Now I need a nap.

I got a little more excitement than I was bargaining for, right after I woke up. (Thanks again, sleep drunkenness! Which can actually last for hours.) Disruptions to my morning--well, noonish, nocturnal as I tend to be--routine are not easy to deal with.

Bare description:

Wake up. Lurch into the kitchen to make coffee. Open patio door to let Max out. Go back into the other part of the house for my temporarily misplaced glasses. Hall door to the kitchen and TV room will not open. Jiggle at jammed latch, curse. Scan for shoes, settle on fuzzy bedroom slippers. Snag spare front door keys, shuffle around the outside of the house--through tall grass and a couple of overgrown elders (with bugs-crawling-on-me phobia)--muttering all the way. Stretch up in clumsy arabesque, reach arm through rose bush to unlatch back gate from the outside. Luckily, patio door is open.

Max gets excited, seeing me going in and out of the gate without him. Repeatedly. At least the gate opens inward, so he can jump up on the unlatched gate to his heart's delight without opening it.

Turn the kettle back on for coffee. Realize I need to go to the bathroom. Find sandals, go back around house. Get tripped by the Mirrors kitty on the way. Snag screwdriver to remove the door handles while I'm there.

Finally get water into the coffee press. Blink repeatedly while slurping the sweet, sweet nectar. Tackle door handle; some genius has painted over stripped screw heads. Naturally, most of the tools are in the other part of the house. Go around house again in search of the Dremel, which turns out to have been lurking in the TV room all along. Remove a couple of unstripped screws on the other side of the plate while I'm there. Back on the other side, try to cut stubborn screw heads off. Poor dog dashes outside in alarm. Fail miserably, because they're fairly flush to the plate. Get fleck of paint in eye. Break the one suitable cutting disk on that side of the house, give the Dremel attempt up as a bad job.

Go back around the house to fetch a small crowbar. Start on that side of the door. Indeed, a steel crowbar trumps a brittle wrought iron aluminum painted to look like wrought iron door plate. Hadn't intended to break it into pieces, but that freed it from the stuck screws! Go back around the house, and pry at the other plate, while Max watches dubiously through the patio door.

At some point in this whole process, strain my already tight iliopsoas, for that extra-fun "groin pull plus thrown-out back" effect.

Finally get the handles off, latch is still stuck. End up jimmying the door open with the crowbar, wishing I'd just tried that first. :/ Luckily, manage not to damage either the door or the doorframe beyond a few minor scratches. Finally finish my coffee.

We may have to keep that door shut with a doorstop temporarily, since we still need to keep Max and the cats separated so he doesn't chase them, but at least it is now open. That should work over the weekend, since vatine is heading off for a long weekend in Sweden tomorrow and I don't want to try to install a new door handle and latch. Since he's on call this week and needs to get home fairly directly, a stop for pain relief is looking more pressing ATM than obtaining a new door latch. :(

And this unexpected morning dance could have been a lot worse: we could be living upstairs. And we did have suitable tools around, where I could find them.