Neighbors

Monday is the night that Brian curls after work. He and three other guys have a match at either 5:30 or 7:45, so Bennett and I have the entire day to ourselves. After school, we have fun thinking of what we can do together to pass the time. Today, we spent the first hour after school looking for Arm & Hammer Washing Soda so that I can start making my own laundry detergent. This has been nearly impossible to find, so we gave up that quest and came home to have a snack before heading outside to play in the snow.

We had a nice snack and then got all bundled up in snow pants, thick coats, snow boots and hats & mitts. We went out the back so we could scrape the snow off the ice rink and deck. I didn't take my keys or phone with me because we were just going to be in the backyard. I didn't want my phone to distract me from having fun with Bennett and I didn't figure I'd need my keys if we were just on the back deck, right? Wrong.

As I closed the sliding glass door, I watched the lock slip down into place. Holy shit! Did I think to unlock the front door before we went out, just in case? I ran around to the front to check. Nopes. Locked tightly. Nice and secure. I'm wracking my brain trying to think of where we might have hidden a key. Of course, we hadn't gotten around to that yet. We've got one hidden now, you can bet on that.

I played with Bennett for a few minutes, but then I started to get chilly. Bear in mind that it was about 14 degrees F with a wind chill factor of probably 0F. Cold, cold, cold. I was super thankful that I'd had us put on snow pants at the last minute. So, I decided to check with the neighbors. We walked around the corner to neighbors that I figured would be home - at least the wife is usually outside smoking every other hour. We walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Nothing. Darn it! Who do we try next? Lots of cars are missing from driveways, so I assume that most neighbors are at work. Which is surprising, because I thought that most of them were retired! We tried the young gals who live right next to us thinking that they may have been given a key by the previous owners of our house. They weren't home. Finally, we tried two other neighbors before we found someone smoking in his back yard. He let us borrow his phone and I called Brian, who came right home to let us in. Whew.

I shouldn't be embarrassed, but I am. I am a grown woman and I can't believe I locked my baby and myself out of our house in this frigid weather. Bennett handled it like a pro and was so excited to see Daddy come home in the middle of the day. You can be sure that I'll have my house keys and my phone on me every time I leave the house now. And we'd better tighten up that locking mechanism on the sliding glass door too.

Sidenote - that first neighbor who wasn't home? She really was. I saw her outside smoking not ten minutes later. I really miss southern hospitality.