Sunday

A little while ago, I had a weekend that can more or less be described as “hectic.”  Not BAD hectic, but not calm-like-still-water hectic either.

Looking back over this blog always makes me wonder if I'm doing too much but
I don't really have time to think about it because I'm planning another project.

"Andy's" dream weekend

“Andy” went out of town on that Thursday morning.  He was going to see dear wonderful friends that we love and watch something like 1,000 slasher films at a Halloween themed movie marathon.  I was invited, and under other circumstance, would have loved to have gone—but the two preceding weeks I was on the road more than I was home, and had just finished that

My dream weekend

odyssey when go-time for final decisions about the trip

 needed to be made, and I just…didn’t have it in me.  Even though there is a lemur exhibit at the local museum, and I love our friends very much.  I just couldn’t wrap my head around not being in slobby pjs covered in cats, so I stayed home.

Having a few nights alone in the house is sort of fun and sort of leaves me at over-ambitious but essentially loose ends.  For example: that Thursday night I came home and, within 2 hours, had touched every kitchen device in the house.  Food processor, electric mixer, instant pot, even the ol’ 

Reader, did you know that fruit leather,
a healthy snack made through the use of a
standard dehydrator,
looks almost exactly like a puddle of cat vomit?

dehydrator got pulled out.  After my whirlwind kitchen project extravaganza I was left with a savory pumpkin-sweet potato puree (healthy and delicious! Perfect for making pancakes, soup, or fritters! Which now I have to eat a lot of, before it goes bad!), dried cucumber and onion chips (I refuse to explain myself), a new batch of kimchi (I don’t have to explain myself), a mess of a kitchen, and a sense of accomplishment that quickly turned to dread because it was only like 7:15, I had finished the TV show I’d been watching (WHICH IS PERFECT), and I had nothing else to do for my night.

The show is on Netflix.  It's called
Rookie Historian Goo Hae-Ryung
and it is HILARIOUS.  Set in ancient Korea.
Worth the subtitles.  So. Good.

I restarted the TV show.  That’s how desperate it got.

The next day, I got out of the house in the evening and went to see a friend.  It was a lovely time.  I also confirmed with my sister that I was having her two tallest children over for a sleepover the following day. 

Her oldest has been asking to come over for a sleepover like every 20 seconds all summer, and the answer is always yes but also…  I love these children more than my breath, but finding a free weekend night has been a struggle.  Low and behold, I had a whole free weekend!   No plans, because I’d basically been holding the time for the trip that I ended up too frazzled to make it on, then decided to fill it right back up!  So c’mon girls, let’s have a sleep over!  

I spent the morning doing ridiculous things like vacuuming my car and mowing the lawn as though it was my Dowager Countess-esque mother coming over and not a 6 and 8 year old.  They got here in the afternoon and we discovered we had each, separately, made a list of fun, meaningful, memory making activities with which to fill our time and symbolize our love for each other. 

So we def set out to ambitiously make it through these lists and—if I do say so myself, we did a great job:

Going to the garden and harvesting collards for dinner?  Check.  

Grocery store trip to get ingredients to bake cookies?  Check.  

A healthy dinner consisting of whole, homemade ingredients including herbs the girls picked from the yard.  SO check.  

Is this child just...eating a raw
collard green leaf?
Yes she is.

Decorating the whole house for Halloween?  Super spooky check.  

Building a tent out of blankets and sheets?  Double check—one in the guest room, and one in the master bedroom.  

Fashion show where I have to explain to my niece she can’t pick out which dresses I will wear from my closet because those are my THIN dresses that I only keep out of stubbornness and nostalgia?  SO MUCH CHECK. 

Behold....fashion!

In the morning we made those cookies, and then like a sane and reasonable person I pulled out a circular saw and some house paint, and we made personalized tombstones for them to take home and decorate their own yards.  Tis the season.

True story, I could have just let
them chase the cats around the whole
time and they would have been
just as happy.

They left around noon and I was like, I don’t even know who I am right now.  It is NOON and I have BAKED and SAWED and my house is a WRECK and IT IS ONLY NOON.

