Keys to the kingdom

The house never seems larger or quieter than when you're home alone in it.

Well, technically it's me and 5 cats, but still. Heidi and Anna are gone to her mom's for one night and before everyone gets jealous and thinks I'm having a bachelor weekend, I worked till nearly 9PM tonight and have to be back at 7AM tomorrow so I am already up well past my bedtime for that. But still, it's such a rare thing to have the house to yourself. This is something Heidi has frequently during the day when I am at work and Anna is at school, but me, not so much.

But the thing is, I almost didn't even have a roof over my head tonight. You think I am joking. I'm certainly not.

One thing you have to know about me is that I am horrible about bringing my keys with me. I don't drive to work as a rule and therefore, it doesn't usually occur to me to bring my car keys. The unfortunate thing is that my house key is on the same key chain as my car keys. Heidi is usually home when I leave and home when I arrive back home, so somewhere along the line this whole "you know, it would really behoove you to bring your car and house keys with you wherever you go" thing has been trained out of me. I'm almost as bad with my wallet, especially when going to work which means I hardly ever have cash when I am at work, which is both good and bad.

Anyway, because they were going to be gone, Heidi gave me a gentle reminder today to please remember to bring my keys because the house will be locked up tonight when I got home. And to my credit, I did remember to go grab them. To my discredit, I set them down in the bathroom and forgot to pick them back up again. Amazingly, Heidi saw them laying there on the counter in the bathroom on a stop back at the house that she had not planned to make (she had forgotten to pack headphones for Anna) and brought them to me at work, which is a story in and of itself.

Had she not made this stop, I would have been wandering the streets. I would have had no keys to get back into the house. I had no car keys to drive the hour to my parents' house to pick up the spare set. I had no wallet to, in the worst case scenario, go stay at a motel and buy a change of clothes for tomorrow (of course, I would have had to walk to the motel.) And I would have had to be back to work at 7AM tomorrow.

I don't know what gods or energy or alignment of planets made this work out, but I am thankful for it. The moral of the story is that we need to have a set of keys with someone here in town, which Heidi has made my job. And that I need to get my act together, but we already knew that.