The hows and the whys of it aren’t important, but one day last week, I found myself crawling across our garage roof to break into a second-story window because of a locked door.

As luck would have it, it was a rainy day. Even luckier, the window that I needed to get into wasn’t perfectly centered on the peak of the roof. No, it was slightly off to the side, so I had to stand at an unsteady angle as I forced my way into the window. And, in general, I absolutely hate heights. So, all the ingredients for everything to go wrong were in place.

At first, I just decided to wait until the Wonderful Husband and the possible spare key came home. But when it became clear that was going to take hours, I decided to call a locksmith. Unfortunately, he wasn’t available until the next day for the reasonable rate, and an emergency call would be more expensive than the door I could probably break down if I was desperate. I am, above all, a cheapskate when it comes to this kind of thing.

As I sat in my car, pondering what to do, I kept telling myself, “You’re a smart, independent woman. You can figure this out.” I also kept asking myself, “What would MacGyver do?” I really hoped that the hours that I devoted to watching that show were finally going to pay off, but I was all out of paper clips and chewing gum. Looking around for something helpful, all I found were about 18 empty water bottles and last week’s math homework that someone shoved under a seat. I really hope that was after it was turned in and graded. My kids need to be a more useful bunch of pack rats.

I examined all the possible ways into the house. Thanks to the WH, it’s basically Fort Knox, and of course, any helpful tool was also locked inside. I did, however, have resources outside the house, which included a ladder. A very tall, very heavy step ladder. The good news is that it was tall enough to reach the garage roof. The bad news is that I was pretty sure I wasn’t strong enough to get it vertical.

“Strong, determined woman. I can do this,” I kept repeating, more to convince myself than anyone else. After a lot of grunting, and shoving, and propping, and yes, a little crying, I managed to get the ladder into position. It wasn’t a perfect fit, and I was still going to have to make a little bit of a swinging leap to get myself onto the roof.

It was right about at this time that I really had a heart to heart with myself.

“You’re 46 years old. Never once in any of those previous 46 years have you had the body or the ability of a gymnast, and today is not going to break that trend. Other things might get broken, but definitely not the streak of NOT being a gymnast.”

But at the same time, perversely, I was also becoming more and more determined that I would get myself out of this pickle with no help.

It’s funny how, in a split second, like the one where you’re making the leap, you can remember things like “It’s raining and when you land, that roof is going to be wet, and that means it’s also going to be slippery.” It’s even more amazing how that thought can travel so quickly to the tips of your fingers and toes and get that message to them.

I’d like to think I landed like Spider-Man, nimbly poised to make my next move. I really can’t think of a suitable comparison to what I landed like, but I’m guessing it would look something like how a walrus would land, if it could fly in the first place.

As I started belly-crawling across the roof to the window, trying desperately not to look down, I think it finally hit me that there are some limitations to what 46-year-old, slightly out-of-shape woman should be doing. This is where the bargaining started. I promised myself to make 87 spare keys to every door of the house. I promised that I would make more of an effort to get back in shape so that roof top acrobatics are part of my wheelhouse. I also started wondering if I was going to be subjected to lectures from my kids about doing dangerous stuff as they pushed my wheelchair around. I also started wondering if this was an elaborate prank and someone was going to jump out with a video camera and yell, “Surprise!”

I also happened to remember a few items that I’d forgotten to put on my grocery list. A lot of weird stuff goes through your brain when you’re trying to forget that high places usually paralyze you.

And just like that, the bathroom window was in front of me. Although the angle was less than ideal, at least I had a windowsill to really grab on to, and I was close enough to the chimney that I almost had a foothold as well. I must say, I’m more than a little impressed with my ability to break into a window, and if it weren’t for the height thing, I might consider a future as a cat burglar. (Kids, if you’re reading this, focus more on the “I have mad skills so good luck keeping secrets from me” than the “I broke into a house” aspect of the story.”)

Safe and sound, with four walls and a floor and a ceiling around me, my first thought was,” Yes! I did it!” and then my second thought was “Good Lord, girl, what were you thinking?” and then I had one of those little breakdowns where I realized all the things that could have gone wrong.

Later that evening, I was excited to tell the kids about my day. They were fairly unimpressed.

“Guys, come on! I was on a roof!” G, as always, had the gears turning.

“Let’s see how excited you are to be on a roof the next time we have to clean out gutters, Mom.”

Yes, I definitely think my days of roof climbing are behind me.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.