When Stupid Reality Shows Come In Handy...

Or, Thank God I Live In A Semi-Basement Apartment.

I've been industrious today. I got all of my dishes done, cleaned out my fridge, did laundry... and took out the trash.

The fantastic habit I've developed of locking the door behind me... well. I was preoccupied. And my keys were where they live while I'm at home... in my catch-all dish.

Yeah, I locked myself out. I really need to stash that spare key in my car, instead of being preoccupied and blonde and forgetting to do it.

So I went looking for the complex manager, to get the office key and let myself in. No dice. Well, they were painting the hallways today... went all the way upstairs in my building, no dice. Stepped outside and eyed the entrances to the other buildings, but I didn't see any painting implements.

The toddler brigade was outside playing, though, so I asked the moms if they knew where the manager was. One of them didn't even know who I was talking about, and the other informed me that the manager and her husband had left for the evening.

(Shit.)

So, I tried the cleaning lady's apartment. No one there either.

(Shit.)

Sat in my car for a few minutes, read through The Raven again (hey, if I'm stuck outside of my apartment until they get back I might as well do something productive like take more notes for my paper, right?) and then had a thought.

See... when it first started, I was addicted to To Catch A Thief. Hey, it was fun to watch the goober homeowners agree to have their house broken into and still pull stupid stuff like leaving doors unlocked. Later it just became the same old schtick of trashing a house and soccer moms crying over the furniture being crooked or muddy footprints on the carpet, and I got bored with it.

But, I thought about it, and I thought I'd left my living room window unlocked. I'd had it open earlier today because there was a nice breeze, and I didn't think I'd locked it when I closed it... I always lock the windows before I go to bed, or if I'm actually going somewhere, but if I'm in the house I don't always lock them when I shut them.

Walked over to my window, and sure enough, I'd left it unlocked.

(Hmm. That's lovely, anyone can walk up to my windows and see if they're locked or not, plain as day.)

Now the only thing standing between me and the rest of my housework (gotta pee, gotta pee!) was the screen....

After a little poking and prodding, I discovered that my screens can be removed from the outside, if you have tiny little fingers and long fingernails.

(Or a flat head screw driver. Cripes, this is making me want to board the windows up.)

(Still, it's a good thing for me right now.)

(I'll have to tell Best Friend that she can't yell at me for my habit of chopping my fingernails off and then ignoring them until they get long enough to get in the way anymore.)

Slid open the window, groped under the blinds for the cord (don't want to tear up my blinds! They're what lets me walk around naked!) and climbed in, (Not head first, nimwit, the floor is down from here!) replacing the screen behind me.

(Crap I think I broke my ankle. What bright moment led me to pile all my shoes under the window? Ohhhh, gotta pee, gotta pee!)

I'm actually waiting for the cops to show up. My living room is just to the left of the front entrance of the apartment building, and faces on another complex, and the people over there seem to be a little nosy, so either they're nosy enough to have seen me in here whilst I had the blinds up, and know that it's my apartment, or they're just nosy enough to have seen me crawling in the window, and have now called the nice officers to report a burglary.

We'll see.