Uh-oh . . .

There are certain sounds you never want to hear - the pre-launch sounds of a dog getting ready to barf on the carpet at 2 a.m. . . . the sound of running water under the kitchen sink when the taps are turned off . . .

. . . and the sound of shattering glass at 5:25 a.m.

Yesterday my alarm went off, as usual. The dogs started cavorting about, as usual (it is just WRONG that they wake up so fast). I had just swung my legs out of bed when I heard the CRASH.

Someone's butt had smashed into one of the glass panels of my grandma's china cupboard in the dining room. It wasn't my butt. The Farmer's butt was still in bed. So it was a Belgian butt. And they aren't talkin'. But I have my suspicions.


This cupboard was a wedding gift from my grandpa to my grandma when they were married in the 1930s. It traveled from Colorado to Missouri to Iowa with nary a scratch. It traveled from my grandmother's house to our house last summer.

It lasted eight months before somebody smacked it with their fat butt. Sigh.

But no one got hurt. The glass all fell IN the cabinet. There wasn't any on the carpet. Which was good because I bolted out of bed, told the dogs to sit (they did, immediately, what good dogs), then walked around barefooted to assess the damage. Hey, it's hard to be totally functional at that hour.

Not having time to clean things up before work, I put a baby gate in front of the cupboard. The dogs could have cared less. It's not like there were cookies involved. When I got home from work, I put the dogs in the kitchen, put on a pair of leather gloves and got ready to carefully pull the shards of broken glass out of the frame.

I carefully gripped the piece that looked the easiest to remove, tugged gently . . . and the ENTIRE FREAKING BROKEN PANEL CAME CRASHING OUT IN ABOUT 500 PIECES!

I said a lot of very bad words, picked up the pieces and got the vacuum.

The Farmer inspected things and measured the empty frame. You've heard of "measure twice, cut once"? How about "measure 14 times — now assisted by Phoenix who was fascinated by the tape measure — scratch your head, make faces, shove the dog out of the way, scribble measurements on paper, scribble more measurements on paper, grumble a bit, take the tape measure way from the dog, take the paper away from the dog and finally give the wife a piece of paper with barely legible dog-slobbered measurements on it." I think the local hardware store can cut a piece of glass to fit, since this was just plain old glass, not fancy curved stuff or anything.

Today is a good day. Nothing has gotten broken. Of course, it's only 10 a.m.