An un-fun morning adventure

My key chain snaps apart so I can go warm up the car and still be able to close and lock the house with the house keys.  This morning, I grabbed my key chain and the kids, pulled the door shut and took everyone out to the car.  As I was getting the kids settled, I realized that I only had the car keys part of the key chain. Doh.

Oh well, I thought, I'll just get the spare key from our spare key location when I get back. And so I went. And came back.  I tromped through the 15 inches of snow we received Sunday and went to our spare key location to find .... no key.

See, here's the thing. Since I was only going to drop the kids off and come home, a 12 block round-trip, I didn't grab my cell phone or purse.  You know what I had?  My jacket, my un-snow boots and half of a key chain.

So. I tromped over to my neighbor's house.  She usually works during the day, but since she works for the school district, she's off on winter break.  She answered the door in her pajamas, looking quite concerned. "J, what happened? Is everything OK?"

I shame-facedly explained what happened and asked if I could use her phone. I called Ry, who, thankfully, answered the phone and asked him where the key, which, heretofore had always resided in the spare key location, had got off to.  There was a moment of silence on the line. Um, it's in the dirt in a spot in our yard.

And so. And so my friends, I tromped back to our yard to the new spare key location. I pushed away the 15 inches of snow over the new spare key location and found ... that the ground was frozen freaking solid.  Tromp tromp tromp to the shed where I got a garden spade. Tromp tromp tromp back where I jammed the thing into the ground repeatedly. Each time I was rewarded for my efforts with a tiny little flake of earth flying happily away.  After 10 minutes, I still hadn't located our key.

Tromp tromp tromp. "Hi neighbor." I double-checked the location with Ry and took the offered pot of hot water from my neighbor to try and loosen the frozen dirt. Tromp ... tromp ... tromp. This is probably also a good time to mention that I didn't have gloves.  That was another thing I didn't think I'd need for my "quick" trip to drop the boys.

I poured the water, and there, glimpsed the silver of the keychain! Success!  I dug it free, tugged hard, and almost sliced my finger open because the damn thing was stuck like ... well, like a frozen key buried in frozen mud in the middle of December under 15 freaking inches of snow!!!!!

After another 10 minutes of digging, I finally liberated the key. I went and tried it in the door, just to make sure it worked (because wouldn't that just be perfect?). Then I returned the empty pot to my neighbor, made a cup of coffee, and thawed my poor, frozen fingers.

And how was your morning?