Decorating...

Without great progress, I've been slowly making my way around the house, occasionally "decorating" a bit.

When we first got to the new house, I unpacked a few boxes of pictures and things that we hadn't had out since Tucson. I placed many of these things on our fireplace mantle to keep them out of little hands that might break them.

Yesterday, I was rearranging things on the mantle and, of course, I broke them. All the ceramic frames from Mexico, the glass in the photo frames, and our hand-painted wedding plate we'd been given (which was already cracked in a few places but epoxied back together) crashed in dramatic fashion on the brick fireplace. NOTHING was spared and nothing was fixable. Ceramics and brick are like the Hedron collider: Whole new worlds may have been formed in the shattering.

Ada, hovering nearby watching a little TV but out of harm's way, had a look of wonder, bewilderment, and "haha! it wasn't me!" on her face as the pieces crashed to the ground. I told her it was a HUGE MISTAKE and she said, "MISHTACK!" and I said, "Yeah! What a mess!" She agreed.

After vacuuming up the pieces and tossing the shards, we went about our business.

This morning, she picked up a little art glass night light from a box I was rummaging through. I told her, "That's fragile. It's glass. ... so be careful."

She looked at the object in her hand, looked at me, and then pointed at the fireplace mantle.

Point taken, kid, point taken.