neighbor, who was picking up her grocery delivery, and I helped her move her packages up, took the next portions, and went down. And then I could not believe my eyes: everything I had already moved to the vestibule was gone!

I rushed out of the door – there was obviously nobody! I asked the Amazon driver, who was taking things out of his car to deliver to the other side of the street, whether he saw somebody walking out of our door, but he obviously didn’t pay attention. And just then, a person who was picking up my donations showed up.

Even though I had a suspicion since my stolen cookies episode two years ago that someone had our master key, and suggested rekeying both buildings, my idea was rejected, and we were advised not to buzz in anyone we don’t know. This time, I am sure nobody was buzzed in, because the buzzing sound is always audible on the stairs, so I would have heard.

That’s it. I didn’t go to the Knox Holiday party at the Steppenwolf that night because I felt in the wrong mood for a party. It was only yesterday that I realized that if I went, I wouldn’t be able to talk about anything except for these stolen donations. Now, I am sort of-kind of-not so horribly upset.

The Night Ministry was able to replace my gifts, but the household items I donated were gone. The worst was not even the monetary value (the Night Ministry always asks to keep the costs low) but the fact that this episode almost destroyed my trust in my community. I will try to get over , but the words of encouragement will be appreciated!