My husband is out of town for work, so I’m in charge for a few days. This is another small victory in my book, as around this time two years ago I was nearly a vegetable. He took this same trip last year, but this year I have that bed-shaker alarm to wake me up in the morning, AND I’ve been feeling so much better, so I was extremely confident in my abilities to hold down the fort sans husband. Pride comes before a fall, folks.

At 8:00 am, the time we are supposed to be AT the bus stop, my daughter was still fiddling to get her shoes on and I was frantically looking for my keys. The coffee was brewing, so that it would be waiting for me when I returned from dropping off the kids. Once Natalie had her shoes on, we headed out the door. I hadn’t found my keys, but figured I would just use the keypad on the garage door when I came back. No biggie. Right?

Fifteen minutes later, the kids are on the bus, and I am back home. However, as I was walking up the driveway I remembered that I had locked the interior door inside the garage the night before. The one I intended to use to get back in the house. Because, you know, my protector husband wasn’t home and I’m suddenly paranoid about people breaking into garages. I guess. This is my first garage, what do I know?

I was pretty quickly on the verge of panicking, but I knew that wouldn’t do me any good so by the grace of God I stayed calm and I didn’t even cry! (Seriously, there were no tears shed in the making of this story) My next thought was that maybe the back door was still unlocked from when Luke let the dog out this morning. I mean, why would he lock the door back up? It’s sort of a responsible thing to do, and not likely for an 8 year old to do without being told. So, I hopped the neighbor’s fence (it’s much shorter than ours, and the gate to their yard is not padlocked as ours is) and tried the back door.

As it turns out, my 8 year old is a responsible young boy.

Did I mention I had also left my phone at home?

Yes, I was in some serious trouble here. But it was still early, and lots of people were home. In fact, I knew the guy across the street was home because he was walking back just ahead of me after dropping his son off at the bus stop. So, I walked over and knocked on the door. Sure enough, he came to the door and let me in to use his phone. I left a message for my husband and then we walked over to my house to see if we could open a window (we couldn’t, not without doing some damage). Thankfully Mike called back while we were burglarizing the house in broad daylight, and he suggested that there might still be a key in the garage where he had left it for his dad. We looked, and it was not there, so we called back and had him call his dad to come and unlock the door for me. BIG sigh of relief!!

I only needed to wait a half an hour, but a half hour sitting in a garage with no one to talk to and nothing to read can feel like an eternity. Also, my freshly brewed coffee was waiting for me just on the other side!! What was I to do?! Well, I swept the garage floor – thoroughly. Then I blew some bubbles in the front yard. And sure enough, Grandpa came pulling up the drive soon enough. I sheepishly kept my head down, embarrassed as ever, and Grandpa just chuckled at me. This stuff happens to the best of us. If you can’t laugh about it, you are taking life way too seriously. So, I’m laughing about it now. And you can bet I owe Matthew from across the street a big batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies!