Scraper Living ... Part Deux

One aspect of living in a scraper is you tend to let the house decay around you. It's silly to fix anything because the house is going to be torn down. When the water heater broke a few weeks ago, we had to get that fixed, because really, hot water is a necessity (that's pretty much why we're not living in our house at the moment). But a burned-out lightbulb? You're talking major coin. Even so, Kurt finally did replace the porch and entryway lights this weekend, but only because the bulbs had come four in a pack!

But an event happened today that sums up the dilemma of scraper living, and why it really does start to drag you down after the first couple of months, once the "hey, we're camping!" feeling wears off. We have exactly two keys to this place. It turns out that one is a rather bad copy of the original. The keys operate the door from the kitchen to the garage, and the deadbolt to the front door. We have no keys for any other part of the house, including the front door knob.

I had, of course forgotten that we never lock the front door knob, and forgot to warn my good friend Pam, who's here visiting from Oregon (with her dog Sprocket in tow). So I gave Pam my key this morning so she could come and go without worrying about leaving the house unlocked. Unfortunately, not knowing the no-key-for-the-door-knob factoid, she, like any reasonable person, locked the doorknob as well as the deadbolt. She was quite surprised when she got home that she couldn't open the front door.

In the meantime, Kurt had given me his key (the original; Pam had my bad copy). So, when Pam called me, the only way in was through the garage, which meant that Kurt had to drive home since he has the car, and thus the garage door opener. Unfortunately, Kurt had the copied key, which naturally, does not open the kitchen door. So they both had to wait until I got home from work with the original key to open the door to the kitchen. Poor Sprocket patiently waited to be freed from scraperdom. Of course the good thing about the scraper living, is that if Sprocket had had an accident, we wouldn't have cared!

We also realized that if we'd had to break a window to get in, well, really, who would have cared about that either? We just would be getting a head start on the whole house demolition project! So I guess there are some upsides. Sort of.

But right now, I really miss my home.