You Gotta Laugh at It

I feel like I keep describing my weekends this way, but what a crazy weekend. I apologize in advance for the length of this post. If you stick with it to the end, it's worth it. Just hang in there!

It began Friday afternoon, when Ryan and I drove two hours both ways to close a bank account on a rainy, windy day. The wind was so fierce while driving it left me completely exhausted when we got home that evening. This part is important only because I started the weekend feeling tired, and it only got worse as the weekend went on.

Saturday began with a lazy morning and running some errands around town. That afternoon Ryan mowed the grass and I started the laborious process of pulling up a vine the previous owner of the house allowed to grow wildly and unchecked. If you are a homeowner who might sell your house or you're thinking about selling your house, do the next owner a favor and clean up the yard. If you love the look of a wild garden, that's wonderful! But the next owner might not love it quite so much. You don't have to chop it all down, but clearing out some of the garden clutter would probably make their day.

The vine I concerned myself with had begun to grow up onto the side of the house in several places, but I focused on the small fenced in section of the backyard. We spent about three full hours outside working in this way.

Our yard, both in front and back, is bigger here than it was in Memphis, which means our electric lawn mower battery has to charge at some point during the process. While it charged and we stood around waiting for it to get up to at least three cells of battery, our neighbors drove into their driveway whom we hadn't met yet. We walked over, said hello and chatted for a few minutes about the normal introductory topics, and they went into their house and we went back to work on the yard.

I'm getting to the point. Just hold on a little longer.

That evening I enjoyed a video call from my parents and Ryan played one of his games. It was a good evening. We were both tired from the yard work and knew we would rest well that night. As the time inched closer to 11 p.m., we leashed our dog and took him out to go to the bathroom.

Sidenote: The doorknob on our back door is the type that, even when locked will continue to turn on the inside, giving the illusion that it is not actually locked.

When Ryan stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind him, it took a few seconds to register what had just happened. We looked at each other and both immediately thought Well, crap. The door was locked. We were locked out of our house, with our dog at 11 at night.

While I let Oreo go to the bathroom, Ryan tried to lift the garage door with no luck. It's a good thing we took the time to speak to our neighbors earlier that day because that's exactly where we went next. Don't ever tell someone they can borrow some tools at any time because they might need to take you up on that offer at 11 p.m. that same night.

Let me try to paint a picture for you of the scene. We have a single-car garage on the downstairs level of our house on the right-hand side. Immediately adjacent to that on the left is what we call the basement because it's unfinished, with a door leading to the finished downstairs, which leads upstairs to the main living space. On the outside, there is the garage door on the right and a door leading into the basement on the left. The exterior basement door has a piece of painted plywood screwed in over what should be a window in the door. It also has no deadbolt; instead, there are two latches as you might see in a bathroom stall, one at the top and one at the bottom. Okay, you're ready for the next part.

Our neighbors graciously gave us a screwdriver and flashlight to hopefully get this piece of wood off the door, unlock it, and get back into our house. You guessed it. It didn't work.

Ryan went back over to our neighbor's house after removing the first piece of plywood. Beneath this is a window space in the door with three panes, two of which were broken with jagged pieces of glass spilling out onto the ground. On the other side of the window pane was yet another piece of plywood. This time they provided a slew of tools to get into the house, including but not limited to an ax and a spatula.

Our neighbor advised using the blunt end of the ax to try and knock out the second wood panel, which Ryan did. If you've never heard someone hitting a piece of wood with the blunt edge of an ax before, it's loud. So loud, I was worried another neighbor would call the police on us breaking into our own house! Remember, I am still holding Oreo's leash and cannot approach the basement door at this point due to the broken glass and pieces of wood covering the ground.

Hitting the door with the blunt end wasn't working to create holes to unlatch the locks. Ryan flipped the ax around and started practicing the scene from The Shining where Johnny tries to take out the bathroom door with an ax, his wife, terrified inside. He managed to get through the piece of wood, hacking it to bits, reached inside to unlatch both latches, and opened the door, scratching up his arm.

As soon as he opened it, I realized there was still another locked door standing in our way to a cozy bed and sleep. The door leading into the finished downstairs from the basement has no doorknob, only a dead bolt. Ryan first thought he could shimmy over the top of the doorway into the finished section (it has ceiling tiles like you would find in a school), but found the opening too small to get through.

The only option left: jimmy the door open as if they were actual burglars. It worked! Ryan was inside the house, unencumbered by lock or key! But before we could go to bed that night, we still had to secure a piece of wood over the gaping hole in the basement door, leaving a small gap open for all the bugs to get inside. But at least it wasn't big enough for humans or vermin to get into the house.

The next morning, rather than go to church, we drove to Lowe's. Don't worry, we're getting a new door, but in the meantime we had to get another piece of plywood to go over the other side of the door. We don't like bugs. The man we spoke to about the piece of plywood understood completely, having done this very same thing to his own door not long ago. You find kindred spirits everywhere.

Before sitting down to post this earlier today, I walked into the kitchen and noticed our cats acting strange beside the window in the sun room overlooking the backyard. Upon closer inspection, I found this fellow basking in the sun. As I said at the beginning of this post, there's hardly ever a dull day in our house, or outside it.