life in this republic

while we were out...

Roxie was home sick. Dan, Rebekah and I had gone to the zahradnictvi (garden center) and then to the gym. We were gone all of 2 hours.

Returning home, we find a man parked in a red van outside of our house, our front door slightly ajar and Roxie upstairs beside herself in tears. Apparently, while we were out, two men rang the doorbell. Roxie knows not to answer the door while we are gone so she ignored it thinking they would go away. To her great dismay, nay, horror, they managed to open the door and began rifling around in our house. She hid herself away between two pieces of furniture and tried to call us. Unfortunately, I did not hear my phone ring. She silently wept, her mind racing, her fear growing.

Minutes later, we come home to a confusing situation...

And now the rest of the story....

Our hot water heater has been acting up and none of us can get a hot shower. Every few seconds we must turn the water off and the last two people to shower are usually cursing the first two as they hop around under the arctic spray. An email was sent to our landlady asking if she couldn't send someone to check it out. Alas, on this fateful day, our landlady's dad and his friend use their key to let themselves into the house so as to investigate the problem, successfully sending Roxie into paroxysms of terror. We had no idea they would be coming, Roxie had no idea who they were, they had no idea somebody was home.

These two men happen to be the nicest people on the planet and were, though mildly amused, very sorry they had caused our youngest such stress and anxiety. Announcing to us in his best, but still horrible, English, our landlady's super nice dad said, "We no dangerous!" and showed off his winning smile.

Roxie is still talking about it, still struggling through those 10 or 15 minutes when she thought the worst was happening and no one would be coming to help her.

I am making sure that my phone volume is on the highest setting...