Despite having taken two Prilosec yesterday, I had a severe case of acid reflux at bedtime. Had I eaten something spicy, it would have been my own fault, but it was simply was from the wonton broth I'd had at supper, which I'd eaten with oyster crackers and a couple of spoonfuls of leftover white rice. I finally got to sleep after four a.m.

James in the meantime had a sore throat all the previous evening. When he started getting cold, we knew he was coming down with something, since he's never cold. Luckily, James' usual cold remedy is "stay home-drink hot liquids-wrap up for a day" and he's fine the following day, which is why we were so concerned when he had fevers for three weeks last year, despite two doses of antibiotic.

I got up at nine intending to go into work and instead found myself coughing and not breathing well. When I cough like that, I am coming down with bronchitis and have to work fast to nip it in the bud, since I developed a penicillin allergy in 2004 and Kaiser finds it hard to find something to prescribe that doesn't cause a reaction. Instead of going to work I went to CVS and got myself some guaifenesen, which is what Kaiser always tells me to get when I call the advice nurse, and also some zinc lozenges. So we sat hibernating all morning and afternoon and I swilled ibuprofin and had an orange. I was feeling a little better by late afternoon, so I put on a jacket and hat just to be safe (even though it was still in the 50s) and went out to get the mail, and on the way back in grabbed the Christmas stuff off the porch, which I'd intended to do when I got home anyway. This took about ten minutes, and I took another ten minutes putting out the winter flag and the little snowman decorations, then swapped a blue bow for the red bow on the silver wreath and was done. I closed the garage doors (I had put the extension cords in the garage), came in, took off my jacket and hat and came upstairs to put the tools away, then asked James if he'd like to see what I did before it got too dark.

He had just put a pot of rice on the stove. It was about 5:30.

He looked around when we got outside and said, "Well, since I'm out here, I'll just get the stepladder and take the lights down. They're all on hooks, it will take five minutes." So he got the stepladder while I unwound the blue lights from the columns, and he took the star lights down.

I picked up the star lights. "I'll put these in the garage."

Except he'd turned the lock.

And there we were, out on the porch, locked out, no phones, and no coats. The garage doors were locked.

However, the bedroom windows were still open; I was airing out the room in an effort to eradicate whatever germs had caused this morning's mischief. If we could find an extension ladder (ours, of course, was in the garage), James could get in the bedroom window.

Unfortunately the Robinsons next door weren't home, Kristi's husband (who was home with the creeping crud, too) said they didn't have one, and the folks next door to them didn't have one, either. Kristi's husband invited us in to keep warm and we called the Spiveys, who gave us the Boulers' number (we know John has an extension ladder), but they weren't home. It's now about 6:15. The rice is on low on the stove.

We bit the bullet and called a locksmith, who told us it would be 20 minutes. They called back five minutes later saying it would be 45 minutes and that since we had something on the stove we might want to call someone else. We did, who said they'd be out in 20-25 minutes. It's now 6:30 p.m.

We know the street is not on a lot of maps, so when someone had not showed up in 25 minutes, we called the locksmith back to make sure they didn't need further directions. Sure enough, the guy couldn't find our street on his GPS receiver and had gone back. James told him to look up the address of the house on the corner, which is on all the maps (this is how we generate a map to give to friends trying to find the house) and clearly enunciated the name of the street several times and spelled it. James said the person was talking on a cell phone and the signal was terrible.

By now I'm getting paranoid about the stuff on the stove. A half hour more goes by. By now Kristi comes home. James is sitting outside waiting for the guy with my scarf on. She makes hot chocolate for him. The guy calls. After an hour, he is still ten minutes away!

Ten minutes later he calls back and it turns out he is on a completely different road. Although James told him the name of the street several times and spelled it for him, he was near a street with a similar name instead. I asked him where he was, asking for specific landmarks so I could give him directions our way, and couldn't understand him very well since he had a thick accent.

It is now close to 8 p.m. The rice has been on the stove for almost two hours. Despite the fact that James assures me it is on "low," I'm having visions of the kitchen catching fire.

In the meantime Kristi said "Wait a minute, maybe Dave has an extension ladder." Dave and his wife Linda live a couple of houses down from them. Kristi calls Dave, who does indeed have an extension ladder. I am at that point on the phone with the locksmith, who is still something like a fifteen minute drive from our house. He says, "Do you still want me to come?"

By the time he has asked that, James is at the top of the ladder, cut a small hole in one of the screens, enough to release the latch and get the screen off, and is going through the window. I said, "No, there's no need to," and he hung up. About five minutes later, as Dave is putting the ladder away and I'm giving Kristi a thank-you hug, the dispatcher at the locksmith calls Kristi back on her cell phone, angry because we told the guy not to come. Kristi calmly told her that the guy had gotten lost again, had not listened to our directions in the first place even though we had spelled out the name of the street and the cross street, and that in the meantime we had to get into the house because there was food on the stove and a neighbor had helped out.

Ironically, the rice was fine; it had turned into porridge, but it didn't even scorch. I patched the screen with the cool screen patch kit from Benny's in Rhode Island (they apparently don't sell them here; I've looked at both Lowe's and Home Depot, and even at the Ace and True Value Hardware stores), so we at least don't have to worry about that.

Sounds like it's time to get a spare key made... <wry g>

Labels: accidents, sickness

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 8:32:00 PM

Comments:

Glad you got in without the rice catching on fire: I hate getting locked out. I hope you both feel better soon.

# posted by  Anonymous : 8:41:00 AM

 

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