I've Been Locked Out!

So this actually happened last week, and I can't believe I forgot to blog about it, as I kept trying to keep myself calm with the thought, "this will make a great story". But I really want to reference a song from the Reality Bites soundtrack so that we can pretend like it's 1994 again. Allright, I'm carrying an ammo box as a purse, I'm wearing plaid miniskirts, tights, and my lace-up knee-high doc rip-offs, I'm driving my 1981 Ford Fairmont with about 10 people crammed in, coffee shops rule... Okay, that's out of my system, moment over, on to the story.

So last Saturday night, Tim's parents were both out of town, so we had Anna, Sean, Ian and Erin over for dinner. Anna and Sean left when the very patient Daniel got so tired he couldn't take it anymore, and Ian and Erin left a little before two. Tim went to bed about 1am, so I came in and showed them to the door, then went back to the porch to get the baby monitor and a glass that had been left outside. I went to go back in and the porch door was locked! Tim's parents locks are such that if you lock the bottom lock, you'll lock yourself out. We try to never lock them, of course, so I guess either Ian or Erin had kind of automatically locked the door. Crap, I thought. First thing I did was run out front to see if Ian and Erin were still here, but they were gone. I got a little freaked out, but I knew Tim's parents had left a key in the garage in a secret place and there was alledgedly a clear path through all our belongings to the key. So I opened the garage door with the keypad and looked for the so-called "clear path". Right, negative on that one. No clear path. There was tons of stuff piled in front of the key location. So I said, forget that, I'm not going to try to move all that stuff. I may have had a few drinks. I can neither confirm or deny that. So I decided I'd go back to the backyard and throw rocks at the room where Tim was sleeping. I threw every freakin' rock in that backyard at that window (surprisingly I have really good aim when I am fighting off hysterics at 2 in the morning), but it didn't budge Tim. He's a very heavy sleeper, and he had the box fan on, so who knows if he could hear anything. So I shed a few tears, tried to think clearly, thought about walking to the gas station, but they close at 1, as does HEB. I thought perhaps I could call the house from those places. But then I realized that if Tim couldn't hear the rocks, there was no way he'd hear the phone ring on the other side of the house. I then tried the doorbell. I rang it over and over again, Lucy was barking her head off, but it did no good. So finally, I went back to the garage, took a deep breath, and decided that it was the only way I was not going to spend the night in the backyard on the grass.

I moved the jogging stroller, then tried to move Tim's bike, but it was stuck on the bookshelf, so I climbed over it, getting lots of bike grease all over me in the process. Oh, right, did I mention I was wearing a skirt?
Side note: why is bike grease so hard to get off? I scrubbed and scrubbed at that stuff every day in the shower, but it just finally completely disappeared yesterday.
Then I moved that stupid gray pylon that we bought for Scaping the Goat and keep "just in case" we ever need it again. Then I moved the circular saw. Then I was able to climb up on the yellow kitchen stool, which by this point only had one box left on it, and survey how much further I had to go. Unfortunately, I had a tower of purple rubbermaid bins stacked 3 or 4 high, then ANOTHER tower of boxes behind that, then a no man's land of about 2-3 feet square of open space, then the location of the key. In fact, I could see the key from my perch, I just couldn't see how the heck I was going to get to it.

I freaked out again before I just said, "I've got to go for it. I've got to commit to this and pray I don't fall on my head or break my leg." So I climbed back onto the stool, then lay across the rubbermaid bins and used all my reaching power to get to the key. Now I just had to hold my breath and hope that I didn't drop the key into the no man's land. But I didn't! I managed to bring the key safely back and was able to get back into the house! I was so mad at Tim by the time I got in I could have pummeled him, but he'd been asleep the whole time and the poor guy had no clue why his wife was yelling at him at 2:30 in the morning.

So that's my story. Hopefully it's the last time I'll be locked out. I'm definitely tempted to take my keys whenever I step outside now!