It was just last week that I commented to my husband on my Ladder Phobia. As in, "You could not pay me enough to get up on that ladder and paint the neighbor's house."
Ask and ye shall receive.
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It's not quite 9 o'clock in the morning, and I'm helping my mother-in-law load up her car to begin her journey home. Bags, coolers, and more bags. In and out of the house along with me is my preschooler, who's all about "helping" Mommy and Grandma. Yes, you know the kind of help I'm talking about. He's in his underpants and t-shirt; I'm sporting bed-head and am in my stylish candy-cane pajama bottoms and a tank top, sans upper-body support.
I head in for the final load, and pull the back entrance screen door, which we'd been using. It is stuck.
No wait, it's worse than stuck. It's locked! We're all outside, in various forms of (un)dress, and the door is locked.
PANIC sets in instantly.
OK, remain cool, Marie, you can figure this out.
No problem! I know where there's a spare key. I grab it and head to the front door. But I can't get to the front door, because that screen door is locked too.
With those options out, I realize that I must go in through a window. Oh, and the "ground floor" at our house isn't exactly near the ground. Luckily I had opened a locked window earlier, just a bit, and I knew that particular screen could be jostled.
So I head to the garage for a ladder. As I set it up, I know it is the preschooler, my 78 year-old mother-in-law, or me who has to climb it.
Yep, time to eat my words.
And let me tell you, there is no graceful way to climb into your house, bra-less, in candy-cane PJ bottoms. Not even in front of your mother-in-law.
I never did finish my cup of tea this morning. Not that I needed it after that!
