Domino effect.

It's 3am and I'm holding my breath. I'm listening. Someone just screamed What the fuck?! from the apartment directly above me and now they're walking around up there. I am frozen and actively trying to look through my ceiling tiles to see what's going on up there. Since my x-ray vision isn't working, I try my telepathy. Go back to sleep. Go the hell back to sleep. You're not being robbed. It was all a dream. I wait it out. Once twenty minutes goes by, it's safe to continue. Which reminds me, I need to replace the batteries in my kitchen clock. It's been 5:15 in my kitchen since October.

It all started Sunday. It could have actually started on Saturday and I was simply too rushed and crazy to notice anything until Sunday. I came home to a flooded kitchen. I took off my socks and tried to find the source of all the water. This proved impossible since it was everywhere and could have been coming up through the tiles for all I knew. I gave up and decided to have a Dr. Pepper. That's when I noticed the can was warm and the smell - like a coconut won a hot dog eating contest and then vomited in my refrigerator before setting itself on fire. But, having just come home from work and it being 2am, I wasn't that worried about investigating the smell. I simply adjusted the temperature controls in the back of the fridge and shut the door. I removed a large tumbler from my cupboard and opened the freezer expecting to find the 22lb. bag of ice that I keep there and instead finding only a waterfall that rushed out at me and soaked the rest of my clothing. I screamed and shut the door, too late to stop anything. I stood dripping and listening to the people upstairs investigating the disturbance. I put the cup down on the counter and canvassed the kitchen floor with towels. Thankfully, I had enough since I'm not in the habit of loaning them to neighbours. I am, however, just recently in the habit of waking them up at all hours of the night with screaming and kitchen insanity.

I had successfully solved the mystery of the flooded kitchen. My refrigerator was broken. During the course of one or more days, the ice in the freezer had melted and was slowly leaking out. I accelerated that process when I opened the freezer. Now, I needed a plan. First, I needed a solution and then a plan. But before I did anything, I had to be absolutely certain there wasn't a simpler explanation for my problem. A less expense explanation, possibly. I moved the refrigerator and utilized an alternate power outlet. Perhaps, it seemed, there was something wrong with the outlet. Maybe it shorted out or wasn't providing the proper wattage to sustain a refrigerator of that size. So, I would wait and see if I could salvage the thing. When it still remained unresponsive after nearly a day of waiting, I knew I needed to replace the thing.

Since I don't really use my refrigerator for much else than soda and occasional lunch meats, I opted for a small dorm-sized fridge. Once I obtained that, I set it up in my kitchen next to the other one. That solved half of my problem, but now I had a very large and completely useless appliance and no idea what to do with it. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. I began the joyless task of food salvation from the larger fridge into the smaller one. I filled a 30 gallon garbage bag with spoiled food which I drug out to the dumpster in the box the new fridge came in. I noticed what a fantastic job the weighted box had done at plowing a path through the snow. I knew what I had to do next, but I would wait for a more opportune time to carry out the next phase of my plan.

Around 3am, I decided the time had come. I had acquired a dolly and convinced myself it would be so easy to simply load the thing, wheel it out to the dumpster, and be done with it. And under the cover of night, no one would have any idea. I wouldn't have to explain anything to anyone. The path I made earlier had been there all day long so anyone observant enough to notice it would have noticed it before and not necessarily be able to assume any connection between the two. People dump shit out there all the time. It's more like the community dumpster than just the apartment community dumpster. Yes, brilliant. I put way too much thought into all of it.

Before I tell you how it all went horribly wrong, I should take a moment to paint a more detailed landscape of my kitchen for you.

I have three cupboards, a lazy susan, and only one drawer in my kitchen. The drawer is about six inches wide. I have elected to store my vast cutlery set there. I've had to get very creative with my kitchen organization and storage. I have clear bins for utensils. I installed shelves for food stuff and cooking ware. It's been a process. I could make a career out of efficiently designing kitchens the size of bathrooms.

My mistake was overestimating the distance between the refrigerator and the shelves I installed. I would have been alright if they weren't the cheapest shelves I could find. Basically, they are strips of metal screwed into the wall which I then slide brackets into and then sit the painted wooden shelves on. They just hang there, precariously waiting for a disaster. They didn't have to wait long. When I heard the metal bracket bouncing back and forth between the fridge and the wall as it fell, I knew something terrible was about to happen. Oh shit. I thought helplessly. Something terrible just happened. I decided that if I didn't move, everything would be fine. I could maintain the status quo of impending doom and keep it at bay by simply forbidding the inevitable from occurring. I would simply stand there holding my refrigerator at a 45 degree angle while simultaneously wedging a bracketless shelf between the refrigerator and the wall forever. Because of the extreme nature of the situation, I couldn't reach anything to do much else without altering the angle of the fridge and disrupting the fragile balance of my tiny kitchen universe. Damn it. I thought, setting the refrigerator back up into a fully upright position. Gravity and the domino effect did the rest.

What happened next was total insanity. I watched in horror as the shelves collapsed - each one unbalancing the next, metal brackets went flying, cooking ware crashed and smashed through boxes of food stuff. For about five seconds, my kitchen was possessed by furious demons. I clamped both hands over my mouth to keep from screaming or laughing or something. Someone in the apartment above me shrieked What the fuck?! in a way that sent chills rippling through me. They were truly frightened which frightened me. I stood there in complete shock just looking at the carnage. Once the footsteps stopped upstairs, I relaxed a little. I remained silent, like a kitchen devastating ninja, for the next twenty minutes while I chain-smoked and not much else but sigh.

It actually was rather easy moving the refrigerator after that. I decided I would reclaim the kitchen when I woke up later that morning. I would even vacuum once the floor dried completely.