The Perfect Storm

I was worried I wouldn't have any real stories to put in the blog this weekend. Well, I needn't worry..... Here goes...

I was leaving my parent's house Saturday night. Zander was getting tired so I was going to go home and put him to bed. Well, he was crabby and only wanted Grandma. She carried him out to the car while I made like a pack mule and carried all of our crap out.

I have this habit of always locking the door behind me.

I also have another habit....I lose keys.

So, you're thinking "Oh, Karla lost her keys." Well, just the key to my parent's house. (This happens when your child is sleeping in the car on a previous occasion, you just need to run in really quick to get something, and you don't want to wake your child. So, you take just that key off your key ring so the car radio and everything is still playing....but then you can't ever remember what you did with that key). So, now my mom can't get back into the house. And I don't have the key.

Well, its no big deal, right? My Dad is in the house....he'll open the door. Slight problem with that. He went upstairs to watch tv.

He is totally deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other, and what he can hear, he usually ignores.

We beat on the front door, the back door and the basement door.

I threw rocks at the bedroom window....then I realized he was in the other bedroom (see, I've got my "mommy brain" constantly working against me).

So I tried to throw rocks at the other bedroom window...it was harder though because that is the side of the house where the covered porch is and so I had to get the rocks over the roof and I'm no pitcher!

I then honked his truck horn and then my Jeep horn.

I screamed until Zander cried because I was so loud.

My mom had been banging on the door so long her knuckles were numb.

Oh, I had my cell phone and had been calling the house phone AND his cell phone too. I let the house phone ring for sooo long that it actually turned on the answering machine that Zander had turned off earlier. But, the ringers were turned off on the phones upstairs because that is where the kids take naps.

Of course the only neighbors with a spare key weren't home either.

The lock on the basement door had broken a few months ago, so it was deadbolted with no key.

I eventually called Kim to come with a key.....she was lives about 20 minutes away. After her and John got done laughing at us.....they were on their way.

My mom kept telling me to take Zander home...but I couldn't leave her....after all, I was the one who had locked her out. This was like the "Perfect Storm" version of being locked out.

So, I figured my Dad was watching a western, because, uh, that is the ONLY thing he ever watches. The show is usually not as loud as the commercials. So, I figured I had to keep making a bunch of noise and hope I got his attention right before a gun fight or something....its usually quiet then. That's when you have a drunk guy yelling at an empty building for so and so to come out....while meanwhile, so and so and his posse are surrounding the drunk guy. You've seen one western, you've seen them all.

So, I kicked at the back door. I kept kicking at it....not hard enough to knock it down, but just to make noise.

FINALLY, he pops his head around the corner from the steps and sees Mom, Z and me standing on the back porch looking through the glass at him. And still he stands there and says "What are you guys doing?"

At that point my mom and I were yelling...I don't remember what we said. This is where it gets to be like a "Three Stooges" episode.

He says "Why didn't you call me? I had my phone in my pocket." He pulls his cell phone (yes, the same one I called) out of his chest pocket.

My mom says "How many missed calls do you have?" Uh, 4.

So, later I find out he thinks that if you turn the volume down on your cell phone, the phone will vibrate. I had to explain to him that is not how it works (and then later I set his phone up to do just that).

He was mad because the ringers on the phones were turned off upstairs. I was mad because they didn't have spare house keys in their garage (which now has an garage door opener with a keypad on it, so there should be no excuses for that). And mom was mad because she still had to bake a pie.

He said he did hear us beating on something once, but he thought Mom was just hammering on something loudly because she was mad at him for not doing work around the house. Ok, mom doesn't use tools or fix things, so not sure why he thought that after over 40+ years of marriage, she would suddenly pick up that habit.

I had to call Kim and John and tell them they didn't have to come after all, although they were about halfway there. Kim was laughing so hard when I told her all the happenings that John could hardly understand her when she relayed the story to him. I thought she was going to wet herself.

All in all, we were outside for 40 minutes trying to get in.

Lesson learned. Mom turned the ringers on upstairs (although, come to find out Dad's ringer was on!), Dad's cell phone will vibrate now, and next time we go to the auto store we will be getting several spare house keys.