Me vs. The Door

I should start out by saying that I love the place where I live.  It is perfect for me and has a huge and beautiful yard that is perfect for me dog.

However, since I moved in, I have been engaged in a war with the bedroom doors (hmmm, that is much to rhymey, and I would rather not say "war with a door" any more than those two times in this post.  Maybe it's more of an epic battle).  To be fair, they are folding doors, so they are unlike 98% of all the doors that I have used.

Round 1 went to the doors.  I struggled to open them for the first couple weeks that I lived there.  But it's totally normal for an adult to be stuck in her own room, right?

Round 2 went to... my dog.  He figured out how to open the doors at about the same time I did and used that skill enthusiastically every morning at 6:45 right before my alarm went off.

Round 3 went to the doors and my dog.  I'm pretty sure that they conspired all day while I was gone at work.  He opened the door, per usual, but instead of just opening, it fell on me and woke me up.  After inspecting myself for life threatening injuries¹, I went to check on the door... and that's when I discovered that it was held together by wire.

For the next month or so, the door leaned up against its frame and experienced feelings of instability, neglect, and ostracism.  I felt a sense of superiority and laziness; every time I looked at the door I thought, "I control your destiny, door!" which I'm going to count as a win for me.  (For those at home keeping score, that's Doors: 2, Dog: 2, Human: 1²).

Finally, one night, fueled by beer and a brief bout of courage, I decided to fix the door.  I knew there was a high risk that I would end up gluing my hand to the door, but I was willing to take it.  I was going to win this battle.

As a safety precaution, I wrapped my hands in paper towel while I handled the glue (we can glide right past the fact that I was doing this all in my underwear, so maybe I should have covered more than just my hands...).  I knelt down over the broken door, glue at the edge of the bottle... and realized that the wires were still on the broken part.

I spent 15 minutes trying to get them off and was rewarded with several bloody fingers and two mangled, but still tight, wires.

"Fine," said I, "Keep your stupid wires!" and then I put glue everywhere I could fit it in the broken part.

Interesting aside:  did you know wood glue foams when you expose it to air?  Neither did I until after I applied it and then read the instructions!

When I awoke in the morning, the door was fixed (yay!), but the hole for the pin that holds the door to its frame was all full of glue-foam.  Hard, hard glue-foam.

Interesting aside the second:  know what's a great way to start the morning?  Hammering a pin into hard glue-foam!  In your underwear, which is apparently the only way I work!

By the time I left for work, I had two standing doors.  I had succeeded.

Except somehow neither door was actually set correctly in the door frame.

I think now it's time to go to the graph to see how I have done overall against the door.

Not graphed: Doors laughing heartily at my failures.  I ran out of colors, but I can tell you it would be a line at 2 all the way across. 

Oh, I have clearly lost.  At this point, the door is galloping around my house, with my desecrated carcass  attached to the back of its chariot³.



¹There were none, except for the emotional ones.  An irrational fear of doors shouldn't be a problem, right?  I can just live in a tent!  I know just the place for that!
²Ninjas: 3,467,591.  They always win.
³It would appear from my multiple Troy references that the only epic poem I've read is the Illiad.  I will try to casually work in some other classics references so that this blog attracts the right crowd.