Garage Door Drama

Coats on, ready to go. I pressed the button on our garage door opener.

But the door opened only about two inches, and only on the left side. I punched the button a few more times, same result. We were stuck.

Paul went in the side door of the garage, and a quick inspection proved that a spring had busted. And he couldn't force the door open by himself either. We really were stuck.

Of course, this happened on Sunday, about five minutes before I was scheduled to arrive for my monthly Sunday School duties. The car was out. The bike needed air in its tires. So I texted the Sunday School coordinator that I would be late, loaded Edith into the stroller and walked the mile to church as fast as I could. I got there in 15 or 20 minutes, found that the middle-school classroom assistant handled things beautifully and got on with the morning.

The weather was chilly but not all that bad. Edith and I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up a few essentials for the week -- stroller baskets can hold a surprising amount of food. When we got home about three hours after we took off, Atticus was sleeping in Paul's arms and a garage door repairman was already explaining our options to Paul. We're scheduled to get a new door and spring system this week. (And the repairman and Paul strong-armed the door open so we could get out our cars and park them in the driveway until that happens.)

Sunday morning was annoying, but it could have been worse. Luckily it was the weekend. And even more fortuitously, the broken spring or wire or whatever it was didn't snap across the garage, damaging our cars or worse, a person. We had been having garage door issues for a while and even had someone out to inspect it recently to no avail. All things considering, we got off easy.