A Night in the Shed
It was a warm late summer's evening. I got home from work and dawned shorts and a T-shirt. I usually feed the cats first thing, and tonight I decided to use the side door of the garage instead of bending over to take the locking pipe out of the sliding glass patio doors.
Big mistake. When I tried to get back into the garage, the door was locked. The sliding patio doors were locked. The kitchen windows and bedroom windows and dining room windows: all locked. Great.
Okay. It was around 6pm now, and still warm. I puttered around the yard a little, picking up debris and straightening out my plants and yard clutter. That took all of 20 minutes. My neighbor should be home, so I went next door and rang the bell. No answer. The lights were on but no one was home.....
My husband Michael was working a late shift today, and wouldn't be home until 10 pm. Three and a half more hours to go. I go around to all the windows and take down the screens hoping I could get in. No luck. Arrgghh.
The sun was quickly setting and the temperature was quickly dropping as well. Here I am in shorts and a T shirt. Outside. What to do? Well, as luck would have it, we had a new Tuff Shed installed. I went inside and closed the door. It was a little warmer here.
I laid down on the built in bench my husband had covered in carpeting, and tried to take a nap. The idea was, I would sleep until he came home. That would do the trick! Yup, you guessed it. No sleep for me, the bench was hard and uncomfortable.
I go back outside and drag a lounge chair in that our daughter Majal had given us. Since I hadn't moved any items in the shed yet, I had lots of room for it. I lay down and try to think of ways to pass the time.
I pray the rosary. I go through every Beatle song I've ever sung and memorized. And it's getting colder. And colder. I let the cats in to snuggle with me. They're more interested in roaming the shed than keeping me warm. I forget to let Mama Kitty in with my other two cats, and she claws the window screen. Reprimands me. Scared me half to death!
So, I notice there are two rolls of carpet remnants on the bench. I get this idea to wrap myself in them to warm up since the kitties were not cooperating at all. I wrap myself up like a burrito and try to keep calm. I think warm. I imagine the sun and laying on a tropical beach on my lounge chair.....now the kitties want some snuggling. It helps a little.
How much time has passed now? I don't know. I unwrap myself and try the neighbor's house again, but she's not home. It's Friday night and I imagine she's out on a hot date. Back to the shed I go.
No phone. No iPad. No TV. No nothing but me and my thoughts. How in the world did I ever manage without them. In college, hand held calculators had just come out. Too expensive for me, I never had one. We did all our math by hand and had to memorize all the formulas in our heads. We had a little 12 inch TV at the dorm, black and white, that could only be run for 2 hours at a time or the transformer would burn it up. We gathered our bath and cooking water by placing a 30 gallon drum under a faucet and letting it drip drip drip to collect enough water.
All these memories of a different era running through my head. And foremost: How in the world do the homeless survive out there? I knew in a few hours I would be back inside my castle. But they would not be. They would be in the elements, every day, scraping for food, scraping for a place to sleep, scraping for any comfort.
I say a prayer for them. And I pray for my children to be happy and successful. I pray for my husband to be healthy and happy. And to come home early. I have to unwrap myself to check the lights in the kitchen.....not yet.
I try different configurations of the rug burrito I have become. Wrapping it over the chair helps keep it in place more than just wrapping it over me. And I itch. And I itch, but it is helping to keep some of the cold off of my short and t-shirt clothed self.
I eye the barbeque cover, and decide if the cold gets any worse, I will be wrapping it around me as well. And I wait and I wait and I wait.....
FINALLY! The kitchen lights are on! I run out and start banging on the patio door before Mike has a chance to go upstairs and not hear me at all. BANG! BANG BANG! OPEN OPEN OPEN!!!!!
He looks at me and jumps startled. Before he could completely open the door, I make a wild dash for the bathroom. Yup. It's been 4 hours folks, and I am not one of those who can "go" outside.
I hug him and hug him and he is laughing hysterically.
I make a wild dash for a good hot shower to wash the itch off me.
And I say a prayer or thanks. Thank you for my lounge chair. Thank you for my rug burrito scraps. Thank you for my kitties. Thank you for my shed. And thank you for my Castle of a home.
It may not be much, but it is home.
And I am a very, very lucky woman.
God Bless.
