I've been working overtime this week, helping out with a theatre set after regular hours and I've worn out a bit, so last night I decided on some self maintenance .
After tucking the girls in (5 and 7 yo), my wife in charge of the rest (0 and 11 yo), I took some knives out to the garage to sharpen. I was planning on tidying the place up a bit and sharpening the knives while listening to a podcast and having a pipe and a beer, just for an hour or two and then early to bed.
That'd be nice.
So I popped the beer and lit an unfinished pipe from some other day and was just about to start doing something when one of my neighbours stopped by. He had some questions about how to renovate his grandfathers old house without ruining the feel of it and we got talking. He's had some troubles with alcohol in the past, so I just left my beer behind some crates as we talked. Now this is an old-fashioned kind of guy. He's never in a hurry. He talks and talks and asks questions about this and that, smokes cigarettes and talks some more. Nice guy, not a genius in any way, but kind and dutiful and quite funny.
I can never tell people to leave, hospitality forbids it, so when he finally took off at midnight, my plans were all shot down.
I lit a new pipe, knowing that I'd just barely get the flavor of it, finished my by now not very cold and not very sizzly beer and dragged my by this point exhausted self back to the house, only to find the front door locked. I say front door, but there's only one door, so The Door. It was locked.
Damn! I don't keep a spare key in the garage, so I can't get in. I called my wife's phone but it was unavailable.
Fly mode I guess.
Texted her. Called the kids, but no answer, which was to expect as they're not allowed to have phones in bed.
Fuck! She must have locked the damn door absentmindedly when she went to bed. Or maybe she's annoyed that I'm not coming in? Maybe she is trying to teach me a lesson. Maybe she's fed up with, uhh something, I dunno. She's a woman, who can ever know?
I was cold by now. The garage is heated, but not much, and my neighbour had been there for about 3 hours and I was shivering by now. I really wanted to get in the house, so I tried prodding and poking with a screwdriver and a crowbar to see if I could get the lock to snap out of the door frame without breaking anything.
There was a storm, I haven't mentioned that, and being outside in the dark with the crowbar and the hammer, unsufficiently dressed for the occasion, shivering with cold and fatigue (I didn't eat much at supper, my beloved wife is not a consistently good chef) it suddenly hit me that I was breaking in. I'm a burglar now, I thought, not a very good one, but still...
What if this is all a ruse, I thought, what if I'm supposed to break in only to get murdered in the entryway so she can collect all the insurance and stuff.
Not being in the mood to get murdered, I went back to the garage. Upstairs there's a couch and some blankets, well there's much more, it is a combination of my father-in-law's Beatles shrine, guitar collection, my tobacco collection, hunting gear etc, but there is a couch, leather, well fake leather I suppose and a couple of blankets and I huddled up in there.
At 4-5 in the morning my wife woke me up, tearstruck, so sorry and everything, hope you can foregive me, I thought you were in bed and all that.
So of course we're all good and dandy and not secretly trying to murder anyone.
Or are we?
What do YOU think?
After tucking the girls in (5 and 7 yo), my wife in charge of the rest (0 and 11 yo), I took some knives out to the garage to sharpen. I was planning on tidying the place up a bit and sharpening the knives while listening to a podcast and having a pipe and a beer, just for an hour or two and then early to bed.
That'd be nice.
So I popped the beer and lit an unfinished pipe from some other day and was just about to start doing something when one of my neighbours stopped by. He had some questions about how to renovate his grandfathers old house without ruining the feel of it and we got talking. He's had some troubles with alcohol in the past, so I just left my beer behind some crates as we talked. Now this is an old-fashioned kind of guy. He's never in a hurry. He talks and talks and asks questions about this and that, smokes cigarettes and talks some more. Nice guy, not a genius in any way, but kind and dutiful and quite funny.
I can never tell people to leave, hospitality forbids it, so when he finally took off at midnight, my plans were all shot down.
I lit a new pipe, knowing that I'd just barely get the flavor of it, finished my by now not very cold and not very sizzly beer and dragged my by this point exhausted self back to the house, only to find the front door locked. I say front door, but there's only one door, so The Door. It was locked.
Damn! I don't keep a spare key in the garage, so I can't get in. I called my wife's phone but it was unavailable.
Fly mode I guess.
Texted her. Called the kids, but no answer, which was to expect as they're not allowed to have phones in bed.
Fuck! She must have locked the damn door absentmindedly when she went to bed. Or maybe she's annoyed that I'm not coming in? Maybe she is trying to teach me a lesson. Maybe she's fed up with, uhh something, I dunno. She's a woman, who can ever know?
I was cold by now. The garage is heated, but not much, and my neighbour had been there for about 3 hours and I was shivering by now. I really wanted to get in the house, so I tried prodding and poking with a screwdriver and a crowbar to see if I could get the lock to snap out of the door frame without breaking anything.
There was a storm, I haven't mentioned that, and being outside in the dark with the crowbar and the hammer, unsufficiently dressed for the occasion, shivering with cold and fatigue (I didn't eat much at supper, my beloved wife is not a consistently good chef) it suddenly hit me that I was breaking in. I'm a burglar now, I thought, not a very good one, but still...
What if this is all a ruse, I thought, what if I'm supposed to break in only to get murdered in the entryway so she can collect all the insurance and stuff.
Not being in the mood to get murdered, I went back to the garage. Upstairs there's a couch and some blankets, well there's much more, it is a combination of my father-in-law's Beatles shrine, guitar collection, my tobacco collection, hunting gear etc, but there is a couch, leather, well fake leather I suppose and a couple of blankets and I huddled up in there.
At 4-5 in the morning my wife woke me up, tearstruck, so sorry and everything, hope you can foregive me, I thought you were in bed and all that.
So of course we're all good and dandy and not secretly trying to murder anyone.
Or are we?
What do YOU think?
