Sunday, February 03, 2008

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?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's sucks about the garage door opener. That would drive me nuts.

About Blogger...don't know for sure. Blogger has issues from time to time. I use MS Word to type my posts and do the spell check while I'm using it. I then copy/paste over to blogger. I could post from within Word but I'm not fond of that feature. It too can be a little testy.

Hugs

Renee said...

OUrs breaks all the time! If Mark's not here, it stays broken.

River Rat said...

I SO miss summer right now!

auntpearl said...

I have heard some stories about those garage doors...Hope you get yours back to normal.
Take care,
Hugs,
Pearl

Smalltown RN said...

I think the planets are colliding my friend.....check out what I had to say on my blog today....and as for the spell check....no it isn't working....Urgh! I have become very dependant on it....guess I have to get out the dictionary today....

Sorry your hurt your rump.....ouch!!!...but I am getting a vision here of you on your vehicle trying to get that rope....damn rope.....bad bad garage door opener......hope you warmed up quickly....

cheers...

Ame said...

"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!"

LOL!!! Just *one* naughty word???!!! tehehehehehe

"I literally hung on and wiggled my body (good thing it was dark) and the door still would not budge."

Still laughing ... hahahatehehehehe
Gosh ... I'd a done the same thing!!!

Oh, sorry all this happened ;(

Guessing you've got a new garage door opener by now.

But, it sure is a REALLY funny story!!!!!

Cheryl said...

Oh my. Garage door openers--mine won't go down all the way unless I stand there and hold the button. Apparently my garage has some kind of ghost that convinces the electronic eye that something is under the door. So, unless I hold the button, it closes to within about 2 feet of the bottom, then reverses directions and opens again.