Shattered

This past weekend we made a trip to Home Depot to return the tiller that we had purchased less than 2 weeks ago.  Frustrating, right?  But thankfully we did get our money back, and ultimately it was the cheapest 9 day rental of a tiller ever.  Unfortunately, we weren't done tilling when it decided to stop working, so our progress in gardening was greatly impeded. 

"But Lisa, what does all of that have to do with the title of this post?" 

Well, funny you should ask.

When we returned home from the aforementioned Home Depot trip, I gasped in utter horror when I saw this:

I was totally convinced that someone had broken into our house. 

But upon closer inspection we learned that was not the case.  Instead, it was just a storm window that was poorly secured by little "hingy" things that clearly weren't properly hinged.  The last piece that was holding that window in must have finally given way when were out, releasing the window and causing it to shatter to the ground. 

I bet Murphy was barking his little heart out when that happened.... I can only imagine.

So Dave spent Sunday morning cleaning up glass shards off of the sidewalk and out of the grass.  If you've even broken anything made of glass before (and if you haven't, then you're truly amazing) you'll know that glass shards fly in crazy ways, and that for days after the broken glass incident, you'll be finding glass in places that seem miles away from the site of the actual break.  Every time I walked out the front door another glinting piece of glass caught my eye.  I was afraid to take Murphy out that door, lest a shard of glass imbed itself into the pads of his feet.

So now we need to decide - should we replace it?  Should we let it be?  Should we take this as a sign that we should get a new door (the actual door is sort of awful - the handle doesn't work right and it leaks quite a bit of air.)  Unfortunately, buying a new door is definitely NOT in the budget right now, and after seeing all of the condensation that built up on the inside of the window overnight, I can definitely tell that those storm windows actually serve a useful purpose.  We're going to need to replace it before the next winter season... Fortunately, we have lots of time before that happens!