A great big ole' hole in the wall

Not sure whether to laugh or cry. I think I had gained a false sense of security living where we do for the past two years where we've had no trouble at all, or even heard of any trouble in the area. It's a quiet neighborhood and we like it that way. *sigh*

Maybe that's why Ivan's news was such a shock to my system. He came home yesterday after doing some errands and visitation, and told me he'd gone by the lot to see how progress was coming on the new costanera and discovered a great big ole' hole in the wall of the casita!

He called the owner who came over and discovered thieves had taken the ONLY things inside: a toilet and sink in the bathroom. Further investigation revealed they'd also removed over 40 meters of electrical wiring that went from the pole by the street to the house.

The owner will have someone patch the hole but this has made me more than a little nervous. Ivan says it happened because the casita is vacant and there's no fence around the property, leaving it wide open. But I have to wonder: will we continue to have problems once the property is ours and we do put a fence up? Seems like someone who thinks nothing of busting through a block wall would have no qualms about a mere fence. And we won't be living there for a long time, so vacancy will continue to be an issue.

Breathe in. Breathe Out. Trying not to completely freak out.

We've been thinking of trying to build the garage (to store all our stuff) and get the casita move-in ready by next March so we could move out of the house we're currently renting before going on furlough. That would save us a chunk of change. The idea was to move into the casita when we got back, while building the house. But this experience makes me doubt the wisdom of that plan... we could come back to find everything just GONE. Which would cost an even bigger chunk of change to replace. So maybe it would be cheaper in the long run to stay where we are, and not do anything about the property until we get back.

It's really hard to know what to do!

And the whole thing may be a moot point since buying this property is taking WAAAAAAY longer than anticipated and I'm beginning to wonder if it will ever actually happen. The latest wrinkle is that the bank here wants copies of our tax returns from way back to prove we had jobs in the U.S. that allowed us to contribute to our retirement funds from which we're drawing the money to purchase the lot. Apparently they want to be sure we didn't come by the money nefariously before they allow us to bring it into the country. We'd already given them proof that the money has been in our accounts for several years but that isn't sufficient. Jon, I hope you don't mind but I think the next thing they'll be asking for is our firstborn. Is that okay?