Sometimes Chores are Hard

Once, Aaron and I got locked out of our apartment in the middle of the night, when we lived in the ghetto-with-a-capitol-G of Redding. We were stepping out just for a moment to run some last-minute laundry down to the laundry room in preparation for going out of town the next day, and Aaron, out of reflex, locked the door behind him. Funny thing was, since it was laundry time, we were both half-naked; neither of us had any pockets, which meant no keys. We climbed back up to the stairs to our front door to try and solve the puzzle before us. First we tried messing with the door and window but couldn't break ourselves back in, a partially reassuring discovery, considering the reason he was so accustomed to constantly locking the door in the first place. We waked around the back of the building and discovered the bedroom window to our apartment was still open, so all we needed was a ladder! We called our apartment's emergency services line, and left a message, knowing they would likely get it on Monday. Not knowing where else to turn, we called the fire department. They offered no help, telling us, "If we did it for you, we'd have to do it for everyone." Aaron was so irritated! He ranted for awhile about how unsafe it was to have his cute wife was trapped outside her ghetto apartment, braless and in tiny shorts--all we needed was a ladder, not a parade, and what else did the fire dept. of a tiny city have to do in the middle of the night? We ended up hiking over to a nearby waterpark where thankfully, there was a maintenance crew working on some equipment (a lawn mower, I think?). They laughed as they passed a rather tall ladder over the fence and the two of us trotted back through the weeds to the back wall of our little place, awkwardly swaying as the ladder jostled between us. Aaron scrambled up the rungs, hopped through the window and let us back in, then I put some more clothes on and we returned the ladder, along with some baked goods we happened to have made.

To this day, I have a great deal of faith in lawn mower maintenance and repair men.