rickity old ladder

I'm home alone, watching a really scary movie, at 2:00 am (never sleeping now).  Decided during the commercial break I should get some bread for tomorrow out of the freezer in the garage, shutting the door behind me so my kitties wouldn't follow me.  

At this point I realized the handle didn't feel right.  I tried it again...yep, it's locked.

!@#$.

The folks aren't due back until late Sunday night; all my neighbors are asleep; I'm barefoot & coatless in my pjs; I don't have a key to the house or to my car; and I don't even have my cell phone with me.  And all I hear is the super creepy music from the scary movie and the screams of people being attacked by zombies.

I figure I have three options:  

(1) wake the neighbors (and then what??), 

(2) crawl into mom's car and try to get comfortable in the backseat until morning (like I could sleep in there, esp. with all the scary background noise), or 

(3) try to get through the only unlocked window in the house...the open kitchen window, two stories up.

I decided to try option 3, figuring it would either lead to option 1 or would have to try option 2 if I failed.  

I paused as I looked at the rickity old wood ladder in the garage: it's been around longer than the house - would it hold me?  I prayed the adventure wouldn't result in an option 4:  a night in the ER.

I started around the house to check out the window...and realized the night was pitch black and I had turned off all the house lights.  I couldn't see a thing.  But I could hear gun fire blasting from the living room.

Totally creeped out I hurried back to the garage to look for a flashlight.  Nothing.  How could we not have a flashlight in the garage??  Probably the same reason we don't have a spare key hidden outside the house.

So I found a portable construction light...but it would need to be plugged in to work.  Which means I would still need to walk around to the back of the house in complete darkness and fumble for the plug-in on the back deck.  Which I did - praying for protection from whatever the whole time.

Ahhh, light.  So much better.

Back to the garage for the ladder...to find it blocked in by snow tires.

!@#$.

The back seat was seeming more and more like the option I was going to have to pick.

Eventually wiggled the thing out of it's location (probably hadn't been moved for years) and hauled it off in the near-darkness to the side of the house.  I started having flash-backs to the night I helped my Irvine roommate crawl through her kitchen window to unlock her place.  ha!

Managed to get it set in place, now praying the whole time that it wouldn't slip and I wouldn't fall...and crawled through the window onto the sink counter...while Bear stared at me wide-eyed from the kitchen floor.  LOL

I made it!  Whew.

Back to the garage to close things up, I opened the freezer to get my bread...

Turns out we're all out.

Damn it.  Go figure.  Such is my life...