Paid: December stupid tax

[magid]

Shabbat started well. I had dinner, then went out for tea and dessert and conversation. I was out latish, getting back to my place around midnight. Which is when I discovered that my house key had been replaced with Folger's Crystals. Which is to say, I'd put the wrong key on my Shabbat watch, not the building front door at all.

No one heard my knocks on the front door (I didn't expect them to, given that the only people who seemed awake were on the second floor), and my hosts from earlier had already gone to bed (and live in a big building as well).

I walked to the nearby hospital, loitering until someone used the automatic doors, and asked the security guards if I could wait in the lobby until morning, when I could either get someone to let me into the building, or get the spare keys friends have. They seemed a little confused by it all, but were quite nice, telling me where there was a water fountain, the bathrooms, offering to call my friends, and so on.

So I sat, reading a local paper (why doesn't the Cambridge Tab have any Cambridge-centric news?), then a magazine. I tried lying on the floor, but my light jacket (it had been warm for December) wasn't long enough to cover me, and it felt too cool (and exposed) to do more than doze off between times when people were passing through. I gave up on trying to get any sleep around 3:30 when the security guards started watching a video, laughing and commenting on it. So I scrounged the lounge for further reading material; I have now read issues of Allure and Museums and More (*shudder*, for both of them). And the night slowly passed.

Sunrise is late these days, almost 7, and I was fast running out of anything to read, so I left not long after the sky had brightened. No one was awake at the house, so I walked across town to where my spare keys were. Luckily my friends were not only in town, but also awake. It turns out that they're a repository of spare keys, and mine weren't labeled, so I wasn't completely sure that I had the right ones. But if they weren't, I was to come back and they'd take care of me until after Shabbat.

I headed home again, tired, hungry, warmer (thanks to the loan of some fleece), just wanting to be in my own place.

They were the right keys.

I got home just before 9 am, ate, changed (the joys of discarding underwire after so many hours is not to be underestimated), and toddled off to bed.

And that happy-I-hadn't-hurt-myself note? I should not have tempted whatever powers that be. Tonight I ran my foot over a small nail that had worked its way up out of the floor, and managed quite a nice cut in a completely inconvenient place.

Comments

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you stayed safe and relatively warm. (Relative to hypothermia)

That is dedication that I've forgotten since the days of my Charedi upbringing.

[magid.livejournal.com]

The scary part is that I'd considered sitting on my front steps until someone came out. But my coat and clothes were far too light for that, really.

I didn't have a lot of options. I mean, I wouln't've wanted parents of new-ish kids woken up (ssuming they were sleeping around midnight), and they were the only ones with keys.

[farwing.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. Um. *hugs* Glad you were able to go someplace warmish. (I think that should cover the stupid tax for all of next year, actually. I mean, I've locked myself out before, but never for quite that long.) *more hugs*

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thanks. *hugs back*

I've been locked out of my apartment overnight before, and that was much more traumatic: I found out that the key I'd been given as the building key wasn't, after all (usually the building was open; I didn't realize they closed the front door at all). It was after Shabbat, so I had no money to call up to my roommates on the top floor, and the other people I knew in the neighborhood were away. That time I went to Mercaz HaRav Kook (a yeshiva) and snuck into what's the women's section on Shabbat (but isn't the rest of the time). I slept on a bench there, said shacharit with the earliest minyan, and went home to shower.

This time I wasn't at all freaked, for some reason. It was annoying, and my sleep cycle is off, but it wasn't as big a deal all around.

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds like a whole lot of stupid tax. Bad keys! no key biscuit!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Now I'm reminding myself I must return the spare keys whence they came, before I forget and really lock myself out.

Hmmm... key biscuits. I wonder what they'd taste like...?

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

like lox!

;)

sorry.

[cellio]

Ouch. I'm glad you were able to find someplace to go to wait it out.

[magid.livejournal.com]

When I first moved in years ago (long before the eruv was completed), I thought about what my backup plan would be, and it was always to go to the hospital (which is across the street and two houses up), since they're never closed.