So, remember how I talked about how secure our house seems (here and here?).

I can confirm it is indeed VERY FREAKING DIFFICULT to break into it.

This morning the four of us and my mom were heading out to Caltigirone, a nearby town known for its ceramics. Chris, the kids and Mom were all outside, so I was hustling to catch up and shut the door behind me. The reaction was immediate.

“PLEASE TELL ME YOU HAVE YOUR KEYS?”

Uh. No. You don’t, dear husband?*

Nope.

So, after confirming that there wasn’t a single place where we’d accidentally left a window open — we do take security seriously — we figured we’d better call our landlord. Unfortunately, I already pretty much knew she didn’t have a copy of our key because of her telling me so repeatedly in the aftermath of the neighbor’s break-in, where she felt our neighbor was accusing her a being a jewel thief since she does have a key to their house.

Eventually she popped over and told us that one of her guys was on his way over, and he attempted to break in to our house using one of our landlord’s old X-rays (basically like trying to pop it like you would try to get a lock to open with a credit card). While it certainly would have been a lot easier if that had worked, I’m fairly pleased to say it didn’t. Fortunately, this was one of the guys who had been working on our gate and fence this past week, so he both knows how to weld and had the equipment to do so.

He went to work and soon we had this chunk taken out of our door.

He popped it open, I walked the two steps inside the door and grabbed my keys, and he went to work putting it back together.

Good as new right?!

To my very great surprise, my landlord (who hasn’t historically liked me much) was very understanding and kind about the incident. She seemed almost cheerful about it? I think this may be partially because she recently locked herself out of her own home and had to break a window. Dare I say we may have actually bonded?

By the time this way all over, it was far too late to go to Caltigirone before riposto (it had taken a while to get in touch with our landlord because she is having phone problems), but we salvaged the day by heading north to Taormina instead. We had a nice lunch, saw a few sights and headed back home since my dad and sister are expected to be here shortly.

*I’m quite certain Chris would like me to note for the record that there wasn’t any particular reason he should have his keys, as he wasn’t driving. I had car keys but not house keys because the gate was already open and I wasn’t bringing my purse. My two sets of keys are not attached to each other because I don’t like having to turn off the car whenever I want to open to the gate.