Santa and Mrs. Claus visit our park

The other day Jim and I went to the "Watering Hole"  (what they call a dance that's held from 4-6 pm) at our resort park. This consisted of a little dancing and a little drinking. Jim went ahead earlier than me to reserve a table for our gang. I came about 25 minutes later, carrying my keys and ticket. The two hours passed quickly by, and soon we were making our way home in the dark. (It was only 6:00 pm)

We arrived to find our trailer all dark - I forgot to leave the outside lights on. Jim walked over to the streetlight to find the right key to open the door. Meanwhile, I thought, "Huh. I have keys! Why don't I unlock the door?" (It's rare that I have my keys with me.)

Now my trailer keys are kept on a separate key chain. There are only three keys on it. They all belong to the trailer to open either the door or outdoor compartments.

So I stuck what I thought was the right key in the hole.

The key turned but then nothing happened.

Huh.

I stuck the next key in and nothing happened.

Huh. Again.

By this time Jim came back with the correct key in his hot little hand and he asked, kind of accusatory, I might add, "What'd ya do?"

"Well, I guess I stuck the wrong keys in the hole. I can't get the door open."

So he stuck the correct key in the lock.

And nothing happened.

Then he let out this big sigh.

He tends to do that a lot around me.

"You broke the lock," he said.

"How can I break the lock just from sticking the wrong key inside of the door? I didn't force it in. It slipped right in."

"Well, it's broken and now we're screwed." He sighed AGAIN.

You may or may not know this, but trailers come with an easy access window in case of a fire. Luckily we had left our windows open or we REALLY would have been in trouble.

"I guess we're going to have to climb through the window," I said. I think I may have laughed at this point.

Jim stomped off to get his fancy ladder that can fold into different shapes and stand straight up.

Of course the window that we had to climb through couldn't have been at the shorter end of the trailer. Nope. It was at the front end of the trailer where it's nice and tall. Jim leaned the ladder up to the bedroom window and climbed up the steps.

He got through the window okay, and I tried to hold my laughter in. I hoped our neighbors couldn't see us. Maybe it was a good thing our lights were off.

Jim got to our door on the inside and tried to open the lock.

It wouldn't budge.

He let out another big sigh. It was so loud that I could hear him outside.

He stomped back up to the bedroom and stuck his head out the window. "Give me my tool box!" He barked.

I fumbled around in the dark and found it and handed it up through the window.

A few minutes later and there still was no change.

So here was the situation.

I was locked outside and I had to pee. And I was laughing because I knew I had to climb through the damn window.

Jim was locked inside the trailer and I knew he was ready to kill me.

Maybe I should spend the night with a friend.

I yelled to Jim, "Let's just call it a night. You can look at this tomorrow in the light of day. We'll just have to be locked in the trailer all night."

It was my turn to climb the ladder. I hoped that the ladder wouldn't slide and I'd fall and break something.

I was halfway in the window, laughing, when I couldn't figure out how to climb in the rest of the way.

You know, Jim and I are not small people. Jim is 6'2" and 250+ lbs, I'm 5'4" and, well, pleasingly plump. It was a good thing we weren't wearing red 'cause if anybody saw us, they would have thought Santa and Mrs.Claus came early to our village! And Mrs. Claus was stuck in the window!


So where was I? Oh yeah, half in, half out the window. I had to reach as far forward as I could to touch my bed, and put my legs straight out and slide the rest of the way into the trailer. I'm surprised I didn't wet myself.

Jim STILL didn't see the humor in the situation.

I STILL didn't think that I broke the lock. I think that it was just tired of working and decided to break at that most inopportune time. (It could have broke when JIM stuck his key in!)

So we spent the night locked up in our trailer. I prayed that we wouldn't have an emergency or we'd have to scramble through the window again.

I was tempted to call my friends and tell them what had happened to us, but I just know one of them would have come by and taken our ladder as a joke and we would have been up the proverbial creek without a paddle!

Then I panicked thinking some STRANGER would steal the ladder and then

a) we'd be stuck in the trailer and
b) I'd never hear the end of it because Jim loves that ladder!

So I prayed to the God of Ladders to watch over us and keep us safe.

The next morning Jim was able to remove the whole lock mechanism and we were free, FREE AT LAST!

And there was our ladder, up against our trailer just like we left it the night before.

Funny, it looks awfully like the ladder in the sign for our resort.

These are called kiva ladders and are used by Native Americans to climb in their pueblos and down to their kivas (a sacred room).

Maybe we should just keep our ladder leaning up against the trailer.


This being the Southwest and all.

Christmas joke-of-the-day:

Q. What did the bald man say when he got a comb for Christmas?

A. Thanks, I'll never part with it!