The Drama of Running Out of Milk

Sometimes you should have just stayed in bed.

Yesterday was, well, an ADVENTURE for the Elkinseseses.

The day started out nice and cheery: Nathan’s last day of summer and my regular teleworking day. I got out of bed, shuffled into the kitchen and started to pour a bowl of cereal.

But then I realized WE WERE OUT OF MILK.

Right then and there, I should have called my boss and called it a sick day.

But I chose to soldier on despite the MILK SHORTAGE. I decided this meant it was a McDonald’s breakfast kind of day and went to get Nathan up. I told him about our depressing lack of milk and we sighed together. We will settle. We will go to McDonald’s.

We dressed, we told Pogi to be good, we grabbed the car keys and I deliberately told my phone, “wait on the couch; I don’t need you right now.” Then we embarked on our quest across the street for hash browns. Only we had a minor snag as the door seem to stick as we were going out.

Perhaps it was also protesting the lack of milk. Or perhaps, it was a door with a really cheap doorknob that was going to get back at us for all of the times we scratched it trying to get the key in.

Off to McDonald’s.

I ordered a meal with a large orange juice, Nathan ordered pancakes and we rolled up to the window to pay.

“Crap, we don’t have MILK,” Nathan complained and asked the employee at the window to add that to his order. We paid, we got our food, we drove home. Nathan now had a very small bottle of milk.

We were home.

But we weren’t inside.

That was going to take us over an hour.

Who takes an hour to get inside their own home? Even if there isn’t any milk inside? Apparently, we do. Nathan unlocked the deadbolt, went to unlock the doorknob and he was DENIED. No jiggling, cursing, or slamming of shoulders against the door could get us inside. We stood around on our patio helpless while Pogi whined inside about how we didn’t have any milk.

We sat down on the patio furniture and ate our McDonald’s. What else were we to do? Then, while Nathan called my Mom to look up locksmith numbers (since my phone, which is the “smartphone” was sitting on the couch inside), I tried to open our door with a credit card. Turns out, I can’t break into my own home.

Eventually, our neighbor, who works for a locksmith company, walked over with his little boy strapped into his stroller and helped jimmy his way into our home. We learned that something in the lock in the doorknob was stuck and it was forever locked. We couldn’t shut our door or we would be locked inside. Oh the horrors! We still didn’t have any MILK.

Nathan took the doorknob out and we left the house with a hole in the door. We did lock the deadbolt and hoped that while we were out buying a new doorknob, no criminal with very tiny hands would stop by, reach in through the hole and unlock the deadbolt. At least he couldn’t steal any milk.

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