after my adventure last week, i’m considering a possible career in cat burglary – that is, if this theatre thing doesn’t work out. or maybe just as a side job. anyway, the story goes thus: sunday, i’m out running errands & i come home with a bunch of groceries, park illegally right in front of my apartment, & go inside to put the groceries away. i think, ‘i’ll just pop upstairs & move the laundry before i put the groceries away.’ so i step out the back door, & ‘bam!’ the instant i yank the door closed i realize that i’m locked out. so here i am, on the back porch on a cold february afternoon (it snowed in the oakland hills later that same day). i have no coat, no keys, no money & no phone. i search my pockets & come up with only a pair of needle nose pliers. i think to myself, ‘i am a resourceful girl. i can figure this out.’ i think of many resources, but none of them pan out – the windows are all locked &/or painted shut, the landlord upstairs & then other tenant downstairs are not home, my friend with the spare keys won’t answer her phone (i have to use the sketchiest payphone ever & bill everything to the only calling card # i can remember, which happens to be my dad’s) the locksmith down the street is closed; i can’t page his emergency number b/c the payphone i’m at doesn’t receive calls; etc. i go home again & circle the house some more. to make matters worse, zeke is pacing the inside of the house with me, peering out & mewing silent mews at me from each window i go to. i consider breaking the small, flimsy-looking pane of glass next to the back door, but it occurs to me that i’ve only seen this done in movies & i’m not at all sure that it will work the same in real life. i have visions of myself & the cat sliced with flying glass & decide to keep looking. as i pace around the house, i see it – bingo! the bathroom window is open. keep in mind, folks, that my bathroom window is on the second story. all i need is a ladder. the garage is full of construction shit, so i paw around there in search of the ladder that i figure must – & is not – there. so i start thinking, what else could i climb on? the window is a good ten feet above me, so i really need more than a chair or two. then it occurs to me: the 8ft length of iron railing, turned on it’s side, would kind of look like a ladder. so i rummage in the garage for tools, unbolt the railing from the wall, & heave it up on it’s side against the wall. this process takes a good half hour; the railing is so heavy that i can’t lift it by myself, i can only heave one end at a time. anyway, i finally get the railing-turned-ladder leaning against the wall & make my way up it. when i get to the top i discover that the screen on the window is jammed, so i have to climb back down (precariously, there’s a lot of slippery mud on my shoes) & get some tools to pry to screen off. the screen comes off, &, standing on the very top rung of my make-shift ladder, i manage to lift myself through the window in cannon-ball form (the window sits quite high above the bathroom floor, so if i tried to go in head first i would have ended up falling 3 feet into the toilet). upon successfully completing my mission in cat-burglary, i put the groceries away (the whole reason i had to break in was that i had 40 dollars worth of groceries melting on the counter that i didn’t want to waste), then go back outside & heave the railing back down & re-bolt it to the wall. unless he notices the muddy footprints up the side of the spindles, my landlord will never be the wiser.