CRASH!
The shelf in the bathroom medicine cabinet— the shelf that until that moment provided support for a variety of jars and bottles— came crashing down. Along with everything that was on it. As well as a few additional bottles that had been housed below.
I’m proud to say I met this unfolding of events somewhat calmly. I was surprised of course. This wasn’t what I was expecting when I had opened the cabinet to reach for my hair product.
Assessing the situation through somewhat-calm-lenses, my first concern was spillage and broken glass. Some of my things had fallen into the sink and others, traveling as far as gravity could take them, were now lying marooned on the floor. Luckily, none had spilled, and nothing was broken. So, I righted the upturned and found temporary housing on the sink for the now homeless— because the one thing I knew for certain was that the only reason that shelf fell was because one of its tiny support pins had fallen out. I was almost certain I knew the culprit. It had been loose before— though not to the point of upheaval. It had loosened because, over time, the hole it was in had widened and so, at the time, I’d re-slotted all four into new holes to avoid impending upheaval.
Standing now, in the aftermath of upheaval, a look into the cabinet confirmed my suspicions. Three of the four clear plastic support pins were present. My somewhat-calm-lenses cracked. The pins were tiny. If the missing one had fallen onto the bathroom floor— a floor that provided not much of a contrast to said pin—my search would likely rival that of the needle in the haystack incident.
Picking up my flashlight, I got down on the floor. Nothing. Standing back up, once more I combed the sink area— even looking behind one the bottles that had been living below the shelf. Again, nothing.
By this point, I was resigning myself to going to Target or a nearby hardware store to find a replacement. I didn’t want to. But I needed to get that shelf, and all the bottles and jars who called it home, back into place. So I made the decision to add the unexpected shopping trip to my day’s to-do list. I also took a moment to verbalize how open I was to this miraculously working out— however that looked and felt. On the heels of that, I promptly revisited all of the places I’d just searched, because, well, hope. The result? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Needing to get on with my day, but wanting a visual for when I went shopping, I placed one of the three pins in a clear plastic bag and put it in my purse. Then I finished getting ready.
On the spur of the moment I decided I wanted to put on a particular scented oil. So I reached back into the medicine cabinet, took the bottle out of the bag where it lived and found the missing pin. It had been obscured by the bottle and further camouflaged due to the clear plastic nature of pin and bag.
Steadily chanting a mantra of “Thank yous,” I rehoused the shelf to a higher set of holes and moved the tenants back in. I didn’t have to go pin shopping anymore 🥳 My miraculous outcome after all😊