A few weekends ago, a surprise friend showed up on our deck and stayed the night. We go back a few years, to our early days in Scotland, when my hubbie and I moved into a flat across from him and his wife. We reached out to them - initially freaking them out - with our un-Scottish invitation to Thanksgiving dinner.
They were a little bewildered when they came over and realized no one else from the flats had been invited, and now, after knowing them for so long, we suspect it crossed their minds that they were on course to becoming the main course - especially as big brother showed up a little ways in to the night (they must have called in back-up)!
That might have been the end of a beautiful friendship, if only my husband hadn't charmed the pants off them with his Texan banter. The four of us subsequently enjoyed many evenings chewing the fat and putting the world to rights. It didn't take long to find out that they (or at least he) harboured a safety paranoia that surpassed my own.
So, last weekend, when he went back outside the cabin to lock his rental vehicle (because you never know, right?), I looked upon the act with a conflicting mixture of ridicule and approval. See, after living here four years, you could say I've become wiser to the reduced risks in country living - or possibly I've just gotten sloppy.
Unfortunately the latter seems to be a more correct statement, and when our 'paranoid' guest lightly commented on how relieved he'd been when he showed up - as would any burglar - that our guard doggie greeting comittee had been securely penned in, I grimaced at the oversight. Apparently they had done their job beautifully, it was just us owners that had fallen short. More plainly, put I'd let my guard down, which is ironic when I think of my resolution before moving here.
If you've read my earlier blog No-one can hear you scream! you'll be familiar with the stark terror I experienced staying out overnight in a fairly remote location, on my initial visit to Texas. And so, when we first moved into our cabin sitting alone on a 3.9 acre plot (nearly half a decade later), after sharing an equal space with possibly 1,000 or so Scottish inhabitants for 3 years previously, as you an imagine, I was quite the nansy pants!
I'm relieved to say, my 'paranoia' is not so acute these days (a decade ago I couldn't make it through one night). Ironically, I think we were running a much greater security risk, living in our quaint fishing village as oppose to our remote country cabin, simply due to the sheer quantity of strange folk that were surrounding us. Most of them we didn't know from Adam! Back in the 'safety' of our fishing village it was unheard of to leave your car or home unlocked, but here, the locals (maybe a naivety these days) do it all too often. I thought they were all crazy, at first, but it's easy to be lulled into a 'false' sense of security when you're in the lap of country living.
Even so, I'm still a little high strung when it comes to home security, especially now we've got wee ones. My safety checklists are endless, and my husband is so familiar with the drill, he's long grown bored with mocking me, when night after night I whisper to him as he's getting into bed "Did you do the the safety checks?".
A day or so after my - paranoid comrade in arms - house guest left, the hubbie noticed the house keys were missing from my key chain. I hadn't used them in days - a week even. After the initial panic subsided, it didn't take long to track them down, exactly where I'd left them, sitting outside, in the not-so-frequently used front door lock.
So much for Miss - high and mighty - Safety!
Every now and then I come across our door keys and I'll take them off their hook, go to one of the doors, lock it, put the key in, turn to unlock it and say, "Yip, still works." Then put the keys back on their hook for a few more years.
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