Locked out Thursday, October 26, 2023

 

 

My morning ritual of exercise got disrupted when I accidentally locked myself out of the house this morning, attempting to feed some of the outside cats.

I usually wake up around 6 a.m., make coffee, feed the inside cats, then if I see any cats in the yard put out a dish or two for them before hopping onto the inside bicycle, hand weights, bands and such.

This morning, I got through most of it when another one of our wandering outside cats made its appearance and I grabbed a bag of hard food and went out to fill the dish, only to find that the screen door had locked behind me.

I might have gone to the front door to push the doorbell to get help, only because several people have wandering unwanted into our yard over the last few weeks, I had installed a padlock on the gate, the key for which was in my pants inside the house.

The inside cats looked at me through the screen, puzzled by my situation, as did the outside cats, who ate and made their way off for their own daily routines.

Fortunately, the temperature had risen from the chill of the previous few days, while still somewhat chilly, it was not unbearable, even though I had only a t-shirt and sweat pants on from exercise.

I could have pushed my way through the screen to get back inside, but we had just replaced the screen door and I didn’t want to damage it.

So, I sat at the table in the yard for a while, looking over the latest news reports on my phone, calling inside at intervals to get someone inside to come open the door for me, which eventually occurred.

The inner cats, still puzzled from the previous day’s antics of our locking them in various rooms while the windows on the first floor were replaced, greeted me with pleas for more food, as if they thought I had totally forgotten having already fed them.

This has been a week of spoiled routines, rituals of life by which we manage to live our lives – the morning, evening routines, the recycling days, the trash days, those days when we put nothing at the curb -- the ruins of our removed ancient air conditioner put out on the sidewalk, partly stripped over night by those people selling previous metals.

I’m still a little groggy from it all, since I had locked myself out before I got my first sip of coffee, and for some reason, being out there in the chilly air, knowing coffee waited inside, made the matter worse.

I tried fiddling with the screen in the door, hoping to loosen one or more of the bolts that kept it in place, and when that didn’t work, I started calling inside, and was eventually rescued.

Now, I face a day in which the daily routine has already been spoiled, and though I got my sip of coffee, and eventually my shoulder, somehow it isn’t the same.

 Day to Day menu


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