6/12/2016

Why Home Security is Sometimes Not a Good Idea

MargaretMargaret
Filed under: @ 6:04 pm

Here are the facts:
We have a hot tub. It’s very helpful with Andrew’s back, my back and shoulders, and it’s a lovely way to decompress. Being that we’re married, and that the area around the hot tub is pretty much completely screened from the neighbors, we don’t wear bathing suits when it’s just us in the tub.

The hot tub is on the back porch just outside the sliding glass door (this features heavily in the following).

Considering that sliding glass doors have locks that an angleworm could break, we’ve always put a bar (in our case a section of 2″ diameter closet rod) in the track of the sliding door when we’re locking up. Usually when we open the door the bar gets lifted out of the track and set on the floor in front of it.

However yesterday I was doing the floors so I took the bar, stood it on end _in_ the track for the door and completely forgot about it. The glass door was open most of the day and moving the bar back down onto the floor just didn’t seem necessary.

Pogo gets _very_ desperate around dinner time and is not shy about stretching up and planting his pointy little toes in the screen door. Pogo also knows that when we get out of the hot tub on Saturday evenings it means that Says You is over and that it’s dinner time.

So there’s the facts of the matter. Here’s why I’m telling you.

Andrew and I like to listen to Says You on the radio in the hot tub on Saturday evenings. Yesterday was a very pleasant evening and since we were sitting in hot water with the setting sun on our backs, by the time Says You was concluding we were getting warmer than was comfortable.
At about 6:45 p.m. Andrew suggested that we get out of the tub and just sit in the pleasant evening at the table on the porch while we finished listening to Says You. I thought it was a lovely idea.
So we got out of the tub, got into our robes, and to keep Pogo from shredding our screen door in an attempt to tell us how important it was that we were out of the tub and it was dinnertime, Andrew shut the sliding glass door.

At which point the bar, which had been conveniently standing on its end in the track for the door all day, perversely decided to fall forwards into the track for the door.
Neatly barring the sliding glass door.
With us on the other side barefoot and in bathrobes.

😯

Now if I were a stinker I’d post this solo without the follow up. But I’m feeling unaccountably mellow this evening so here’s the rest.

Fortunately our bedroom window was open. And fortunately we were in the _back_ garden where my garden shed lives. My garden shed full of garden tools large and small. Including screwdrivers.

Since the sill of the window is about 6′ off the ground and I’m 5’3″ on a good day, I stood on a chair and pried at the top edge of the screen while Andrew pried at the bottom edge of the screen.
Getting through the window involved more gymnastics than I’ve done in a while…. _especially_ while scantily clothed, but I’m pleased to be able to report that I didn’t moon the neighbors nor did we damage the screen.

And I think the bar for the sliding glass door is going to have a new home when it’s not in use from now on!!


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