God... please grant me patience. I really need some.
Last night I spent two hours getting into Jackson's room because the door had gotten locked from the inside and we have no key. For some reason, the previous owners found it necessary to install outside locking doors on all the interior bedroom doors in my house. I am redoing my hallway, which included patching and sanding Jackson's door. So, after two days of fixing it up while the kids were at their Dad's we couldn't get into his room. His door wouldn't even latch shut much less lock, so how it locked that particular time is beyond me.
After drills, saws & a sledge hammer, it still wouldn't open. The problem was that the doorknob was so old and beat up that it couldn't simply be removed (which I had tried to do previously so I could install an interior door knob) I went outside to inspect the bedroom window... which was locked. Lucky for me, the pains of glass could just be lifted out... both pains. Unlucky for me, my house can easily be broken into. When Jackson got home, I hoisted him in though the window and he simply walked over and unlocked the door. Once the door was finally open, I removed the part of the doorknob that actually goes into the door jam when the knob was turned, to avoid it from ever getting locked again. The mangled door knob was still on the door because after all that... it still couldn't be removed.
Tonight, as I'm sitting at my computer... mid blog... I hear Jackson yelling for help. Why was he yelling you ask?? Because, he had locked himself into his bedroom. How does this happen, you are probably wondering. Well, that is the perfect question. Apparently, he wanted to "try something". That something was him putting that latching mechanism, which he found in the discard pile in the hall, in the door and closing it. The problem then was that it was no longer attached to the doorknob so when the knob was turned, nothing happened. It took about an hour. At first I thought I would simply remove the door from the hinges but that didn't work. I climbed though his bedroom window (which is about shoulder high and an opening of about two feet) at least three times so I could work on both sides of the door. Again with the drill, the saw, the sledge hammer, and a multitude of other tools if I thought it would have the slightest chance of helping. There's about four more holes in his door now. So much for patching and the sanding I did over the weekend.
I was already having a bad night. I was tired from staying up late the night before and my patience were already worn down from fighting with Ashleigh to do her homework and on the kids tails about trying to keep the house clean and a few little things here and there (which always feel like big things when you're in a bad mood) ... it was just one of those nights. In the end, I removed part of the door jam from around the door in the hall to expose more of the door jam and tried to jimmy the lock open. It was close but there wasn't enough clearance. So, I got a long piece of metal and showed Ashleigh how to do it. Then I went back though the window into his room and managed to get the door off the bottom hinges and moved to the side just enough to give the lock that extra bit of clearance as Ashleigh helped from the other side. Success. First thing I did after the door was open.... lets just say that Jackson does not have a bedroom door right now.
I finally got the kids to bed just over an hour late and as we are sitting together saying our night time prayers, I choke back tears and pray for patience. Maybe tomorrow I will post the blog that I had actually started for tonight.
