Locked Out

If my month were a book and last week was a chapter, I would title it Locked Out.

It all started when my dear friend and boss stuffed my keys into her purse before heading to the U.P. for the weekend. I discovered their absence at 11:00 p.m. After a call to my husband (who had gone to bed 3 hours prior) and a call to the cab company, my evening ended at 12:15 when a friend picked me up from work.

The following day I lost the key to the house where I was staying for the week.

The next day I went to see a few apartments and three of the landlords had key problems. One had to call the previous tenant to ask them to come with their key; one broke into the top apartment to unlock the main floor. The third landlord said, "Huh. My key isn't working." I said, "I could have told you that hours ago."

That same day I called Matt to tell him that the church office key wasn't in it's usual spot. He said, "Yes it is, I saw it last night." I said, "I took everything out, and it's really really not." He said, "Well it's in there! Okay! Bye!" and hung up. (But he was the friend that picked me up from work at midnight, so we're not even a little irritated with him.)

I waited on my car for my friend to get home with the car opener (since I lost her only house key).

I waited on my car for my husband's boss to arrive with my house key (since mine was in my friend's purse).

I waited, I waited, I waited.

In frustrating moments like these, I like to comfort myself by weaving meaning into what seems pointless. I'm usually pretty good at it, too, so I was surprised to come up nearly blank. Oh, I dug up a few little analogies about doors and keys and knocking and opening and master keys and loose keys, etc., though nothing worth mentioning. Then I thought to myself,

"Self? Dearest. Perhaps you need to spend a little less time weaving meaning into your daily life, and a little more brain power remembering to put your KEYS in your PURSE when you get to work, rather than leaving them strewn about the office." Which turned out to be the mundane moral to last week's story.