Good Grief.

Important points to note:  1)  Luke’s been hunting since Sunday morning.  I’ve had zero minutes of “chill time” since then (thanks to cramming in all the work I had to do for the month that I missed while Piper was in the hospital), so my mental status may be…  questionable.  2)  If you’ve heard about the Jessica Ridgeway case, that’s scary close to us.  She lived only a few miles from where I grew up.  And although we don’t live quite that close now, we’re still within about 10 miles.  And I’m a little creeped out by the whole bit.  3)  Our laundry room (which is really like a laundry hallway) was packed full of chaos because I was doing a few loads. 

Ahem…

Remember me saying that, hopefully, the freeze would be the cure-all for our string of bad luck?

Apparently I was wrong.

Monday morning, Piper was all ready to go to school for the whole day for the first time since before she was sick.  I was attempting to get the three of us out of the house, in the car, and to school on time.  Addy, obviously, chooses this day to sleep in.  So I was sneaking around the house trying to be as quiet as possible so as to not wake her up (because, let’s face it- if the kid-who-never-sleeps is still sleeping, she seriously needs it.) 

The night before, because I was husbandless, it was dark out, and there’s a murderer in our midst, I decided, for the first time ever, to lock the door between our house and the garage. 

I realized that I had left Piper’s backpack in the car, so I went out to get it.  Piper was at the kitchen table eating breakfast and Addy was in her bed asleep.  I snuck outside, carefully closed the door, got the backpack from the garage, and went back inside.

Except I couldn’t.

Because I was such a careful, caring, paranoid and creeped out mother to have locked the door.

And every other door in our house.

Sooo, my kids were locked inside.  And I was outside.  In my pajamas.  At 7:30am.

Fantastic.

I ran next door to the neighbors; she answered the door, embarrassed in her pajamas (sorry, dear neighbor) and asked to use a phone while I tried to come up with a plan.  We tried the credit card trick to no avail.  I ran around the house making sure there was no way to get inside.  Piper’s not tall enough to reach the doorknobs, so even if I could convince her to get down off the table, she wouldn’t have been any help.  We called a locksmith, but it’d take about 45 minutes for them to get there (plus paying for an emergency locksmith, afterhours, would have been pricey.)  We have a keypad to our garage, so no one in our family has a spare key.  I thought about just breaking a window, but I wasn’t sure about climbing into the house through a broken window or getting the broken window replaced on short notice (and it’s been COLD at night time!)  We finally called the police department.

And about 10 minutes later, a big ol’ fire truck came down our street.

Yeah.  They axed their way into my house.  Through my packed-full-of-chaos laundry room.  *Embarrassing.*

It was great.

The pounding scared the crap out of both kids (Addy either was up at this point or was awoken by the pound of an axe and hammer at her door…) and they were both petrified by the time we got inside. 

So I swooped both kids up and tried to tell them that everything was okay.  One of the firefighters said that he needed my information for paperwork, and I thought that, maybe, seeing the big fire truck would pacify/distract/make the kids less mad at me for abandoning them by themselves.

So the three fire fighters and my two kids walked back out the house through the packed-full-of-chaos laundry room. 

And the door closed.

And locked.

Yup.  They had to axe their way in to my house again.

Twice.  They had to break into my house twice.  When I realized what had happened, the fire fighter looked at me incredulously and said “You’re kidding.” 

I couldn’t help but laugh.  I mean, really.  Who does that???

Needless to say, Piper didn’t make it to school on time on Monday.

And also of note is the fact that, the night after, I left my keys in the front door all night.  So Night #1 I was so careful I locked myself out and night #2 I was so careful I left the keys in the door as if to say “Hey, Mr. Badguy- feel free to come in, just be quiet about it, would ya?” 

Not one of the brighter points of my parenthood journey.