Recliner Catapult

(What the kids did comes at about 2:04. Thanks, by the way, Mr. Deitch, for such a fine visual to use with my post.)

I got a call from Michelle shortly before 5 pm yesterday. When I picked up the phone, she was using that voice that meant she was mad. Mad. I was quickly relieved to find out I was not the one she was mad about. But then I, also, had to put on the mad face.

The boys broke the recliner. As far as we can tell, the ten-year-old tried to catapult the five-year-old off the chair. Something went snappo. This morning, I tried to fix it. Not being an expert on recliner repair, I gave up quickly after putting just a single screw back in place. I didn't want to risk breaking anything else.

Now, I know we didn't just suffer an earthquake or have to dig any loved ones out of the rubble. Relatively speaking, this is a non-disaster. So don't get all preachy on me.

It'll cost us, at least at this point, $65 to fix. The part, inexplicably, was still under warranty, even after I explained how the chair got broken in the first place. That tells me this is a labor-intensive job and that the part, while all metally and complicated, is cheap to manufacture. Oh well. At least that's a sop the furniture store can throw our way. I'll take whatever sop I can get at this point. And since the boys broke the chair, they're going to pay for it through their allowance money. Too bad. They were so close to getting that Lego "Jungle Cutter." Whatever that is.

I'm just tired of thing breaking. Earlier this week I sat in my desk chair at home and one of the wheels went snap. What else is going to happen? I just hope I don't break the chair I'm sitting in now -- one of the little chairs from the kids' writing table. It sits about a foot off the ground, so I'm squatting at the keyboard right now, typing like a madman.

This is, by the way, my 1,000th post. Not an auspicious one by any means, but still it's a meaningless round-number milestone that must be marked with some kind of celebration. So I might go make a quesadilla for lunch.