A Forever Fear of Particle Board?

Our guardian angels have been working overtime.

While away one weekend this past year, visiting our middle child at college for friends and family weekend, we got a call from the fire department. They confirmed that all dogs and people had been safely evacuated from our house due to carbon monoxide gas. Everyone was okay. The furnace was venting into the house, likely because I had the chimney swept, and they had knocked something loose while doing the work. The fireplace has been “out of order” because of the $30,000 in repairs the contractor had said we needed, but I’m evaluating that quote with a bit of side-eye now, in light of the carbon monoxide situation.

The relief I felt that we had obsessively installed multiple carbon monoxide detectors was overwhelming. I didn’t install them, Kevin did. At least one of us is together, and the graduate student staying at the house caring for our elderly dogs and chickens, didn’t die. Please go and install them.

In that same month my mom disappeared while hiking near the woods the Serial podcast was set in. She was found, and thanks to her guardian angel, all is well. She would be mortified if I went on, so I won’t.

My brother gave me a Murphy Bed that he was tossing out when they were putting their condo up for sale. I thought, Yay! What’s better than a Murphy Bed in a small house? Really, nothing as it makes the rooms more flexible. Getting the Murphy Bed was an ordeal, but just yesterday, after the dust had settled, installation complete, and the same graduate student previously poisoned by carbon monoxide had stayed in it for a week…. the bed frame came crashing down. (I hope he’s not reading this, because then he’ll be scared off forever.)

The youngest child was sitting on the bed, in the center of all 10,000 pounds of particle board disaster, physically unharmed, but terrified. She will certainly develop a forever fear of particle board and who can blame her? It’s shit construction. She was spared as the bed frame detached from a plaster wall and came crashing down around her. Her desk broke in half when the frame landed on it, and she came away with just the slightest scratch on her foot. See guardian angels on duty, above.

Turns out IKEA furniture isn’t even made of particle board, but rather a honeycomb-patterned cardboard. I am seriously doubling down on my philosophy of reuse and will only buy vintage furniture made from solid wood from now on.

I told the child that sat perfectly unharmed amid the destruction a story about her older sister, that had climb up the dresser drawers and pulled it down on herself at the age of 2, but it was stopped from landing on her by the handle of the closet door. She was unharmed, but I still have a little PTSD from that incident. To this day, I still don’t like blonde-wood furniture.

We are cleaning up the mess, I need to fix the wall, and figure out a replacement for the desk that broke the fall. I am grateful that no one was hurt. It is clear our angels are on it and I think I need to make a cake- for the fire department.

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