The Great Shelf Disaster Of '09

In preparation for our new flooring, I decided to get started on moving my Snow White collection out of the curio cabinet today. I had taken everything off the bottom two shelves and most everything off the third shelf when it hit...

The Great Shelf Disaster Of '09!

The top shelf tipped and crashed down onto the next shelf. Then went the two lower shelves. I caught and braced as well as I could. I yelled for Cliff. Elizabeth was near, but not close enough to get hurt. Cliff came running down the stairs and helped me with the stuff I was holding up (those shelves are heavy!) and Elizabeth cried because she was scared and I had yelled at her to get back (there was broken glass on the floor.) Luckily Catherine was upstairs asleep (and somehow managed to sleep through the crying and yelling.)

As I cleaned up the pieces I saved all the ones that were bigger than a pencil eraser, hoping that some of them could be fixed. After everything was cleaned, I felt like a triage nurse as I assessed the status of each figurine. The four shelves were unscathed. There were two that I tagged as DOA; unfixable. They were both relatively inexpensive ones from Wal-Mart.

The next ones were unhurt, not needing any fixing.

Then came the ones that were taken to the ER. These needed various body parts reattached.

Finally, there were the ones which required major reconstruction. I had gathered as many pieces of them as I could, hoping it would be enough.

I got out the glue, toothpicks, and a paper towel. I began reconstruction on the worst of them first, then working on the others while waiting for the glue to dry enough to continue.

I reattached 5 arms, 6 hands, one set of arms holding a flute, a violin bow, the neck of a bass fiddle, 6 heads, a finger, and 3 feet. Of the two that were completely rebuilt, one had 18 pieces (and not all of his butt was reattached) and the other had 17 pieces (and part of his foot is still missing.) One figure will be missing a nose for the rest of his life, and one Snow White is missing a hand and all of the fingers on the other hand.

After all the reconstruction, I looked again at the casualties and the little one looked so much like Catherine that I had to try and save her. She came together very easily, but will now have a hole in the side of her head the exact size and shape of a shelf peg. The other casualty was fairly easy also, and a large red bow will now hide the worst of the damage.

[Irony: I talked to Suzanne yesterday about this very thing happening.]