Just what I needed

Slept over at my house last night for the first time in a while.  My mom and I have both been very sick lately, and I  wanted to be in a position to get her to a hospital ASAP if the need arises.  That sort of thing hasn't come up in over five years, but I worry about it, especially when she's having a coughing fit.  But we both felt better last night, and I decided it was OK to be across town for the night.

I slept well.  No nightmares, though I did have a dream that someone had gotten into the house and defeated my security system using my remote.  (I accidentally activated the security system with my remote while I was in the house the other day.  When you change your security code, do you have to reprogram the remote?  Or does that always provide access to your system, regardless of what you change?) I remember hearing voices of people talking, as if they were downstairs or just outside.

I slept late, but eventually got around to getting out of my house and going to the other half, the library/storage side that was broken into back in August when they stole all the copper pipes.  Everything was fine.  But when I came back out of the house I noticed something odd on my car.  It looked like a small black plastic bag with a yellow drawstring sitting on my windshield.  Or was it a cat?  Or...oh no...was it my side-view mirror?

I went back into my other side of the house, slipped the phone back in its charger, changed into my boots, took my coat and scarf and hat off the hall tree.  I set the alarm, exited the house, went out to my car, and...

...yep, it was my side-view mirror.

Half of the mirror housing was sitting on the windshield wipers.  There was glass and bits of plastic all over the street.  There was no other damage to the car, no scrape marks from a passing vehicle or random damage caused by a vandal.  My best guess is that the mirror was just barely snagged by a passing snowplow, which caused damage to the outer edge and then snapped off most of the mirror housing.  It could have been a passing vehicle of almost any sort, but I actually saw at least one snowplow driving around today, even though there's been no snow needing plowing for a while.  So maybe the voices I dreamt I heard were actually people saying "Whaddya wanna do?  Should we leave a note?" "Naaah, just toss that crap on his car and let's get out of here, nobody saw us."

So.  That's another expense I really didn't need right now.

I guess the moral of the story is:  even if you commit yourself to living as austerely as possible, to spending as little money as possible, someone else will always find a way to spend your money for you, whether by breaking into your house and cutting out your pipes, or damaging your car, or something.