How I locked myself out of the house

I decided that I need to do better at keeping the doors to the house locked. So last night, at about 11:30 pm, in my pajamas right before heading to bed, I decided to go around a make sure all the doors were locked. Sure enough, the front door was unlocked, so I locked it. I also found the outside door from the kitchen unlocked, so I was locking it when I decided to make sure I turned the water to the garden off, and closed the locked door behind me.

My first approach was to go around the entire house and find an open door or window, but apparently I had been doing a better job than I thought at keeping things locked up. My second thought was to use the garbage can to get onto the root and try a for-sure-to-be-open second story window. But my chin barely cleared the gutter, and I wasn’t sure I could pull myself up onto the roof, especially since the garbage can had wheels. Placing a bucket on top of the garbage can seemed even more perilous.

My arms were about three inches too short to reach the garage door knob through the cat door (no I don’t have a cat). The most I could do with a board I found was to turn on the outside light switch, but I could never get the pesky little door lock turned.

I considered a brick through a window, and also sleeping outside, but neither option seemed elegant. So I decided to bury my pride and call for help. So I walked, in bare feet, to the gas station to find a phone, but pay phones are only for airports now days. I then walked to the near by 24 Hour Fitness and used their phone to call Sandy. I was really glad for the few moments I spent a few months earlier memorizing her phone number, because otherwise I would have been calling my parents in Oregon.

I woke Sandy up, but she drove down to use the garage door remote to open it up for me, so that I could actually sleep in a real bed.