Trivets. What are they?
That is the question I posed to myself this morning while seated in my favorite chair in the barn apartment, enjoying a cup of coffee I brewed myself because Polly is too busy cataloguing something or other at the library to bring me one. The coffee was adequate. The cup was hot. I needed something to set it on. And there it was. A trivet.
My moustache tingled.
Trivets, for those of you in Moose County who have never encountered one, are flat objects. They sit on surfaces. You put hot things on them. Why? Because tables, apparently, can be damaged. Can they? I suppose they can. I wouldn’t know. Everything in the barn apartment was furnished through the Klingenschoen Fund, and replacing a table would be a perfectly legitimate estate expense, but I am told by certain attorneys that I should use trivets anyway.
Koko, who has been pushing a particular volume of the encyclopedia off the shelf all week — the “T” volume, I might add — seemed to know I would be writing about this topic before I did. Is he psychic? Almost certainly. Yum Yum, meanwhile, stole my trivet and batted it under the refrigerator, which I take as editorial commentary of the highest order.
Speaking of theft, there have been four burglaries in Pickax this month, two of which involved the disappearance of decorative kitchen items. Chief Brodie assures me this is unrelated to the arson on Ittibittiwassee Road last Tuesday or the body found behind the Hotel Booze. In a town of three thousand, these things simply happen. Do they? Apparently they do. I myself was near all three locations on the days in question, which is merely coincidence and nobody should read anything into it.
I considered purchasing a new trivet at Scottish Janet’s shop but found the prices unreasonable. Four dollars. For a flat piece of ceramic. I left empty-handed and later submitted a memo to the K Fund suggesting that trivets for the barn apartment be classified as “historical preservation materials.” This is perfectly defensible.
Are trivets beautiful? Some are. Are they necessary? Debatable. Are squirrels still stealing the birdseed I put out at considerable personal expense? Yes. But that is a column for another day.
Trivets.
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