This Darn Sunshine State

Guess who got locked out of their condo Monday in the suffocating florida humidity? This girl! 

And I didn't get locked out of my front door - I locked myself out on the balcony. Yep. I immediately started panicking. 

Peter Parker inspired moves were out of the question because it's a screened balcony. 

Aaaand my phone was sitting on my counter INSIDE, so phoning for assistance was out of the question. 

I first started to just use my body weight in an attempt to puuuuuull the door open because I wasn't 'locked-out' in the true sense of the word, instead, the door was jammed. You see, we just moved in a week ago and I was trying to be all Martha Stewart up in this joint and have the house unpacked and feeling like 'home' in record time. One of the last things I needed to do in the living room was hang curtains. We have ten foot-high ceilings and my curtains were also 10 feet in length, I hung them at about the nine foot mark, consequentially I had an extra foot of curtain dragging on the floor. I planned to hem the bottom of the curtains so that there wouldn't be so much excess fabric hanging on the floor but I hadn't unpacked my sewing machine yet; it's in my closet, and my closet is still a work in serious progress. 

So anyway, when I slid the door open, the fabric must've fell into the tracks of the sliding door, so when I went to open the door back up the fabric jammed the door from opening. And by 'jammed' I mean 'ain't-budging-a-flippin'-inch.' I pushed and pulled and huffed and puffed and sweated as if I had trekked across the Sahara Desert in long johns…to no avail. 

My face literally dripped with sweat and I stood there, mentally defeated, contemplating yelling like a crazy woman until someone below heard me. But then, it hit me: I'M MARRIED TO A MAN'S MAN! And he has looooooads of tools. And in a matter of seconds I thought to myself, "Crap! I always lock doors, the storage room door is gonna be locked and that's where the tools are!" But then I told myself, "Self?! Seth never locks doors and he was the last one in the storage room, it may be unlocked!" So I turn the knob and…(drum roll)…

It OPENS!

Woot! I shoulda 'dropped it'…because boy was it hot (sorry, I couldn't resist)!

I immediately started digging thru Love's plethora of tools, and I'm not overexaggerating when I talk about my guy's tool collection. I'll put it like this: 

Shoes *are to* Lorri 

*as* 

Tools *are to* Seth

So, I picked out a few different sizes of wrenches, a pair of needle-nosed plier, and a hanger to a flower pot. I used every combination of those tools possible. Trust me.

These tools had my back

My original idea was to open the door enough to pull the curtain out of the track with one of the tools, thereby unjamming the door. So I opened the door the half inch it would budge, then I slipped the smaller of the wrenches between the two glass panels of the door, this created a slight opening between the panels, so much so that I could feel a slight breeze from my nice cooled air-conditioned home. Sigh. It was nice to feel, but pure torture knowing that I was so close and yet oh so far. 

Then I used the needle-nosed pliers to try to grab the fabric. No such luck - I needed some sort of hook, this is where the flower pot hanger came in to play. I went to try to scoop up the curtain with the hook part of the hanger but it wouldn't budge. Then little Mister Jersey comes to the door to see what I'm doing. As he comes to check me out in all my sweaty glory, he stepped onto the part of the curtain I was trying to pull. When he stepped on it I noticed it was taunt and wasn't budging and that I likely wouldn't be able to get the proper leverage to get the fabric out of the tracks because it was really in there. 

I toyed around with every idea I had when suddenly I saw a piece of the fabric peak beneath the door. I put the tip of the flathead screwdriver under the door and used a lever like motion to raise the door a bit. It only raised a few millimeters but it was enough to grab a little bit of the sheer fabric with the pliers. I pulled as hard as I could and the fabric just sliiiiiiid thru the bottom of the sliding door. Just enough fabric slid through to unjam the door. The fabric was still in the tracks but it wasn't bunched up so when I went to pull the door open it just slid right open as if it had never been jammed to begin with. 

Phew!

The second I stepped inside I just started laughing like a complete lunatic. I was beyond relieved.

Then, I  promptly I grabbed some scissors and cut the bottom of my curtains without even attempting to make a straight line. 

Up close we're now a hot-jagged-mess

But from afar we still look presentable (now I just gotta tackle my closet project and bust out that sewing machine)

I got scissor-happy because just didn't want it to happen again and I knew I wasn't gonna get to my sewing machine in the next day or two. Besides, I'd rather have to sew a jagged hemline than spend another sweaty hour out on my balcony contemplating yelling down to my neighbors like a crazy women. Sigh. C'est la vie.

Even after I got back inside and slid the curtain smooth enough to open the door it's still in there pretty good

My chopped off portion of fabric. See the black marks? That where it was caught in the tracks.

And another up close (because I'm camera-happy like that)

So how about you all? Have you ever locked yourself out of your house or car and had to either make a fool of yourself getting back in or found yourself standing in the rain, wind, snow with only your pride and your makeshift tools while trying to fix the situation on your own?




Til the next adventure,


Lor