Tuesday, October 25, 2011

September 22, 2011--Locked out!

Last Saturday night I got locked out of the house. We were getting ready to go on a mini-vacation to stay at a cabin on a lake at the campground for our denomination, and Erick and the kids had been getting ready to go. I had to work until 11:00 p.m. that night. I had lost my set of keys, so I took the spare set. It has the key to the blue van and a couple of house keys on it. During my lunch hour, Erick came to switch vans so he could get the one I had taken cleaned out and packed up for our trip. Since I didn't have my regular set of keys, he went and had a key made for the gold van so I could get home. After all, I'd hate to get stranded at Walmart.

All went well until I got home. Usually, Erick leaves the door unlocked when I work late so I don't have to mess with finding the right key in the dark. That night, he had locked it. I tried to unlock it with my spare keys, and lo and behold, none of them fit. Apparently they were the keys to our last house. I called Erick on my cell phone and got his voice mail. I called the house phone and no one answered. I knocked and rang the doorbell and no one heard me.

Now, most of the time, if I'm not home in a reasonable amount of time, Erick will wake up and notice I'm not in bed and he'll call me. I figured that he's get up soon and notice he had some missed calls and texts and come out and let me in. So I figured I'd wait in the van for him. Since there were blankets packed up for our trip, I made myself a little place to sleep on the back seat and tried to sleep, but I was lonely and had a hard time sleeping. After an hour he still hadn't come out, so I got up and tried calling and knocking and everything again, but to no avail. I went and laid down again. Finally, at nearly two in the morning, I was starting to get desperate. I wanted in and I wanted in now! I decided to break in. I pried the screen off of one of the windows that we keep open a lot and then stood on an upside-down trash can so I could try to pry it open. It wouldn't budge. I found out later that Erick had put the security locks on since we were getting ready to leave on our mini-vacation. I put my mouth up to the crack and screamed and yelled as loud as I could, but not even the dog responded. I went around to Jay's window and threw rocks at it, hoping to wake him up. I finally started body slamming the front door, intending to break it if I had to. I was beginning to imagine that someone had broken in, murdered my family, and then locked the door on the way out. I knew I couldn't go back to sleep with that thought running through my head.

Finally, Jay came down and let me in. I was in tears. I went upstairs and flipped on the light and said to Erick, "What are you doing sleeping?" He jumped up and said, "It's in the middle of the night--what do you think I'm doing?" I was a wreck. He felt terrible about it. It took me awhile to calm down. The next day it seemed a l ot funnier, but boy it sure wasn't funny at the time!

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