I May Need Help

So I haven’t done a very good job of keeping up with my chapter-a-week book review. I’ve been somewhat incapable of normality lately. Last week was filled with insanity. I managed to lock myself out of my house twice in a week. For the first five years of houseownership I was capable of leaving my house and bringing my keys with me. This summer I managed to, thanks to last week, get locked out five times. Nice. After the first time I was stuck outside last week I decided that since I had managed to set a new norm for ditziness I should have another spare key made and hidden. I have plenty of friends and family members with keys but I don’t want to keep asking them to drop everything and rescue me.

My lawn mower has been having problems. I have a great brother-in-law who has some skill at fixing small motors so I asked him to take a look at it. Naturally, in order to do so, he needed to get into my garage and since I now have a spare key I gave it to him so he could get in. He wasn’t able to figure out what the problem was but he has some friends at work who also have some skill at fixing small engines so he took the carburetor out of the mower so he could show them. That evening when I got home from work I didn’t notice the lawn mower sitting in the middle of the garage and ran into it with my car. Oops. The guys weren’t able to figure out what the problem was either so my b-i-l put the mower back together without doing anything to it. He said that he after it was reassembled it started up right away and ran with out any problem and that maybe taking the carburetor out shook something loose and let it pass. I may have helped with that process.

Thursday afternoon I was heading to work. As soon as I stepped out of the house I knew that I had locked my keys inside again. But I had a spare key nearby so no problem. Wait. Problem. My b-i-l still had it. Then I decided to call someone. I reached for my phone and realized it was locked in the house too. No problem. I live in a neighborhood with a bunch of older people and the neighbor across the street appeared to be home so I decided to trot over and ask to borrow his phone. I knocked and there wasn’t an answer so I knocked again. Still no answer. As I turned to run to another neighbor’s house he came to the door…in his tighty-whitey underwear. After recovering from my short-term blindness I was able to make a phone call for help and return to sitting outside my house and waiting to be rescued.

I got my spare key back later that day.