Sunday, January 3, 2010

Busted Stuff

My house is full of busted stuff. I have kids. And cats. And now a dog. Plus there’s just the reality that we’ve been in this house for almost twelve years now. Hard to believe, but you can’t argue with the calendar.

Yesterday I decided to put on my ‘to-do’ list the task of assembling all the little things in the house that need to be glued. It’s sort of scary how fast the list has grown. At first, there was just the matter of Eiledon’s desk lamp—still adorable and fully-functional but loose where the lamp shade is attached. Then there’s the floor lamp in her room—also needing a little shade assistance. This led me into the living room where one of our lamps is held together with masking tape and the other was recently knocked to the floor by a friend’s child and the bulb and its socket just kind of loll to one side. I really don’t feel too safe with it on at the moment.

As I swung through the kitchen, this morning, I noticed the ceramic snow man Eiledon got from a friend for Christmas. In the unwrapping, his hat separated into at least three different pieces. I thought, “Add him to the list.”

Then this afternoon, Dan called me downstairs. He’d been tidying and had finally found the missing head to one of my Willow Tree angels from the mantle. Jack-Jack has a fixation with this little angle girl sitting cross-legged and holding a cat. He knocked it down some time ago, removing the head from the body. We’d never actually re-attached the head—just set it back on the body since the break was clean. Well, now Jack-Jack has a fixation with this little head and as many times as we put it back on the poor angel, it wound up back on the floor until it vanished entirely.

I think before I break out the household cement I’ll do a complete walk-through in the house. I’m sure there are items that aren’t coming to mind. For a long time, we kept all the pieces of various broken toys on top of the fridge for eventual repair, but I’m sorry to say that some time ago I gave up on ever getting them fixed and pitched the whole lot. No one’s missed anything yet, thankfully.

So tomorrow, I’ll put on Dave Matthew’s Band’s Busted Stuff album, cover the counter, assemble the wounded and open the glue. I’d open a window, too, but it’s 10 below. Here’s hoping I don’t get so woozy from the fumes I put the angel head on the snowman and the snowman hat on the angel.

It’ll feel good to get a bunch of those little things taken care of. Maybe next week I can move on to all the clothing repairs I need to do. Or the light over the kitchen sink that hasn’t worked in eleven years. Or the wallpaper that’s peeling in the bathroom and kitchen. Or…

Maybe I’ll just glue stuff and call it done for a while.

1 comment:

  1. "I wannna, I wanna sniff some glue..."
    -The Ramones

    ReplyDelete