My day so far (a tragicomedy)

www.inkthinkerblog.com — Pickles and I were on a roll this morning. We got up at 7:30, ate breakfast, played a little, unloaded the dishwasher, and were working by 9 a.m. (this is our new schedule). We went through the bills and wrote checks, updated our calendar, sent out our invoices for last week’s work, and gathered up all of the mail to head to the post office and the bank. We headed out the door and even remembered to grab the hangers we were going to drop off at the dry cleaner on our way home.

As the front door slammed behind us, I dropped everything I was holding and screamed, “Oh, NO!” Pickles looked at me, confused. The garbage men, who had just arrived, looked at me, amused. I looked at my own reflection in the now locked front door, ready to cry. I had remembered everything but the keys. I couldn’t get back in and I couldn’t go anywhere, either. For an idea of what my despair looked like, check out the handy photo above, keeping in mind that (1) I am not a man and (2) I do not live in an apartment and (3) if I did live in an apartment, I wouldn’t put my apartment number on the Internet.

First, I tried rattling the doorknob in the hopes that the front door would spontaneously unlock. Then, I grabbed Pickles and my purse and ran around to the back of the house to try to get in through the sliding door. Ironically, I was extremely responsible today and not only locked but also wedged shut the sliding door with our anti-break-in bar, which we usually use only at night.

Then I had another thought. A LADDER! Maybe I could get in through the window on the landing of the stairs. We usually lock it, but hey, I’d forgotten my keys, so chances were good that the window could also have been forgotten. No dice. Then I ran back around the front of the house to check the other windows. No dice. Then I tried using one of the metal dry-cleaning hangers to pick the lock. No dice. (I suck at breaking and entering.)

Forty-five minutes later, he called again. “Where are you?” I asked. “You don’t want to know,” he said. “You haven’t left yet, have you?” “Nope.” Awesome. So, long story short, I locked myself out at 10:30 and didn’t get back in until 2. I had Pickles’ leash, but I was wearing slippers, so I couldn’t really take her for a walk. (Yes, I’m a 97-year-old grandmother — I run errands in my slippers.) We did, however, make it up to the 7-11 on the corner (Did I mention that I live in the ghetto, which is probably why the neighbors didn’t seem to mind/notice a woman trying to climb through a window on a ladder?) to get an iced tea and some Cheez-Its (I was hungry), and Pickles got some treats from the dog “barkery” next door (she was hungry), but it wasn’t exactly an epic journey.

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