The Broken Bed

As I'm sitting in my living room earlier today I hear a horrendous crash from upstairs. Having been a parent for 12 years I know better then to go rushing up and see what happened as there is no screaming, crying or other noises that would indicate an injury. Instead what I hear is the sudden silence of conspiracy from children who know without a doubt that their life expectancy has just been reduced by a unknown number of years.

I didn't have to call them, they came downstairs just minutes later on their own. Only rarely does that happen and when it does I know it's not just bad, it's really bad. I close my eyes and say a quick silent prayer that after they've confessed I will still have the same number of children that I started the day with.

They eye each other, silently communicating, trying to decide who's going to do the talking. Katie is elected and steps forward to speak with me. Now, as a single parent I don't have the luxury of an extra set of hands to help with repairs and I know before she opens her mouth that I'm going to be wishing for more hands before this is over.

"We just sat down Mom" Katie says, "honest, it must be because all three of us sat on the bed at the same time"

I want to laugh but don't dare. I heard what sounded like a very large elephant stomping across the floor at a fast clip followed by the sound of breaking furniture and they would like me to believe that they just sat down on the bed? HaaHaa right!

Wanting to give them one more chance I ask "are you sure that's what happened?" I get three nods accompanied with two uh huh's.....

I wound up having to recruit some help to fix that stupid bed this afternoon. There's no way in hell three kids did that by sitting on it. To fix it we had to hammer the bolts out of the frame while prying the metal rail back out of the way with a large flat head screw driver at the same time trying to hold the peices of the frame at just the right angle so that those bolts could be hammered out. The hardware is ruined-- yup, I'll be going to homedepot. The cat's are gonna love being able to get inside the box spring until I find the time to recover it but hey, we did manage to get the bent rail straighten back out.

In the end I managed to not kill my daughter and two nephews but I think it was only due to the fact that I was to tired to try.