Gnomeless

When Ryan and I moved into our little cottage my sister presented us with a lawn gnome. Because really, a home is not a home without a gnome. He was little and feisty and sat on our porch smoking a pipe with his jaunty little red hat. Oh, how I loved him. Then, one morning last fall I awoke to find he had been gnomenapped. Of course, I sunk into a major depression. Sure, they put out statewide alerts for kidnapped children, but gnomes? They just laugh at you. That's why I don't I trust the police. Luckily the culprits weren't that clever, the next day one of Ryan's debate kids asked him how his gnome was doing. Yeah, he could get into Stanford, but Cyrus couldn't keep a secret. For the next two months I was relentless in the pursuit of my gnome, warning Cyrus that I would get him. Then at Christmas he showed up with a peace offering -- a new gnome. No, it wasn't as pretty as the first one, but it was riding on a turtle so I accepted it as a fair trade.

All was well. At least until this morning.

As I was walking out the front door at the God awful hour of 5:30am I noticed something was amiss. My gnome friend -- and his turtle -- were gone. In his place was a ceramic monkey -- and a note:

For those of you with bad eyes or just no interest in reading it, the note basically insinuates that the gnome has left of his own accord due to my love of all things monkey. Now, I'm a big believer in the magical, but I smell a rat. Why would my gnome want to leave? Weren't my hugs and bedtime lullabies enough? Yes, he had to live outside, but he's a gnome -- he likes that. I think this was another case of gnomenapping. Only this time the suspects are a little harder to figure out. Yes, our friends Stan and Lana are moving to Florida today and they did own a monkey plant holder like the one left on the porch, but why would such good friends cause me such pain? No, I can't believe it. I'm sure some evil gnome switching syndicate took both their monkey and my gnome, putting one in the place of the other to cause extra strife.

The replacement.

I have learned a valuable lesson though from my hardships: gnomes only bring heartbreak. I think I'm switching to pink flamingos.