Just a quick note on locks and keys

 I went out last evening (Fri. night) to a pot luck and movie at church. Good food, mostly vegetarian. I brought brownies, not vegetarian because eggs were in them. Some of the plant based people ate them.

Movie was Life of Otto. It was very good...Tom Hanks playing a grumpy old man was excellent.

I came home in the dark. I  didn't leave my porch light on because the woman across the way says it shines in her bedroom window (which only has a blind across it). So it was dark, and I was thinking of bears mainly as I got out of the car, and carried the 4 remaining brownies to my house.

Put the plate on the banister, and reached to open the storm door, with key in hand to unlock the house door. Storm door wouldn't open. Now what?

I turned about, which always helps one think. No scratching of head here. Looked around. No help. I could call the emergency number for the maintenance man and get him to come over, but what could he do? Cut the screen to reach in and unlock the storm door? It had no jiggle nor way to slide a credit card in.

So I looked at my keys in hand, and chose one I don't ever use, and pushed it against the screen, about 1/2 inch from the frame of it (there seemed no way to move the screen frame out of the door either.) Pulled the key down the screen, and a neat cut appeared. Tried to get my hand through, needed a bit more room, cut some more.

Then reached in for the button under the handle, and pushed it back into unlocked position. Voila' and I could open the storm door, and somehow found the keyhole for the house door, and there was my kitchen light on.

Unlocked

Locked (and yes, it's easy to close while locked.)

I used to not lock my house door if I was only going to be gone 15 minutes or so, and most of the time I go out in the daylight. This was my first driving since cataracts removal at night, and I noticed how bright and clear the lights were. But I had decided that a movie meant I might be out past dark, which is now at 8:30 here. So I locked up. There is no way the screen door handle had been in the locked position when I left. It can't just be slid into that position.

Conclusion. Someone tried to get in, couldn't, and then set the lock on the storm door and pushed it closed. At least it wasn't a bear. But even if people are awake in their apartments, there aren't any outside after dark, or at least not many, just those coming home, like me...a rareity. I wonder who might have been brazen enough to do this to my door. And why.

It took me a while to get to sleep after all the excitement of Tom Hanks as Otto and the other wonderful actors I saw. Shall I tell you another part of my deciding I was the Key Holder that night?

The church has a lock box, which some people have the combination to, in order to get the two keys that open the doors. The woman who usually sets up for this pot luck decided not to come. So there were four people waiting with their covered dishes in the parking lot when I pulled up. I said, ok, I've got the combination to the back door, here on my phone. So I walked around back, and put in the code, and it didn't work, and so I went back around front, saying the code I found on my phone says lock box, so I tried it on that keypad. No luck either. So we called the woman who usually lets us in, and asked Mary for the code. She gave it to us, and it worked! But the trick of lock boxes is, you have to enter the code again to close the keys back in. And by then it was dark. A friend held his cell phone up so I could see the pad, and we finally got the lock box open and installed the keys, then unlocked it again to close the lock box. Whew.

By then for some reason my phone was battery in the red. So when I got home, and dealt with all my own door problems, I didn't have any light from it to help.

The first thing I did was plug it into the charger! This Key Holder had had it by then!

Today's quote:

Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

MARY OLIVER