Damn, I'm sorry. It's so unfortunate that those things happen so often. Do you have Ring or any other kind of surveillance for the front/sides of your house?

Yeah, we can be knocked of center when life does its thing, but then I wonder, were we knocked off center, or onto the center by that punch from reality? They say in Zen, it's about having a direct experience with reality. I think most of us live in a passive experience, where our bubble is the most direct thing we know. Then something like this happens, the bubble burst, but maybe that's the thing we needed to come back home to the now. It's an unfortunate and infuriating thing in your case, but reality comes knocking in all kinds of ways I suppose. But it's worth mentioning too that Zen prioritizes mindfulness while in direct experience with reality, which comes bundled with other "energies" like understanding, compassion, acceptance aimed both outward and inward.

Anyway, jeez, I went off an a tangent! I don't mean to belittle your experience in any way. It's terrible and I hope you the person that stole the ladder is found, and you get the ladder back. I'm really sorry, Jay. Did you call the police about it?