So I sort of reclaim the house, rearrange some of the decorations because the short people have very strong opinions when they are here and I can’t make them understand why you can’t stack pumpkins in front of the TV or move the lamp off of the end table, but then they leave and turns out, it’s my house.

I decide I’m going to make soap, because I’ve been intending to make soap for a while and I still have that high voltage urge to DO, plus some time, plus an innate inability to sit down and chill like a normal person.

I make the soap.   I find somewhere to cure the soap.  I pace a little.  I am still in my pjs, which absolutely are now sporting evidence of the day’s baking, sawing, painting, and soap making on them, which I find inspirational.  I see the couch.  I see the cats, the promise of my dream fulfilled.  I crash out, put on Netflix, and heave a sigh of contentment.

This last about 3 minutes before, while trying to turn up the volume, I accidentally hit some other button and the whole system of the television realizes its true master is not at the helm and abruptly reminds me that *my* tv watching station is outside on my tablet and NOT on the couch.  It shuts down my show and refuses to get back to Netflix. 

I have all the appropriate feelings about this, and may or may not have sent “Andy” a series of texts using words like “EMERGENCY” and the lord’s name in vain, but he, as mentioned above, is in a movie marathon. 

I glance outside, but it’s raining.  FINE.  I AM UNDETTERED.  I get out the book I’ve been meaning to start, and curl up on the couch, finally relaxing, finally chill, finally in my slobbiest pjs covered in cats.

This is how I imagine myself.

At some point, I notice my phone tell me that an Amazon package is on the way.  Earlier Amazon had told me my package would not be on the way today, because reasons, but I am delighted at this new turn of events.  I have ordered an adorable cloche hat and am looking forward to wearing it with style.  The tracking tells me only 8 stops before mine!  Fabulous.  I go back to my book.

A while passes and I decide to check the porch—then, come to think of it, when did I last check the mail?  That’s usually “Andy’s” job, I did check it at some point, idk when, I might as well.  I step onto the (package-free) stoop, shut the door so the cats won’t get out, take a step, and realize-

I have locked myself outside.

I have turned the handle lock out of habit, like when I leave for work.  I have pulled the door shut—can confirm, Reader.  Definitely locked.  Definitely shut.  I tried it like 15 times.

Ok, I think, let’s assess this situation.  It’s dark out, it’s raining…but I don’t have to poop or anything, so we can get through this.  The back door might be open, let’s start there.  Of course we have a big privacy fence around our back yard, tall and not built for climbing—well, let’s just go check it out. 

Assessing the situation.

Turns out the fence is super easy to scale when properly motivated, especially when once you’re in the air above it, you realize exactly what this looks like to any curious neighbors and you go fast-like-a-bunny to make that a limited viewing option.

The back door is of course locked, because I am a responsible adult who believes in safety.   Also the dog was deeply confused and really sad, because here I was at the back looking like I was opening the door for him to join me in his favorite place, the outside, but I wasn’t opening the door, I was just cruelly taunting him. 

Fine, door’s locked—more assessing.  Maybe the windows?  We open those sometimes, maybe one is unlocked?  Then I hear a noise—over the fence and across the street, someone is loading their car up like they’re going out.  “Perfect!” I think.  “I’ll call to them over the fence, and ask for help!”

Hahahahahaha No.

J/k.  No I don’t. That is absolutely not what I do, Reader.  Rather, I hide in the shadows and wait for them to entirely pack up and leave, because I don’t want them to see me doing shady ish like peering into the windows checking to see if they’re locked.  I literally waited in the dark, in the rain, hiding in my own back yard—the one I am in RIGHT NOW as I type this, NOT hiding, with no sense that anyone might think I am a home invader.

I start to process this home invasion angle—what if someone does call the police, I think?  “Well, then maybe they can get the door open,” replies the naivest part of me, “Surrrre, with their state issued lock-picking tool sets that they always carry on their Batman utility belts to home invasion calls,” finishes the thinking part of me.  Also this entire tragedy is figuring heavily in my mind.  Right, ok, back to assessing.  First let’s get back to the front door—but this time over the shadoweyest, tree-coveredest part of the fence that goes to the alley between our house and the neighbors.  I go back to my stoop, to get out of the rain. 

