breaking-in adventures

I realized today as I was on my walk that I never told you about one of my favorite adventures whilst I was in Prescott over Thanksgiving.

But first, for this story to make sense, I need to give you a little background.

When I was in high school, I forgot my house key at home...a lot.  Which meant that once I got done with the one mile walk from the high school to my house, I didn't have a way to get in my own home.  But since I didn't want to wait however many hours it would take for someone to get home to let me in, I devised my own strategy.  Rather than just learning from my own mistakes and remembering my key every day, I opted for the the breaking-in approach.

Let me clarify that this approach only works if my dog knows and likes you, lest any of you get any grand ideas for breaking into my parents' house.  And really, he doesn't like very many people.  Let's be honest.

Let me paint the picture for you: I would get home from school, pile up however many rocks it would take for me to jump our fence and hop over [without any attempt at being graceful], greet my dog, walk up the deck stairs, and...climb through the doggie door.

Yep.  I did that nearly every day for four years.  Classy.

Ok.  Back to the present.

While Tim was at urgent care, I went with my brother and my dad on a walk around the neighborhood, knowing full well that at this point in my pregnancy, I wouldn't be able to go with them the whole way.  Something about the combination of the extra weight, all the hills, and walking on pavement makes for very painful soreness in my joints the following day.

Ergo, I just figured I would head home a little early from the walk.  I know that neighborhood like the back of my hand, so I wasn't worried in the least.  The potential problems of this particular situation didn't occur to me until I was about halfway home.  I didn't have a key.  And since the dog came home early with me [he wasn't feeling too well that day], I couldn't figure out how I would lift him over the fence, let alone get myself over that fence with about 13 extra pounds attached to my midsection.  Just waiting in the front yard didn't seem like an appealing idea, since I knew the dog would be most unhappy strapped to his leash for the next 30 minutes.

One of my problems was immediately solved upon arriving at the house.  A contractor from my parents' church congregation was there working on the fence in our backyard [because, you know, when a drunk driver goes too fast on the icy roads and drives through the fence and onto the underground trampoline in the backyard, it tends to cause some problems], and consequently had a full section of the fence open.  That solved my first problem: getting into the backyard.

I climbed the deck stairs, allowed Casey to go through the doggie door, and considered my options.  I could sit outside on the deck and just enjoy the nice weather [possibly the more logical conclusion], or I could once again attempt to climb through the doggie door.  Which would have been a logical conclusion were it not for the fact that I had quite a few extra pounds in my midsection this time.

I decided to go for it.

I crouched down, stuck my head and shoulders through, and immediately assumed I was free and clear.  After all, it had been so easy up to this point.  Except for the fact that now things had slowed down a little and my midsection was now somewhat stuck, which meant that half of my body was inside the house, and half of my body was outside the house.  I started to panic, wondering if I was going to be in this uncomfortable and embarrassing position when my dad and brother got home.  Thankfully, however, with a little finessing, I was able to slowly inch my way past my midsection and make my way fully into the house.

Once inside, I just laid on the floor and took a few deep breaths.  Then I started giggling and couldn't stop, picturing my body in its halfway-in, halfway-out predicament.

The incredible thing about the whole situation was that nobody found my predicament quite as humorous as I had.  Maybe it was one of those you-had-to-be-there situations, but really.  A pregnant woman stuck in a doggie door?  Doesn't that warrant more than a few courtesy chuckles?

Maybe they were just too used to my antics to assume that my choices might have been more logical.