The question
Brush my teeth, drink of water, kiss the kids goodnight, fluff up my stuffy bear, pray, check the smartphone one last time. What are your night time rituals just before bedtime?
I invite @erh.germany
Fierce Kitty Saves the Day
My evening ritual starts with a glass of wine, always just one glass, red, preferably Cabernet Sauvignon. Unfortunately, after the wine my evening degenerates rather rapidly. The reason for this is that we have an arm-length checklist to ensure that criminals don’t get in and a person living with us who has Dementia, doesn’t get out.
This all began with would-be thieves, and it’s quite a story so I’ll use it as background to my evening ritual.
A few months ago I woke up to the unmistakable sound of a breaking window. Disoriented, I proceeded to investigate, only to discover that the window in the dining room had shattered. My cat lives in the room and he was nowhere to be seen. Naturally, it was extremely stupid of me to carry out an investigation on my own. But, in my defense I didn’t know what was happening.
As it turns out, the thieves had been standing in our garden chipping away at the putty that secures the window in the dining room. The window had a slight crack, and must’ve broken as they worked. My wonderful cat must’ve been in a complete panic; he doesn’t like strangers. So the window broke and the cat rushed out of the hole, in the black of night, right into the faces of the criminals. I cannot imagine what a scare they must’ve experienced - not being able to see what was coming at them out of that black hole, but luckily for us, they jumped the wall and ran away.
The window the day after the attempted break in, see the chipped putty
My cat
The fact that their retreat was swift and unplanned was evidenced by the fact that they dropped all their “break-in” gear and left it at the foot of the window in our garden - a lighter, screwdriver, matches and spanner. Obviously, we were really scared, particularly when considering what might have happened without my trusty cat - fortunately, my beautiful baby didn’t suffer any harm apart from a scare...no cuts or bruises. TTGL.
On the other hand, our Dementia patient (I don’t want to go into too much personal detail, because this person can not defend himself here), likes to break out of the house at 2:00AM and climb walls, usually, into neighbors houses. He then hangs on their gates and desperately calls passers by to save him since he is dying and being starved to death by evil women(my mom and I)(you can imagine the types of people trolling at this time of the morning) . Often he hurts himself too, he spent 3 weeks in bed with a sprained foot after 1 of these episodes, so we try to be careful. (Apparently, this behavior is common in Dementia patients)
So, we installed an electric fence, bought padlocks and chains for internal and peripheral gates. Also, we engaged the services of an armed response company.
However, our evening is now dominated by a security checklist. This ritual, which is added to our usual chores, now takes an hour at least to complete - switch on electric fence, lock the front door, back door, 2 side doors, check all gates have padlocks (5 gates), switch on security monitoring lights.
The risks of making an error are too dire to contemplate.
OMG my evenings are so much fun.
Check out the picture of our keys to get some idea of the task at hand. LoL.
