Burglary Deterrent

Many years ago, we lived in a little house, and I didn't have a place to store my portable sewing machine. (which was not-so-portable, being in an ancient Singer wooden case and being made of, oh, let's say, cast iron or something--that critter was Heavy.) It ended up in the hallway from the kitchen to our bedroom, sorta across from the bathroom door.

One day, I was sailing into or out of said bathroom and stubbed my foot on the sewing machine. Even though I was wearing shoes, I knew that something was BROKE. (now, I know that, grammatically, I should have used the word "broken," but somehow, BROKE is much more descriptive of that searing, blinding pain. Bad words even came out of my mouth, for which I had to apologize to my then-very-young children. I called Kaybeautiful, my nurse-y friend, and asked her advice. She said that I could tape two toes together for five or six weeks. "What if I went to the doctor?" She said, "they'll tape the two toes together for five or six weeks, and charge you thirty-five bucks." (I told you it was a long time ago...)

So I taped the two toes together. Five weeks later I took off the tape for a trial run--too early. Two more weeks, and I was fine. And I haven't really thought about this incident for years and years and years, till last night.

Charming "found" another sewing machine last night, on his way back from the bathroom. I had just about forgotten about this little number. Lily found a sewing machine with a table at a garage sale this summer for ten dollars. She only needed the table, so I took the machine, thinking I would refurbish it for Tiny Dancer sometime. I put it out of the way, beside a bookshelf in the upstairs hallway. Unlike the former incident, however, this machine had no case, so it is out for all to see in it's heavy-metal glory. It had sat there, basically forgotten, for all these months. But *evidently* someone had kicked it a little out of its normal place, and Charming was the unfortunate victim of a triple-stubbing.

Ouch. Are you rubbing your little toesies in sympathy?

Out of this incident, however, we have devised a Scathingly Brilliant Idea. We can pick up some more discarded, ten dollar machines here and there, and sell them as Burglary Deterrents. Just set them inside your front door at bedtime, and wait for the unsuspecting burglars to show up. They'll run away lightning-fast, spewing bad words as they go. And they'll probably spread the word to other low-lifes who might be considering a crime spree in our neighborhood.

Now to figure out how to attach a really annoying alarm to the machines...