Alright story time.

So I‘ve got a cold and I decided to walk my dog to get out, get some fresh air.  We get back and my dog needs fresh water, I go to get his bowl but what is there beside it?  One of those stinkbug bastards.  I grab a glass, some paper, and scoop him up to take him outside.  The nearest door is the one to my construction zone of a porch. 

Here is my folly.

Our porch was old, rickety, so my dad has been working on it piece by piece when the weather and time permits.  Currently the stairs are gone, they were torn down before Christmas.  It hangs out over our walk-out basement, making it a little over a story high.

I go outside to the porch, release the bug then turn around to go back inside.  The door has locked itself.  It’s one of those demon locks to feels unlocked from the inside, but locks as soon as you step outside.

I’m locked outside on a porch with no stairs and no one is going to be home for at least five hours, maybe more, without my phone.  I flip out.  I look around for anyone around to wave down for help, I check the windows, I try to wrench open the locked door, my dog who knows how to open doors stares at me through the glass.

My first thought is to take the blankets from the porch and try to make a rope to climb down, but they don’t seem sturdy enough.  Hanging over the ledge I think, let’s be smart about this.  I’ve got one body and I’m home alone on a Monday when everyone around will be at work.

That’s when I realize there’s like a million cushions on our porch furniture.  So I drop all of these cushions down into one big pile, stare over the edge and pray for 30 minutes.  One side of the pile has the brick patio and my dad’s construction equipment, another has wood chips and a spiky bush, the other soft grass and safety.

I jumped, banged my ankle on the porch post on the way down, then rolled off the pile into the grass, shaken up but okay.

Look, I’m not an athletic person, I didn’t climb a lot of trees as a kid, so this was a big freakin deal to me.

But here’s the kicker:

I spent Leap Year…

Leaping from my damned porch.