Locked Out

One of the things about our house that I have not gotten used to yet is the fact that the doors to the outside are like hotel doors. They feel unlocked from the inside but might be locked from the outside. We had just talked about this the other day, when the next morning, in my quest to move my empty trash can back from the curb, I locked myself out of my house....

Since we had just talked about it and the possibility of leaving a key outside, I was ready to shoot myself for not having already done so...

Now, fortunately, I was fully dressed and even had a fleece on because it was a bit chilly in the house as well. Unfortunately I was only in slippers since we don't wear shoes in the house....

I went around the entire house which we had locked up like a bug in a rug....no getting in anywhere, but all was not lost because J had worked during the night and I was expecting him home any minute. So I really just needed to find something to do for a while so I would not count the seconds to his arrival and continue looking suspicious on my porch.....

So I decided to work my way around the yard, removing long pine needles from our bushes to make them look nicer and in preparation for possible Christmas light application. Did I mention that almost every bush in our yard is a holly bush???? Needless to say, by the time I finished, I had scratches and pokes all over my hands and upper body from reaching for the pieces in the middle.

Now you might be saying, hmmm....why doesn't she 1. call a locksmith, 2. call J, or 3. at least hang out at a neighbors for the time being???? All good questions but I have answers for all. Firstly, I thought J was going to be home at any minute so I figured if I called a locksmith, they would show up just as J did....next, I didn't call J or the locksmith because I didn't have a phone handy and I was in slippers, which leaves us with option 3, which is negated by the first two reasons I didn't do options 1 and 2. I couldn't possibly introduce myself to my only neighbor (that is right, we only have one neighbor on our circle street of only 5 houses or so) in my slippers, admitting that I locked myself out of the house. How stupid would that look???

So I continued on my pine needle extraction project in hopes that not watching the road would make J come home faster....it didn't. He didn't get home for almost 3 hours....I finally finished in the yard, could not think of anything else I could do that wouldn't be weirder looking than doing yard work in my slippers, so climbed into the back of our truck (we have a canopy) and laid down on some of the flattened cardboard ready for a trip to the recycle center, and tried to nap. By this time I was getting very hungry and was just thankful that I didn't have a teapot on the stove.

After being in the truck for a little bit, J drove up. I climbed out without him noticing and could have kept the entire torrid story to myself, but figured he needed a laugh and I needed a way to explain the lovely bushes up front when I was supposed to be deligently unpacking.....