Series of (Un)Fortunate Events

Tonight will go down as the "Series of Fortunate Events."

Let's start from the beginning: After work, I headed to the gym to try to piece together a workout after eating a little-too-big slice of cake when our office had a surprise wedding shower for a co-worker. On the treadmill, I get a text message from my roommate saying that our fridge was not cold... at all. Dang.

I should have suspected as such because we noticed earlier this week that our ice cream was melting.

I get home and the roommate has gone to her parents' house for a cooler and to get ice from their big ice maker. She comes home about twenty minutes later and asks if I'll help her get the coolers from her car. Sure, I can handle that.

Roommate heads out first and then I shut the door to our house. She gets one cooler while I get the other. We walk back up the stairs and roommate tries to open the door. It's locked.

"Are you sure it's not jammed?" I ask. Panic is rising in my voice.

No. It's not jammed, it's locked. Great.

Standing their with these crazy coolers, a hot fridge, no keys, no phones, all we can do is stand there and laugh. What to do? For security reasons, we don't keep a set of spare keys outside our house, but plenty of our family members have them. But, how to call them?

Off the top of our heads, we decide to walk three blocks to our friend's house, hoping he's home. Walk there. Knock. No answer. 

Great.

We turn and walk back towards our house. At this point, I'm going to be as neighborly as possible and knock on any door close to us. First, I knock on the white house across the street, home to a sweet old lady who always said if we needed anything, let her know. Well, I need a phone and I was letting her know. Even though her car was there, no answer. Bummer.

"Ok," I say. "Let's go across the street."

I knock on our nice neighbors, Margaret and Brent's, house. They welcome us in and give us their phone. Would we like some wine or beer? (Thinking about it, did it look like I needed it?) At this point, I'm too hot and tired for that. First call roommate's brother, who lives on the other side of the neighborhood, but he doesn't answer. Dang.

I call my parents' house, in which my mom answers laughing. Sure, my sister will be there soon. We chat with our neighbors and catch up on who's who around the street and who are the new people that have moved in. We even got invited to the Garden Club (which doesn't garden at all, but rather drinks wine and has fun book swaps and cooking classes once a month), which I plan on joining. 

We walk back to our house and wait a minute or two for some keys to arrive. My two sisters pull up, no doubt laughing at my expense. It's just not like me to get locked out of the house.

So relieved to get the keys, I bound to the door, confidently put the key in the knob and try to turn it. No dice. These look like the right keys. Somehow, they are the wrong ones. We try them on the back door. Again, no dice. 

Oh my gosh.

"At least we have a car now. Let's go to your brothers' house and get his keys," I say to the roommate.

All four of us jump in my sister's PT Cruiser and drive on. We weave through the neighborhood and pull up to the curb as my roommate's brother sits on his front porch. With a puzzled look on his face, they find the keys and we head back towards home.

Pulling up to the house, I'm nervous. What if this copied set doesn't work either?

In a valiant leap over the ditch worthy of the last five minutes in any captivating movie, my roommate runs to the front door with the key. So excited, she can't even get the key in right. 

Key is in the knob. It turns. We are in.

I've never been so thankful.