Broken Window

The kids thought it would be fun to open Tayler's window and wave down to me. I was annoyed because it was a cold day, and because I was in the middle of talking with the neighbor.

They shouted HI! and MOM! LOOK UP HERE!

I was busy staring at the broken downspout, hanging by a screw from the house, trying to figure out how I would fix it as Scott had suggested and listening to the neighbor tell me about a handyman who could take care of the problem.

The downspout detached itself from the house during a particularly windy evening this week. Scott and I were watching a movie. The kids had just gone to bed. We heard something hit the house, and the kids came running downstairs yelling that someone was trying to get in the house.

We sent them back up telling them it was fine, and thinking that the neighbors had picked an interesting time to start some handy work - because the sound didn't actually seem to be coming from our house, but from the neighbors.

The kids came down several more times. Scott went to bed, and curiosity finally got the best of me and I found the downspout broken.

As I was listening to the neighbor the next day, the kids yelling at me, I looked up at them and told them to shut the window.

They started to shut the window, but stopped. It wouldn't move. They asked me to come up and help. I made to go inside but then they said, NO! We've got it!

Little did I know that Tyler's knitting needle had fallen from the ledge on the window, wedged itself in between the top and bottom panes, and when the window was forced shut, it cracked the window. A little bit.

The kids didn't even see it at first. But the crack kept growing. They told me about it, describing as if they were telling me about a mark on the wall, or a scuff on the floor. When I came upstairs, I saw that the window was cracked in two. And the culprit, that damned knitting needle, was right there in the middle of it.

I tried to get the needle out, but moving the window at all made pieces of glass fall into the house.

I called Scott then, he called Kelly, got the name for a handyman and the whole thing was fixed within four hours.