“FINE,” says naïve voice again, “but maybe they have tools for this at the station, and it’s not a far walk!”

Thinking part of my brain weighs in.

This is when it really sinks in that I’m barefoot.  I mean, I’ve been barefoot the whole time, but this is when the significance of that sinks in.

Well, I know how to pick a lock…I just don’t have lockpicks.  I start to assess again—this time assessing the environment.  There’s the Halloween decorations we’d just put out, and there are wires on them, but none of the right strength and size.  Not a bunch of hair pins just sprinkled around the yard, it turns out.  My car is there—wait, didn’t I see once that you can use the wire in a windshield wiper to pick a lock?  There’s some way to do it, I saw it on a youtube video one time….

And this is when it really sinks in that I don’t have my phone.  It's true, you can make lockpicks with a windshield wiper wire.  But I would need one other thing to really do it right and that thing is a tutorial.

So let us continue to assess.  I am barefoot, in my shabbiest pajamas, locked out of my house, in the dark, in the rain.  I do not have my phone.  There is not a hidden key; there is not an unlocked window.  I do have “Andy’s” phone number memorized, but he is in another state, in a movie marathon.  



However.  He has his mother’s number, and she lives about 15 minutes away and is, as far as I know, the only possessor of a spare key.  Gotta get to “Andy,” thinking part of my brain says. 

I consider the neighbors I know—or more specifically, the ones who know me and are least likely to shoot this hobo looking person coming up to their house at night.  I start knocking on doors, but no one I know is home.  I’m on the verge of knocking on other doors, when I see, in the distance, a woman walking under an umbrella up a side street.  And then, like a character in one of the horror movies my husband was surely enjoying at that very moment, I follow her. 

Reader, I know I look like a stalker, and a homeless one at that, but it made sense to me at the time.  She’s way ahead of me though (in retrospect, hopefully far enough ahead that she didn’t even know I was coming after her through the rainy night like a crazy person) and makes it into a house before I’m close enough to call out.  Now I’m at the end of a cul-de-sac in our neighborhood and I’m realizing it’s time to knock on strangers’ doors.  In fact, there is a house down there with lots of lights on.  Lots of cars in the driveway.  Their glass door is shut but the real front door is open.  I start to approach…

And this is when it really sinks in that I’m not wearing a bra.  It’s chilly and rainy out.  I do NOT want to walk up on a party.  Look, it’s an option, Reader, I know it’s an option, but....

We're just not there yet.

I start my way back toward our house—and low and behold, a car has pulled into our driveway.  A woman gets out in an orange safety vest, and I call to her:

Hey, are you the Amazon lady?

The origin of the praise hands emoji.

Yes.

Hi—I live here, this is my home.  I locked myself out, could I borrow your phone to call my husband??

Now let us take a moment for her to asses.   I come, out of the darkness like a forlorn spirit, from across the street, wet, barefoot, no bra, dirty clothes, hair every which way, saying I live here in this house I was not just at and please could you interact with me and in fact hand me your phone, I promise I am not a vagrant.

I looked like this, Reader.

And, god bless her, she does.

I call “Andy” from this unknown number while he is a movie marathon two states away, planning to leave a message then send a text but, god bless him, he answers.

I try to explain my situation which he broadly gets because this is not a moment that calls for specifics, and says he’ll call his mom and call me back—but he can’t call me back, because I’m on this lady’s phone and she has deliveries to make.  So I say good bye, and hand her back the phone.  

She hands me my package, says good luck.  

She drives away.  

I go back to sitting on the stoop.

It occurs to me that I should make a decision about how long I’m going to just sit and wait before I find another phone—what if his mom is asleep and doesn’t get the call?  What if she’s out of town?  What if something else?  

It also occurs to me that I have no idea what time it is, nor how fast time is passing, nor any way to figure those things out.

I consider what a good job we did with the front yard decorations.

And then, god bless her, “Andy’s Mom” comes.  She lets me in and is very sweet.  She leaves and I sit and think about my life.  All this happened because life doesn’t have a 20 second rewind button, and I decided I was going to check the mail.

The mail doesn’t come on Sundays.