Cellar Archeology 002, In which the stern god of John Winthrop and Roger Williams drops a dime on our hero

We were out late last night, had great fun but maybe too much bourbon and too late a dinner and I was feeling low about myself this morning, bloated and boggy, and I decided to go down to the cellar and get on the bike (Lori's, which winters on the trainer) and try to exhaust or exhilarate myself.

So down I headed and midway, damned if one of the stairs didn't let loose and I crashed through, cartoon style, one leg straight down until my crotch found the next stair. As it was inconvenient to fall further, I pitched into the stone wall at my side.

I wasn't really hurt (as measured by bones sticking through flesh and clothing), but lost some skin here and there and was deeply banged. As the shock wore off and I was still astraddle the broken stairs, friends, a wave of sadness washed over me that I can barely describe, and won't really try. Sad deep sadness. Big nauseating waves of mama.

Have I mentioned in any recent posts that I'm reading Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates? I don't think I have. Great book. (Heffernan at the Times hates it. Or hates SV. Or both. She has her knickers in a twist about it. She doesn't think I should be learning from a comedic smart-ass, she thinks I should be learning from a serious academic. But, Heff, I already didn't do that.) Opened my eyes to the Massachusetts Bay plantation founders. I'm about three quarters of the way through. At a few junctures in the book there are events which those men and women 350 years ago clearly took to be their lord giving them big hints about what to do or not do: they are aghast when their brethren don't take the hints.

Sooo, anyways, there I am, weepy on the broken stairs, John Winthrop and Roger Williams looking on from Calvinist heaven. OK. I hear you, dudes. I'm pretty sure the message isn't just to fix the stairs. I'm working on it.

(By the by, this isn't the first time I've gone through that staircase.)

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Strangers are typically pretty leery about going down our cellar stairs - or are after they take one or two of the stairs and feel a little rocking action.In the pic on the left, the stairs that have no carpeting on them are ones that were badly damaged and I reattached, or simply gave way under me. (You can't see the bald stair second from the top - that was a lulu.) The avocado shag holds an astounding quantity of dust and sand and who knows what, so I've learned to strip it off out of doors. The repair in the pic isn't today's stair - it's one of the older ones. For today's I used some two by three, and three inch screws.