And Then the House Fell Down

Thanksgiving was lovely. Todd cooked a 29 pound turkey that was grown a half mile from our house. We met it a few weeks ago, and named him Tom. Last year we’d eaten Tom’s cousin Bob. Todd’s parents came down from Vermont, and our friends Maggie, Charlie, Mike and Sarah sat around our table. We sampled three kinds of stuffing, we ate, and then we ate, and then we ate some more. More friends joined us as pies materialized on the table, and cups of tea served. We laughed as Mike and Sarah’s 3 year old daughter, Arwen, dipped each finger in the freshly whipped cream and ran outside to share them with her Dad as he sat on the deck with my father in law.

With the Thanksgiving afterglow still fresh in my house, Todd’s sister Em arrived on Friday with her 4 year old son and her boyfriend’s 11 year old son. We sat around the dining room table for Thanksgiving take 2.

“I like your light,” Emily pointed to the chandelier.

“You know, I think that one light is a different color than the others, even though we bought them all at the same time,” I pointed out.

“Now that you mention it…” Emily trailed off as I removed two of the glass globes from the light and exposed the light bulbs.

“See?” I asked. Then with a loud crash the light fixture fell from the ceiling and landed on the leftover pumpkin pie that Maggie had brought with her the day before. Em and I stood over the table with our mouths hanging open. Then we started to laugh. I lifted the lamp and wiped the pumpkin pie filling off the side of it.

“What the hell happened here?” Todd burst into the room. “Are you guys OK?” My mother in law was a close second, and then busted up laughing at the sight. We adjourned to the living room; out of habit I flipped the light switch on my way out of the room.

Saturday night we returned from the movies and sat around in the living room, eating leftovers over the coffee table. We’d bought my mother in law a Wii for her birthday, and we were taking turns playing. I looked up just in time to see the curtain rod fall off the wall and dully clatter on the wood floor. One of the brackets that held the rod to the wall fell clean out of the wall, revealing giant holes that will now need to be filled with an entire tub of spackle when I eventually get around repainting the room.

I am now eyeing the walls suspiciously and am listening carefully to my footfalls when I walk from one room to another in hopes that I won’t fall through the floor and end up in the basement.