I had, for the most part, a shockingly productive weekend. Unlike the way things usually go, I actually finished everything that I intended to finish this weekend. I put up about ten half-pints of peach-poblano jam, two half-pints of marinated mushrooms, four quarts of dill pickles, and six half-pints of pickled purple cauliflower and onions.
Even more amazingly, this was all finished by about four thirty on Sunday afternoon. (I didn’t do anything Saturday except shop for ingredients, so it was all done in just a few hours.)
Maura’s been sick all weekend, and Nick and I weren’t really feeling up to a big supper, so I thought that I’d make some pretzels–we could have pretzels, cheese, mustard, and beer and call it a night.
So I’m standing at the mixer, mixing up pretzel dough, when all of a sudden, the cabinet that holds my dishware came off of the wall. It happened in slow-motion, like something out of a movie–I turned around when I heard the dishes starting to shift, and the cabinet was leaning from the wall at a forty-five degree angle. Before I could move, the doors sprung open and a waterfall of dishes poured out, bouncing off the countertop and onto the floor where they crashed and shattered.
It went on forever. Thirty seconds later, I was standing in the kitchen, surrounded by glass and exploded soda. My Pfaltzgraff (in the sadly discontinued Mountain Shadow), my nice stemless wine glasses, the mugs, the drinking glasses, the random bits of pretty dishware that I’d picked up at garage sales–all of it was shattered. We salvaged two bowls, one drinking glass, two mugs, and a few plates that won’t last long (they’re quite chipped) but will do until we’ve figured out where the rest of the dishware is.
Lucky for us, nobody got hurt. Nick and Maura were snuggling on the sofa, and I was on the other side of the kitchen. I ended up with a big scratch across my belly from struggling with a shredding bag of broken dishes, and Nick and I both ended up with little bits of glass in our hands, but it could’ve been so much worse. The kitchen is pretty small, and the cabinet that fell is right next to the fridge and the sink–anyone doing dishes would have gotten sliced up pretty badly, I think.
Thankfully we have other dishes–when Nick and I got together, he had a set of dishes and I had two, plus some random stuff that wasn’t part of a set. Then Nick’s grandmother died, and we inherited her dishes, as well. I’m pretty sure that Gram’s are in the garage, and all I’ll have to do is bring in the box, wash them off, and figure out somewhere to store them.
Has anyone else ever had this happen, where a cabinet (apparently properly installed–screwed into the wall at three points with ~3″ long screws) has just come undone? Do you think that I should be worried about this happening to my other cabinets? Is this one of those things that only happens to me?
This has got to be one of those things that ONLY happens to you!