and this was this morning.

The teenager I am hanging out with/house sitting for and I had a bit of a slow start to the morning; namely, neither of us really wanted to wake up. But we did and ended up getting ready and finished breakfast 10 minutes before we even needed to head out! So, we watched a bit of Saved by the Bell and then I drove him to school. I remembered that we need AA batteries so I thought, ah ha! I'll get them now, but it turns out that Target is not open at 7:30am. Shoot.

Anyways so I go home and realize that it's garbage day here. I go out the side door on the garage, which opens without me having to unlock it and I think "score! i'll just come back in this way." and also "Shoot, I should have been making sure that door was locked all of these nights..."

Turns out the door locks automatically.

I went to move the garbage down to the curb, came back up and realized my fate.

I didn't have the house keys.

I didn't have my phone.

I couldn't remember the security code to get into the garage.

It was raining.

I could use an expletive here, but I'll try to refrain. Just know that in the moment I wasn't so selective with the words I used.

I had been told that two neighbors knew I would be around and if I needed anything I could ask them. So I headed over to one of the neighbors homes and rang the doorbell. and knocked on their door. and did that head twisting to the side to try to see through the small opening in the window thing you see in movies or shows like Desperate Housewives. No lights were on. No movement was sensed.

Again with the expletives.

So I trudge through a couple other neighbors yards and got to the second house. At this point I am embarrassed, wet from the rain, and pretty much thinking that I would be outside until the teenager got home from school and I imagined starving and becoming delirious and having extreme thirst and some random dogs in the neighborhood attacking me because I had seen random dogs roaming the other day.

I get pretty dramatic sometimes.

But the neighbor answers the door! And after relaying my story and her extremely large dog jumping up on me multiple times (I am suspiciously scared of large dogs ever since one bit me in my bottom when I was little) I called the number of the person I'm house sitting for. She doesn't answer. So I call another number. No answer.

The neighbor woman and her friend give me some coffee, laugh a little, and then we start talking.

Turns out they are both writers. One even went back to school and graduated with a journalism degree recently. One has a fiction book deal. Both do a little freelancing on the side. Both are my heroes.

Here's the thing. This could have made me incredibly embarrassed. I could not have tried to ask for help and sat on the porch and pouted and gotten bitten by the random dogs and starved. But instead I asked for help, and made new, incredibly inspiring friends. After I got the security code, they hugged me and made me promise to keep them updated on my job search. They are so great.

And that is why I'm okay with sharing my embarrassing story of being locked out of the house. Some people are just meant to be in your life.