Yeah; I owe you vacation blogs. They’re coming: I’ve got my notes and everything. But in the meantime, our kitchen just freaking fell apart.
Remember how we had to buy and attach all of our own shelves and cabinets? One of the shelves began to slip from the wall early on, and Nick reseated it, and since then I’ve checked routinely, habitually, almost obsessively, to make sure that the much heavier long cabinet above it is safely flush against the wall.
Is it my fault that the damn wall fell apart?
Ignore the fact that, two days ago, our toilet-paper holder fell out of the same wall with no warning whatsoever. In spite of the fact that there was clearly nothing wrong with the holder itself–it was like the wall just let go of the screws–it didn’t occur to us to follow the wall into the kitchen where it was holding up the bulk of our self-installed storage, but I’m betting that it wouldn’t have occurred to you, either, so whatever.
So tonight I’m unpacking groceries, and Nick opens the top cabinet to put the extra Brita filters in, and then there’s this noise. And the kitchen is pitching like there’s an earthquake, except that it’s just the massive cabinet slumping forward off the wall, taking down the shelves below it and shearing the knobs off of the stove inches before it would have crushed Nick’s legs. He escaped, more luckily than I can describe, with just a torn pocket.
Once we had established that happy fact, it was a question of assessing the wreckage: a few bottles of oil and one of vinegar shattered (our Provençal bottle of olive oil was the most dramatic casualty, unfortunately–sorry, J & K) and the oil mixed with the glass in a remarkably nasty sort of way. In that sharp soup floated bouillon cubes, Nespresso cartridges, Brita packaging, copper jars, popcorn kernels, vinegar bottles, and God only knows. I don’t, even, and I’m the one who cleared the things out bit by bit, rocking forward on my toes and trying not to fall in, until there was enough free space to tilt the cabinet up so that Nick could get unpinned. Which is, predictably, about when I fell apart and he got himself together, and we spent the next four hours very carefully trying not to actively work against each other.
Of course, in order to have any semblance of sanity at all, we had to shut the dogs in the other half of the apartment. I mean…glass. Oil. Everywhere. Ever try to get either of those out of an industrial-type carpet while a beagle is angling for the spice rack? Don’t.
Juliette was uncomfortable, but it was Jolie who took it the hardest. She spent the first full hour waiting faithfully just outside of the dividing door, springing up to come check on us whenever I came through. Since I required two different pairs of shoes just to walk the five feet of hallway to said door, that wasn’t happening, so she got fretful-er by the moment. Finally she gave up entirely, retreated into herself, and assumed the crash position: that’s on the bathmat, pressed against the tub, and shivering delicately every few minutes. The end of the world comes, that’s where you’ll find our Jack Russell.
She stayed there until the pizza arrived, at which point she graciously offered to tear the delivery guy limb from limb for us.
Way more is salvageable than I thought at first: we’ve even replaced the cabinet on another wall, braced on top of the refrigerator. I say “we” because, although Nick did 99% of the actual lifting, I stood shoving the thing up with my arms and neck for what felt like a year (thank you, Lou Schuler) while he drilled the holes and drove in the bolts. The stove will need new knobs and possibly new burner plates, but two of the burners and the oven are still functioning fine. And the shelves and racks should be okay to go back, as long as nothing’s actively falling on them. Most of what fell in the oil/glass was either sealed or reasonably throw-away-able (except for the popcorn. We lost so much popcorn. The sound of falling kernels went on for a full minute after the rest of the noise was done.). My full stock-pot even survived intact, as did the glass cover of the stove that had been leaning against it. Not a drop was spilled, and it’s been sitting on our bedroom floor ever since, cooling and waiting for me to get around to removing the carcass.
Maybe tomorrow.