Utter destruction... and me in my bra

A few months ago, our closet imploded. We had lived in the house for just over 3 years at that point, and the shelves in the closet were typical crappy wire shelves stuck into the drywall. When we moved in, we shoved everything that we were too lazy to find a place for into the closet, and there it stayed. My blood pressure shot up just walking in to it. One Sunday afternoon, I heard a huge "WHOOOOOMP" and tried to open the door to no avail. Approximately 11 feet of wire shelves, packed to the gills with entirely too many clothes that don't fit and sweaters that are too warm for Tennessee hit the floor. Large chunks of drywall came out with them. The shelves were twisted beyond recognition.

So, what did I do? Me, who at one time wanted to be an ER doc because I think well on my feet? I melted down. Not just an "oh, mother fucker" meltdown, but a weeping and snarling and refusing to let H anywhere near me to help clean the pathetic mess up. My meltdown was fueled by the fact that H was about to go to church imminently. He offered to stay to help sort it all out (and, to his credit and my eternal gratitude, did stay) but I wanted him to be out of my house and my sight and not come back for a very long time until I figured it all out.

It goes without saying that I was off my meds at this point. No job + no desire to go to doctor + general feelings of "okay, just let me die now" = lunatic.

It took us about an hour to get all of the debris out of the closet and (somewhat) organized on the bed in one of the spare bedrooms. It took days to be able to speak to each other again.

Eventually, we went to Lowe's and bought new shelves. H had expressed doubt from the beginning, but I was determined that we would be able to put them up and that they would be just as strong and marvelous, if not more so, than the originals. I put them up when he was at work one day, and showed off my labors like a 5-year-old bringing home artwork for Mommy. He shook his head and humored me. We probably spent about $100.

Ever since then, I have held my breath every time that I walked into the closet. I knew that it was a matter of time before the tsunami hit again, but I had no idea that it would be so soon. This is where it gets weird, though. I keep my pajamas in my dresser, which is outside of the closet. Tonight, for whatever reason, I chose to change into my pajamas IN the closet, putting my dirty clothes directly into the hamper. I was able to get the bottoms on without incident, but all hell broke loose once I got my shirt off. One of the two shelves collapsed, and I screamed for help (wearing my bra and pajama bottoms). H came running, expecting bloodshed at the least, and was not at all surprised to see most of his clothes dangling by one or two drywall screws.

We put the clothes on the bed in the spare bedroom yet again, and then H vanished into the media room. I am sure that he was expecting another full meltdown. I went downstairs, poured myself a glass of wine, and started researching shelving units on line. All of the options suck.

1. We can buy more stupid wire shelves and count the minutes until they collapse.
2. We can buy some shelving units at Lowe's that we would have to assemble ourselves and would cost us probably $1000 by the time that we got everything that we needed.
3. We can call in the professionals.
   

We're opting for #3. I can't even imagine how much this will cost us. Thank God for home equity loans.