*Click*

That was the sound of my door shutting and locking.

*Damn*

That was the sound of me realizing my keys were on the other side of the door.

I do not like a door that locks itself. Gives it airs. Smacks of impropriety. Interferes with an otherwise congenial human-door relationship. And more than all of that, I don’t like the fact that I can accidentally lock myself out of my home.

Thursday. Early evening, still daylight. Nice breeze and birdsong. Lovely weather to be temporarily homeless. Better than February, I tell myself. Clearly I’m putting a positive spin on this and hoping I won’t notice that I’m not wearing shoes.

*Damn*

Well, that didn’t work at all, did it?

No shoes. Lots of other clothing, though, since I had been headed downstairs to do laundry. But en route the door to my upstairs flat went *click* and I went *damn* and there I was: no keys, no shoes, and a sack of grubby garments slung over my shoulder like I was some sort of sweatshop Santa.

Ho ho pffftt.

Soon I was standing beneath the backyard balcony estimating how many shirts I’d have to tie together to make a rope I could use to scurry up and check if the back door was unlocked. I was almost disappointed to realize I could stand on the BBQ and jump high enough to snag the bottom of the balcony. I hauled myself up. Not nearly as cool as using a shirt-rope.

There is a rumour going around that it took me three tries to haul my never-could-climb-a-rope-in-gym ass up to the balcony. This is a slanderous rumour and my council has advised me not to dignify it with a response.

*Click*

That was the sound of the back door not opening because it was locked.

*Damn*

That was the sound of me realizing the only remaining ingress was an open window at the front.

An open window with no balcony under it, 20 feet off the ground.

At this point, a wise man would scurry down from the balcony and call a locksmith. A slightly less wise man would leap down from the balcony and hope the bag of laundry would break his fall, and then call either a locksmith or an ambulance accordingly.

I am neither a wise man nor a slightly less wise man. I am a vastly less wise man, which means I continued up over the roof to see if I could reach the front window.

I’d love to say it was a harrowing journey, something dramatic and daring, but it turns out I could all but walk right in. I had to stretch across a gap from the eaves to the window, but if it wasn’t for the height it wouldn’t have been harrowing at all. Even with 20 feet of nothing but gravity below me it was barely harrowing. A mild harrow at most. I didn’t even have time to think of a good joke about literally eavesdropping on myself, though that may have been because my mind was refusing to remember words like dropping. 

The same people spreading the rumour that I took three ungraceful tries to climb up to the balcony are now spreading the rumour that I had to wiggle spastically to get myself through the window, with my butt and legs jutting out and jerking like the gangliest kid in swim class. My solicitor will be contacting these scurrilous muckrakers, who should govern themselves accordingly.