Damn you, Murphy!

So. One housemate has moved out and her replacement won't be here for another few days and the other housemate is in Australia for two weeks. The cat and I have had the place all to ourselves for nearly a week now, so it's the perfect time for - you guessed it- locking myself out of the house.

I had pretty much assumed this would happen at some point, and had even been vaguely thinking to myself that I should make a copy of my key and keep it at work, but for it to happen just when both housemates are gone? That's cheeky. Two things conspired to make me forget my key this morning: the Boy had used my key earlier last night and then put it back just far enough away from my wallet and mobile (where it normally lives) so that I didn't see it this morning; and I had chosen to ignore the fact that it was pissing it down and decided to wear a skirt, so no suspiciously empty pockets to remind me. I didn't even notice that I didn't have my keys until lunchtime.

When I discovered the key's absence, I thought, damn, well, how much do locksmiths cost? Looked them up and called a few (by the way, totally off-topically, why the hell are there pages and pages of locksmiths in the Dublin phone book, but barely half a page of veterinarians? Isn't that totally backwards?) and apparently they charge €75-90 to come and possibly break your lock and/or door to get you back inside your house. So, fine, plan B: break into my own house.

The Boy, who is inherently dodgy, was delighted with this plan and immediately started modifying lab tools to be used as lock picks. We had two approaches: a) pick the lock and b) get a stick of the correct size and shape to put through the letter slot and work the latch from inside. As you can probably guess, neither worked. As a last resort, we looked at the window above the sink that had always been kinda loose. After a bit of prying, you could just about insert a thin lab spatula under it and unlatch it, which we, surprisingly successfully, did. So this window is a slit of a thing, maybe 10 inches tall and high off the ground. Took off the boots and got a boost up to the ledge and figured I'd maybe just be able to squeeze through (in the skirt! a bad decision for the day for several reasons, apparently), but it turned out not to be too tight of a fit at all. In no time, I was in my kitchen, with the cat staring at me wondering what the hell I thought I was doing.

I took the spare key with me into work, which is its new home.