Locked Out

We finally did it. We locked ourselves out. Believe it or not, in 7 years of marriage we'd never even so much as locked ourselves out of our car. We've come close. But this time it was the real deal. The three of us left the house this morning a little after 11am for my midwife appointment at the Old Aberdeen Medical Practice. As we were going down the front path, Trey said to me, "You've got your key, right?" And I said, "Yes, it's in my pocketbook." "Good," he replied, "because I didn't bring mine." Little did I know that my key wasn't actually in my pocketbook where I usually keep it because it had been removed the night before by a nameless individual. But at that moment, it wouldn't have mattered if I had checked anyway, because the door was already closed behind us and we have one of those new-fangled doors with an automatic lock. Arrrggghhh...

An hour later we returned through the cold January mist ready for some lunch, when what should we discover, but, ALAS, we are locked out! So now what? Our landlords live in Cairo. We have no cell phone or a phonebook even to use at a payphone to call a locksmith. We try the neighbors to our right. No one is home. We try the neighbors on the other side, and, praise God, the woman is home. She very graciously lets me use her phone and phonebook. I call several locksmiths until I find one that says they can come out within half an hour. The damage? £47 (approximately $95)!!! I am stunned, but what are we to do? In actuality, it took them about an hour to come out to our house. The neighbor had to leave for a hair appointment, so the three of us sat on our cold concrete steps in the blowing mist and discussed how we could avoid this predicament in the future. First on the agenda: get a duplicate key made. Second: find a safe place or person to keep said duplicate key.

Around 1:15pm the locksmith showed up. A minute later we were thawing in our cozy house, hungrier, poorer, but certainly wiser.