THE SHELF

 I'll make this quick, I'm writing while The Man is in the shower.  

Amidst the many many pieces of OLD furniture that call this house their home there stands 2 old china cabinets.  The sort of which are made of wood with rounded panels of glass on each side and on the door on the front of the cabinet.  The glass would cost a small fortune to replace.  Inside these lovely antique cabinets are an assortment of beautiful antique glass ware that The Man could/should have sold to the antique dealer who was here a couple of months ago.  She admired the glassware, she told The Man it was very expensive and she said she would love to buy it from him.  He did not want to sell it to her because, "That isn't what I wanted her to look at".  She was not really interested in any of the crap that The Man wanted her to look at but she did end up taking some stuff.  As she left she told me to give her a call if The Man ever decided to sell the glassware.  

Fast forward to 2 nights ago when there was a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass.  I missed this entire event because I had moved into the second bedroom to try to get some sleep. I was convinced I was dying and didn't want to die and keep The Man awake.  (I obviously was NOT dying.  Just too much caffeine before bed time.). Anyway, I never heard the crash or The Man wandering around trying to see what broke, if in fact anything had broken.  He found nothing and returned to bed.  The following morning he checked again and in the light of day found that a shelf in one of the antique cabinets had fallen and some of the glassware had slid down and broken.  (Guess the antique dealer doesn't want that glassware now!) The man was NOT the least bit upset that the glassware broke BUT he WAS upset that the shelf had fallen.  WHY ????  HAD THE SHELF FALLEN ??????  THAT is what he was upset about.  After careful consideration of the situation he had me look at it and I realized that one of the small metal tabs that fit into holes on the cabinet frame had come loose and fallen out, thus making the shelf tip and drop its contents.  This was a BIG deal and The Man was not going to rest until the tab was returned to its spot and the shelf was once again back in it's place.  

This is where it gets silly . . . 

I took the tab and tried to get it back into its hole but the tab wouldn't go in. ( I assume it never did fit properly into the hole and was just hanging by a thread, thus the shelf finally letting go?) I told this to The Man and his question was WHY ???  WHY won't the tab go back into the hole?  I explained that probably the wood had dried out and shrunk or something like that. (WHO CARES WHY? was what I was screaming in my head.) But The Man needed to know WHY this happened, as if there was an evil conspiracy to make his shelf fall or I sneak around in the middle of the night sabotaging cabinets.  (That theory actually might be plausible.) 

The next question was how do WE fix it.  Now pay attention to this please because this is the point of this whole blog.  I suggested we make the hole a little bigger. The Man wanted to know how we would do that.  I suggested getting a Phillips head screw driver, putting it in the hole and twisting it a few times.  The Man didn't like that idea.  HE thought we needed to sand down the little knob that goes into the hole.  Being the smart person that I am I said, "OK" and walked away.  Upon my return to the kitchen I found The Man sitting in his chair rubbing an emory board on the bracket tab.  (This action would be like trying to cut a 2X4 with a butter knife.)

Now I could have burst out into peals of hysterical laughter but I did not.  I just kept walking. After a few minutes The Man asked me to take the bracket and see if it now fit in the hole.  Do you want to guess what the answer to that was ????  DUH !!! Of course if didn't make a bit of difference.  You're rubbing a freaking emory board on a piece of metal !!!!  Much to his disappointment I returned the tab to him and once again walked away.  BUT WAIT !!!  The Man has another idea . . . He asked me to check in his closet for a small blue box that contained a small electric drill tyoe of tool that is used to wear down metal. 

(I must make note here that all of this is happening minutes after I have crawled out of bed.  I have not yet had anything to eat or drink and my "keep calm" medication has not yet reached my brain.  I am in NO mood to be doing any of this while The Man is sitting at the kitchen table DIRECTING )

Back to the closet search for a tool.  No little blue box anywhere in sight.  OK, The Man decides the tool MUST be in a box in the back of another closet.  NOT.  Maybe it is . . . This could have gone on all morning but I had had enough.  I walked out to the closet where he has a bag of tools.  There I found a PHILLIPS HEAD SCREW DRIVER which I took in to the cabinet, placed it in the hole in the frame, spun it around a few times and then put the freaking metal peg back into the hole.  EXACTLY as I had wanted to do an hour ago.  

What in hell is it with these men who find it necessary to make a HUGE project out of the simplest of things ????????