One of those days...

I decided to stop on my way home from work to get grain. We are scraping the bottom of the barrel, so it was time. It would have put me about 20 minutes late getting home—the kids would be on their own for that amount of time. My rationale was that if they had homework, it would be better for them to use that time to get it done, rather than have me uproot them and take them with me on the grain run, and then have them do their work when we got home.

On the way home, they didn’t call me, which made me nervous. They are always supposed ot call me when they get home to let me know they are home safe. They have a key, but did they lose it? Was the bus really late? If so, why? All the mom thoughts started running through my head…

I get home to find them running around outside—not atypical—but when I asked them why they weren’t in the house, they told me they started to unlock the door to go inside, but the doorknob broke off! Then, L went outside with the key, climbed a tree and lost it in the grass!

Fortunately, I was a girl scout, and am still a pretty handy woman. Just for future reference, a nail setter will work quite well when you need a doorknob substitute and don’t have the right size screwdriver handy. I opened the door in about 45 seconds. We spent considerably longer looking for the key.

While looking for tools, we went down into the basement and found a dead mouse.

You know, NONE of these things would have happened 6 months ago in our old (new) house! The doorknobs were new and secured to the doors. There were no big trees for boys to climb and lose keys! There would be no need for me to stop and get grain! And there were no mice around, and even if there were, they wouldn’t die in my basement!!

But I still would never, ever go back.