A quick trip to mail a birthday card caught me out in the cold. Literally!

It happened a couple or three weeks ago when we had that last cold front and rain, but I’m just now able to admit that I locked myself out of the house.

I couldn’t even get a key into the front door lock, then after I called the police, and found they could get me into my car, but not into my house, I called an Enid locksmith.

It would take him an hour and it would be 100 bucks.

Unsure if it was the timing, or the cost, that caused me to try the keys on the front and back doors again, and even wonder if I could bust out a small, inexpensive window, but decided that would make the house as cold as the outside and cost even more.

It was all the fault of the battery-operated keyless entry system.

Yes, I saw the light switching from red to green for two or three days when I put in the entry code, but thought I’d change the battery later.

After all, wasn’t it just last summer when I’d spent an afternoon putting in a new five-year battery?

A neighbor friend invited me into her house, but stubborn me stayed in the car.

By the time the repair guy got there I was hoarse from singing to the fifties and sixties radio stations, deleted every promotion ad on my phone, and tried getting in the house again.

I gave the repairman my key, and didn’t think to tell him there was also a deadbolt, or that I hadn’t been able to get the key in that lock.

He tried the key, sprayed the lock with something, fiddled with it a few minutes, then asked if there was another entry into the house.

“Sure,” I told him, “and asked if he had a flashlight.”

He did, so we went to the back door where there are also two locks.

“I only have the key to one of those locks,” I told him, then continued to tell him for the 1,000th time how stupid I felt for locking myself out.

He worked on the lock with both hands, and I got out my phone and used the flashlight mode so he could see while I kept apologizing for calling him out in the rain.

“I don’t need the light,” he said. “This is mainly by feel.”

It apparently also takes concentration, patience and no noise, so when I finally quit talking to him, Eureka! We were in and the Tuxedo cat greeted us.

Then the locksmith took the front door mechanism apart, said he had another battery in his truck, and could replaced it for $10. I went to our battery drawer in the hallway, pulled out the right size as if I knew what I was doing, and he fixed the door lock.

He said the key I had wasn’t the right one, but he could make one in his truck. $10.

Good thing I got my Covid/Stimulus check from Uncle Sam, er uh Uncle Joe. It will also help pay for higher gasoline and electricity costs, a brake job on my car, and its cracked windshield. Yes, the brake job is due to me riding the brakes, and the windshield happened last summer when I pulled out of the car wash.