Locked out

Half past six and we are all out on our newly installed patio, sitting on the new faux wrought iron seats, Giselle in her new sling seat, under the gazebo we just installed, enjoying the cool evening breeze, winding down after a full day at work.

Everything is calm and peaceful, even the energetic scampering of Hercules, Giselle’s “always-full-of-zip and zing” pug, has been forestalled by locking him in the house behind the glass sliding doors looking out into the patio.

That was our first mistake, letting Hercules still see us. The second was ignoring his wining and scampering against the glass door. You see, since someone had already tried to break-in through the said glass sliding doors, Richard installed a manual lock down mechanism for the doors.

When we are safely ensconced inside, or all about to leave the house for the day, we pull these four small levers down behind the door that slides, locking the two glass doors together…stopping the sliding action of the door.

Hercules, in his typical “always-full-of zip and zing” mode was jumping up against the door, cart-wheeling his tiny paws, in an effort to dig trough the glass or, maybe,  just to show us that he wants out, wants to join us, wants to enjoy the afternoon breezes.

In his scampering on the door he inadvertently lowered one of the “protectant” levers. Leaving us all locked outside, without keys, after all who goes outside to their patio with house keys, in the cool evening, which by now is beginning to get cold, and no way back into the house.

Giselle called (thank god Richard had his phone on him) Mathew, her son, to come over and open the door with his key, he was at work but indicated that his girlfriend, Jessica, can get the key to rescue us.

Meanwhile, Richard is outside looking in at Hercules, trying to get him to over to the lever and have him push it back up. Now this might sound ridiculous but by bending down and wiggling his fingers opposite the lever, he did get Hercules to bend his head under the lever and then, by moving his hand up suddenly, got Hercules’ head to move back up, hitting the lever, partially raising it.

But after another ten minutes of trying to get Hercules to repeat this action to no avail, seems that the first time it happened he must have hurt himself and there was no way he was going to do that again.

With still no action from Mathew, Richard decided he couldn’t wait any longer and called a lock smith.

But our adventure did not end there, it seems that the lock smith, who turned up fifteen minutes later, could not pick the lock, which on the face of it seems like a good thing, but to us three, Giselle in her night wear, me in a pants only, Richard was the only one still in his work clothes, things were definitely looking grim, not to mention cold. The lock smith indicated that he could drill out the lock and replace it with a $200 core. “No way!” said Richard, “Not when I could get a new lock from Lowes for $50.”

So once again we called Mathew, seemed that Jessica could not find the key and had to call Mathew to find out where it was, thus the delay in getting back to us. So we waited while that happened, then, just minutes ago, they called to say that they had the key but could we come and pick it up.

At last luck was once again with us, Richard had his electronic car key on him…thank god he hadn’t changed as yet, or else we’d still be locked outside, at lease I hope nothing else has gone wrong, They both left here to get the spare key and I’m here, outside, all alone, cold and being stared at by a now relaxed and lounging little pug named Hercules.