Missing...

One steel and wooden glider.

(Not the kids, or the dog. Though the dog, Valentine, has long since left this world, and the kids are now in their teens. So, I guess I miss that they're not kids anymore. That's my niece Stesha with the long blond hair, and the two curly-tops are my Twins. For real. Seriously cute, right? Twin2 seated on the glider, Twin1 in the foreground showing you the top of his cute curly head.)

This photo shows the glider/swing in it's former home, my mom's back yard. It has resided in my front yard for about 5 years or so. Until last week.

Taken from my front yard, sometime during the day Tuesday. (You'd need at least two people to carry it away, maybe even a truck, and yet, nobody saw it happen.) The owner of the currently-for-sale house next door had mowed that day - I called him in the hope that he'd moved it, maybe left it in his garage for some bizarre reason, or maybe he'd seen it "walk away" - but, no. He noticed it was gone when he mowed, but figured I'd moved it.
I'm fairly certain I would have noticed it was missing when we left the house Tuesday morning. I know for sure it was there Sunday afternoon, because we were admiring the first rose buds on the bush right next to it, while I contemplated how best to prune said roses. (My yard can get out of control.)
I was on the verge of replacing the rose bushes that used to be where the glider has been. But, I don't know, I guess I figured I'd put the glider on the (soon-to-be-built) porch after that. Or even just move it to the side, make myself a nice place to sit, surrounded by roses.

I felt really silly reporting the theft to the police. But the officer was really nice about it, said that if it were him, he'd have reported it, too.

Mom gave me that glider.
I don't understand what makes a person steal something.
And why a glider?

I've considered other possibilities: Someone thought it was theirs. Someone saw one listed on Freebay, and got the address wrong. Or, the highly unlikely, "someone thought they'd refinish it for me as a surprise, and it will come back later". All those options occurred to me at first. And not just to me. My brother E came over Sunday, and asked if it was at all possible that some guy I was dating had taken it to refinish. It was weird to hear someone else had considered the same possibility, even if mine was more along the lines of "my VT or HT" instead of "some guy". Since I'd have to be dating someone for that to be true, and I'm pretty much not. I still wish that were the case. But I'm sure it's not.

*I hesitated on blogging this. Some paranoid part of my brain suggested that maybe someone out there was trying to see if I was who they thought I was, as in, "if she blogs that she's had this stolen, then I'll know who she is and where she lives." Because, you know, I'm just that important. There was another Utah blogger who recently had her lawnmower stolen from the driveway, so that fueled the paranoia.*