Garage door openers..............

are great when they work right! Lately, we've been having some problems with ours. When we wake up in the morning, the garage door has been opened even though we know we closed it before retiring. Bumpa always checks it before he goes to bed at 3 AM. He works second shift so he makes sure it is closed after he gets his last beer for the night out of the refrigerator in the garage. I get up usually by no later than 8:30, sometimes 9 AM. The rest of the doors going to the garage are locked so no one could get in anyway. Besides, we have the 4-legged variety of ADT. Anyone trying to gain entry to our home would be severly startled by a vicious looking and sounding critter!

A few nights ago, the door kept opening all by itself sending my ADT monitor into a steady stream of barking and snarling. I would go up and push the button and watch the door close and go about my business. And within about 40 minutes the same thing would happen. This went on for a while, until the last time I went to close the door and the button on the wall would not work. So I went to my car and took the remote out and pushed it and that didn't work either. Thinking that the battery was probably dead, I replaced it and re-pushed the button without any luck. Of course this was a night when Bumpa was working overtime and would not return until 1:30 and that was only an estimate because the roads were rather nasty. It was the night of the big snow and high winds with blowing and drifting and many interstates closed for accident clean ups. Needless to say, my garage was also filling with drifting snow! I pulled on my boots and ventured out in my fleece jammies. I opened the rear driver's side door and climbed inside to stand on the floorboard in order to reach the rope that is the manual release for the door. AND.PROMPTLY.FELL.OUT.ON.MY.BEHIND! Those things happen when you are vertically challenged!

This required me to pick myself up and use a naughty word because my behind hurt and I was now wet and muddy and snowy and cold! I had to come into the house to get my step stool since the ladders in the garage are all hanging up and too heavy for me to lift and get down. I set up my stool and pulled on the release cord. I climbed down and went to the door and tugged on it. NOTHING! I literally hung on and wiggled my body (good thing it was dark) and the door still would not budge. After several attempts at looking silly and pulling on the door, it finally shut, but not before I had to shovel the snow out of the garage.

Why do these kinds of things happen when the men are not home? Anyway, he thought he had it fixed. We now think the motor is shot and it is just as expensive to fix it as to purchase a new one. So, we will be shopping for a new door opener soon. I'm getting tired of having to open and close it by hand, but I shouldn't complain. Before we moved here we didn't even have a garage.

And I want to close with this statement. I apologize for any mispellings.......the spell check on this hasn't worked the last few time I've tried to use it. Anyone else having this problem or does blogger just hate me?