My New Open Door Policy

Bless his heart, Chief is not a Mr. Fix-It.  He tries.  Sometimes he succeeds, but that is rare.

The lastest antic has been the patio door.  To give you some background, our house backs up to common woods which just so happens to be about a mile from the railroad tracks.  We live in a nice middle-class neighborhood, but once in awhile you will see someone who more than likely stumbled off the tracks, and they’re not wearing a Hobo costume because it’s Halloween. 

For this very reason, I am scared out of my mind when he is out of town.  I boobie-trap the house better than the kid in “Home Alone”.  Then I lay awake at night watching for shadows beneath the crack of the locked bedroom door, indicating an axe murderer is just outside waiting to chop the dogs and I to pieces.

The door was broken before he left, at least it was “sticking” and difficult to turn the knob to lock.  He tried to take it apart to figure out what was wrong with it, but he did not succeed. 

“Hopefully it will hold up until I get home," he said. Yes, let’s hope.  That will keep me safe.  It wasn’t even 24 hours after shipping out for his two-month training session three states away that the darn door quit opening at all from the inside, but opened very well from the outside... and doesn’t lock at all except to LOCK ME AND TWO DOGS INSIDE!!!  

No problem, just call someone to fix it.  Well apparently we have some sort of door model that no longer exists in the whole entire galaxy, and no one can seem to repair it.  I was referred to the company who originally made it, and they no longer even service it.

The representative over the phone told me how the door is equipped with a triple-point locking safety feature which prevents most kick-ins.  I asked why that mattered when 80% of it was a pane of glass.  He didn’t have a useful answer.