Need a house broken in to? I’m your girl.

I am notoriously locking myself out of things. My car, my house, my car running with a baby inside. I’m an expert.

I walked out of the house yesterday with Preston in one arm, and my phone and my notebook and a few other things in the other. The second the locked door closed behind me I realized that my keys were not one of the items in my hand. Funny how that realization only comes the second I hear the door click.

We walked to the van to shockingly find it open. I buckled Preston in so that he couldn’t run onto the road while I figured out what I was going to do.

Our windows are pretty much always open these days, but they’re not anywhere near low enough to climb through. So I made a “ladder”.

We don’t have an actual ladder, unfortunately, so I piled a big tub on top of our recycling bin, and used a flower pot to try to climb onto the pile of plastic containers. The pot crumbled instantly. Whoops. It was overly fragile, as it had contained potato bug-killing gasoline. Good thing it was only a dollar. I then climbed up the outside of the stairs, hung on to the window sill as I made my way on to the pile of blue containers, punched out the screen (without breaking it!), and launched myself through the open window.

I was kind of hoping that nobody would drive by as I was climbing through the window, as I didn’t have time to deal with the cops. I had to pick up the girls and I was going to just make it as it was.

Since I didn’t have time to move the bins, I locked the window to prevent anyone else from following in my footsteps, grabbed my keys, and went to the van where Preston had been watching me. And I was on time to pick up the girls. Early, even.

I really need to get a door mat to hide a key under. Though I would never actually hide a key under a mat, as isn’t that the first place a person would look when they want to break into your house? But I really do need to make an extra key and hide it somewhere around our yard because that wasn’t the first (or fourth) time I’ve locked myself out.

I called Noah as we were on our way to the girls school (using the van’s bluetooth thing, I don’t want a ticket) and said, “Guess what I just did!”

“You got in an accident?” he asked.

Sheesh. I don’t think I’d be so cheerful if I’d gotten in an accident. Unless it was an intentional accident (and therefore not so much an accident) because some guy cut me off and I finally did what always goes through my head when someone cuts me off and stepped on the gas instead of the brake and rammed that guy into the curb.

Um, not that I’d ever do that. Nope. Not with a kid in the car. And not with our brand new already-been-hit-twice van.

Maybe in an old car. With good air bags.

Anyway. Someone remind me to cut an extra house key, okay?

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My sister-in-law started a non-profit called Hope Aglow. Hope Aglow partners with existing organizations that are fighting the war against human trafficking in the Dominican Republic. Teresa has a shop full of beautiful necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, (they ship to Canada and the US) and all the proceeds go straight to helping victims of human trafficking. She and my brother and a few others are heading to the DR in October, but are covering their travel expenses themselves. All money from sales goes straight to the partner organizations. Check out her site to see what you can do to help end human trafficking.