Day 19 - Healthier? Not so much, but I am still here

BREAKFAST

4 Hebrew National hot dogs.  These are so good.  No horrible ingredients and they taste very nice.

That is it.  No lunch.  No dinner.  I forgot to take something to work, which is not a meal, just easy to eat snacks.  Between clients.  There were only three today.  One is a regular, one other is always challenging (but really, really nice and I like him a lot), and a new person who came in with an insanely difficult problem concerning SSI documentation.  We all rocked there today.

The day began with me locking my keys in the house.  I knew the instant I heard the latch click.

I always keep a spare key in my bag.  Always.  Except for today.  I looked.  So, I started to walk to work and remembered that I do carry  an extra car key, so I drove and was not late.  Yay.

I called my landlord when that happened, but I could tell by his voice that he was super busy and told him that I would get a locksmith.  I called two whilst waiting for clients.  I could not understand anything the first one said, as their phone connection was horrible.  The second one told me to call back when I was near the end of the day and a technician would set up a time for him to come.  I did that.  He said that he was in the neighborhood and asked if he could come right over.  I skipped a task I needed to do today and raced home.  In the car, but I did the speed limit.  It seemed like racing because I was not walking.

I waited more than an hour.  I must live in a really huge neighborhood.  He came, introduced himself, worked on the lock for ten minutes and told me that he could not get it to open.  Then, he took my last $75.00 and told me to have a nice day.

It grieved me to call my landlord again, but I did.  I left a message.  Then, I thought, hell, I did not do a perfect job of installing the little air conditioner in my bedroom.  Yeah.  I can go over there, pull it out, climb in the window and somebody's your uncle.

I forgot that this is house is not level with the ground, and whilst the windows look to be just fine inside, on the outside, the lower edge is higher than I am tall.

And, I thought, heck, I can do this.  It would have been nice had I thought to break into my flat before I did commerce with the un-locksmith guy.  However, it is still light and where there is a will there is a way.  I could have gone all soft and just stayed overnight someplace until my landlord was available.  Oh, unless the rush in his voice earlier meant that they were going away for the weekend.

Oh.

So, I went to the side of the house and tried to remove the air conditioner.  Not only is a little air conditioner much heavier when it is stuck in a window over your head, than it is when you are inside your bedroom, but it leaks water on you, small gushes, but still.  Worse was that I had fastened it more securely than I thought.  Nice and all that if someone wants to break in, but since I was the person breaking up, the fact that I could even move it around a little was nice for me (the locked-out) it kind of freaked me out that I could move it at all.

I went to the lawyer office next door to ask if I could park my car in their driveway so that I could climb on my car to break into my flat.  They were very nice and said that I could if I could do it quickly or wait until they closed the office at five.

Whilst I was waiting for them to go home, I returned to wrestle with the wee air conditioner, managed to get wet again, lose my grip and have it drop on my head and then finally heaved it up and into the room.  Then, I went to wait until the lawyers left.

Car back into the driveway and perfectly positioned and I discovered that the old arthritis would not allow me to lift my leg high enough to climb up on the rear bumper.  I used my porch chair and managed to step up and crawl onto the trunk.  I braced myself against the house and stood up.

The gap between the trunk and the window was too great, so I eased myself up along the rear window frame, hoping that I did not pop the back windshield out.  I got one knee on the window sill.  I could not get my right knee up there because my bone-on-bone knee joints were not cooperating. 

There I was, left knee on the sill, sort of balanced between the car and the house, still with a song in my heart and finally realized that the only way this was going to work was to abandon any notions I had about boosting my bulk onto the sill and swiveling myself into the room.

So, I did the only thing a responsible person, especially one facing the prospect of sleeping in the car, would do.  I threw my upper body over the sill and into the bedroom.

I balanced there for a while, if you could call that balancing and then pushed myself forward, missing the wounded air conditioner and the red crate of art supplies I have been storing here. 

Wedged between the conditioner and the crate, I tried to roll onto my side, hoping for a better fit and, well, I gave up and kept pulling myself into the room.  My legs dangled for way too many minutes, but I made it.  I dragged myself (knees not working) to my bed and pulled myself upright.

Now, the one question I have is, how serious is it that I smashed a bunch of those thin metal baffle strips when I crashed onto the conditioner?  I hope not too badly.

And, I stood up, went to the door, opened it and retrieved my key ring from the shelf where it had been forgotten, locked and unlocked the door to make sure that the un-locksmith had not messed that up with his hammer.  Yes, he used a hammer-like tool.

What with the changing of the car lights yesterday and breaking and entering my own flat, I am feeling preh T gud.

I received a call from the shelter where I lived two years ago and where I now work.  One of the largest foundations in the country provides one of our biggest grants.  Last year, I think, the director asked me to write my story as part of the grant application process.  This year they want to use me in their new brochure(s).  I am thinking about it.

Thinking will have to wait because I am eating delivery Chinese food (thank the goddess for credit cards) and waiting for Shark Tank to begin.  Tomorrow morning I will be meeting my friends for coffee and next week when I have all those days off, I will be visiting a dinosaur museum and walking downtown to just sit, have a coffee and watch people.

I have the best life.