this morning's emergency.

I have a candy dish for my keys. I have to always put my keys in the candy dish sitting on the table in my living room or I will lose them. Yes, I am one of those people. The key/candy dish was Casey's idea, because he got tired of waiting for me to find my keys every time we went someplace. So he suggested the candy dish plan so that he would not have to be subjected to my frantic tearing around the house, and I would not have to be subjected to his loud sighing.

This morning, the keys were not in the candy dish. I checked a couple of other places that seemed likely. I thought hard about what I did when I came in yesterday. I unlocked the door. Then I unlocked the dead bolt, which was unusual, because I don't usually lock the deadbolt when I leave the house. It threw me off my routine, perhaps. Had I left the keys in the deadbolt?

That thought was concerning. I opened the door to check if there were keys dangling outside. There were not. That was even more concerning. What if I had left my keys hanging in the deadbolt overnight, and someone had taken the opportunity to take them? Oh, no, no, no, this was bad. I thought about the keys on the set in question: various keys to cars and apartments far away (no real worries there), my car key, my house key, my mailbox key.

I had a spare set; that wasn't the problem. The problem was that there might be someone out there who now had access to all those things and knew where to find them. I tried to calm down and not freak out. After all, it was more than possible that I had just mislaid the keys somewhere in the apartment. No need to start calling my landlord or the nearest Toyota dealership. So I decided to just take my spare set and go to work and not worry about it. And what could I do now anyway, when there was no real guarantee that the keys had been stolen? Just go to work.

Well, that was a stupid idea, how could I not worry about it? I got a mile down the road before I realized that if I was going to get broken into while I was at work, I would at least be prepared. The first thing I did when I got back was to go upstairs to my computer, the only real thing of value that I own. I use a browser that saves my passwords to any sites that I log into. I erased all my passwords, so that if any criminals happened to look at my computer before they sold it, they wouldn't log into any sites like oh, say, my bank account. I hid my stack of account documents and bills. I was planning on taking a roll of tape with me out the door, so that I could tape it across the door. That way, if I came home and the robber was still there, I would know to not go in. All in all, I consider that I handled the situation quite well.

I was already late for work, but before I left, I was going to write a note to my landlord saying that I may have lost my keys. I grabbed some paper and went to get the pen I'd left on the coffee table last night. I lifted a magazine to look for the pen, and suddenly I didn't need the pen anymore.

Always, always use the candy dish.