First is the most traumatic.

It was late, the girls were really wired because of e.'s play and tons of sugar that I allowed in an attempt to get rid of the Halloween candy (j. still has like 7,000 pieces left), and I was trying to shephard them into bed. It was 10:10 or so. Remember their new bedroom? Well, for some reason, e. asked for me to take her bed down. i passed the chore along to beloved, and came into my room for some unknown purpose. All of a sudden - scream; crash; scream; crash; "OH NO OH NO OH NO!!" I had no idea what happened, but i tore into that room. Apparently, as beloved was taking the bed down ....

it came out of the wall.

it is attached to the desk/shelving unit next to it, so that came crashing down - shelves fell out of the unit, everything e. owns went flying.

as i was going IN to the room, j. was coming out, her face showing complete horror. I was happy to see her, but didn't see e., and felt panicked. I ran in to the room, and e. came out - beloved was stuck holding the entire bed up. e. cried that she had a "bad cut" on her finger, and i went with her - leaving beloved where he was.

my father is in town, and he had run in as well, and he helped beloved while i helped the hyperventilating children. e. was shaking, and j. was crying and on the verge of hysterical saying, "i don't want to sleep in my bed; i don't want to sleep in my bed; i don't want to sleep in my bed."

needless to say, they're sleeping on mattresses on the living room floor tonight. my dad is on the couch. they're all having an all-out slumber party in there.

i'm not a happy camper. beloved knows it, so i'm not going to pretend otherwise - i'm pissed off at beloved. really pissed off. my dad said that the screws that were holding the bed to the wall were probably only 3/8ths of an inch into the wall --- HUH? He said he thinks a screw that is 1" longer will permanently fix the problem, and if I'm still nervous, we can stick an extra one in at an angle, and there will then be zero chance of a repeat of tonight's performance.

why such a tiny screw? for a huge-ass bed? that holds small children who can be crushed by said huge-ass beds?

what if e. was the one to take her bed down tonight? she would be like ..... dead. or something horrid.

i guess i also don't understand why the fucking shelves were bolted to the bed. I mean .... why? I understand he's used to bolting things to the wall, being from earthquake country and all, but in this case, it seems like all it's doing (since it's NOT bolted to the wall) is creating a double problem instead of a single. If the shelf comes down - so does the bed. If the bed comes down - so does the shelf.

Why?

At first, I said that I wanted the beds taken down. The end. That pissed me off, b/c we probably spent $6K on this bedroom project. And we'd now have to spend more to get the girls new beds. but then my dad's ideas about how to fix it sounded reasonable, so I'm able to be persuaded that it can stay up.

But it better get fixed fucking TOMORROW. I really don't care what it takes.

And poor e. all her stuff went FLYING. She has been *so good* about keeping her desk organized. She also had a lot of stuff taht she loves ... she calls it her "museum" and it's all things that are important to her. and she's acted like it. I've been very impressed iwth her increased organization (i wish i could say the same for her sister, the slob) since the room was re-done. and now it's all a pile of rubble. absolute RUBBLE. One of her giraffes (which she collects) lost a head and 3 legs. one fairy figurine lost an arm, and another lost its wings. her ipod is okay, though. thank god.

[Update: venting here made me feel much better, and beloved and i were able to discuss solutions. he had followed the directions for the beds completely, and had 3 inch screws in the wall, into the studs, and it should have been fine. We are replacing them with 4 inch screws, and putting in double the amount of screws, and putting them in at an ANGLE, so that they can't pull straight out of the wall. We are also disconnecting the shelves from the beds, and securing them to the wall. Turns out his reason for securing the shelves had nothing to do with earthquakes, and was quite well thought-out. The girls' desks are a curved shelf that fits into their bookshelf, but comes out 2x as far as a regular shelf ... and if the girls were to lean on them, climb on them, anything else that kids are prone to do, the fear is that the entire shelf would come tumbling down. So it's good to have those secured. Beloved is not a dummy. The universe was on our side last night, by having beloved help her take her bed down. she always takes it down herself, but yesterday, her hands were sore from raking leaves, and from jumping into a pile of leaves, and landing on some sticks. We were alerted of the problem, and are now able to fix it without injury. Phew. Good Universe.)
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e. was in a play tonight. she was great. the plays have singing, dancing, humor, drama. The kids are all in grades 4-6, and they're really super cute and pretty good. Everyone, of course, has different strengths. e.'s seems to be some humor, and her singing voice is strong ... but i have to say, in the dancing department? she comes from my womb, and it shows. if everyone else is going right, she's going left. if everyone else has their right hand in the air, she has her left. she's constantly looking at her feet, or at the person next to her, to try and figure out what they're doing, and then does it right AFTER they do. Sorry, e. Didn't mean to give you that gene.

This is why my father is here. My mother "couldn't" come, b/c her sister's son's wife's baby shower was today. So just my dad came.

There's another showing tomorrow, and my ex and his new wife are coming for that. i hate seeing him. he always makes me feel fat. i've only met his new wife once, very briefly, and at the time, she was not his new wife, and i didn't live on this coast. Definitely a while ago.

and now the girls get to tell him that beloved and i almost killed them with their new beds. great.

posted by Zuska @ 11:05 PM

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