There's something to that pendulum theory....

Every now and then, I get so bogged down in the little failures, I forget that after half a dozen things go wrong, the pendulum will swing back in the other direction and something will go right!

I was whining (and I'm SO good at that) about the glitches lately......

* my machine and the "kerthunk" noise that started right before I completed the quilt on the frame last week,
* the further necessity to rip out an entire row of meandering quilting due to tension issues,
* the need for repeated application of "only one application necessary" stripper on the Kitchen Kabinet Projekt,
* and just two days ago, the reminder of the agony involved in any attempt to hang a drape, curtain, blind or valance in this house....

That last glitch, of course, was due to a cleaning fit I had on Saturday. It was one of those inexplicable things that over take me....where I started out just straightening my office, and continued on to completely clean the office from ceiling cob webs, spackling of holes, and scrubbing of floor boards, right on to ripping out old blinds and installing a new windowshade.

I've decided blinds, cute and retro as they are (I have fond memories of my grandmother's home, lace curtains and breezes in the summertime!).......they are the Window Covering Choice I Do Not Need.

I am heartily sick of the need to dust them, and I am even more sick of seeing them dusty because I failed to dust them, and the most sick of all of having to take them down and outside to be hosed off because they are that dirty when I finally decide to do anything about them. So, I got a simple light-blocking pull-down shade for the office window. No dusting will be needed. Ever. :)

Hanging a blind or shade should NOT be difficult. But in this house, unlike any other house we've ever owned (and there have been several!) it's a really large pain in my really large derriere. There is something about the frame that makes it seemingly impossible to screw in the brackets to hold the shade, blind or curtain rods.

This time, I spent almost 45 minutes on my knees on top of my desk, which is currently shored up with 2x4's in my attempt to continue using a perfectly good desk which is unstable from being moved upstairs and downstairs (long story, but suffice it to say that moving a desk built and held together with "cams" is not a good idea). I was kneeling on it, praying I didn't rock it too much, while I predrilled little holes and spackled old holes, and tried to install the brackets.

I was the entertainment source for our neighbor, I'm sure, as I alternately loudly groaned and strained, then cursed a blue streak, and then dissolved into the ugly crying and whining streak, and finally, took nails and while cursing in clipped, concise, focused manner (an important force-boosting mechanism) I hammered them in and bent them into position to hold the darn brackets, and installed the shade which now functions beautifully.

I put everything back where it belonged in the office and collapsed, gazing with no small satisfaction on the order, cleanliness and lack of chaos in my little corner of the business world.

The next day, my elderly knees were not thanking me for that time spent kneeling and straining on the desk. And insult was added to injury when I realized that the window (which has to be lifted out of the frame in order to scrub the screen side of the glass) had been reinstalled..... shiny and clean....

upside down!

I finally calmed down enough to clear the desk again, gingerly climb up and kneel on a folded quilt, remove the installed shade, and once again, moan, groan, and finally power-curse my window out of the frame, turn it, and reinstall it in the frame again.

All this serves as background information for where I am taking this post. Yes, I do have a point! Bet you thought I'd never get to it! Hold your water, as my grandmother used to say....

Here is what happens when Max the Wuss Magnificent decides to frantically try to make a new doorway out of the house in the midst of one of his panic attacks (one of the fire detectors had the audacity to beep because the battery was low).

I ordered a new blind. I figured we'd install it, and just keep the thing pulled up, all the time, until we are ready to move someday. We'll only lower it for home showings....

maybe.

I ordered it on March 6, 2007.















(See? just keeping it real, as Pioneerwoman likes to say! I love how she "keeps it real" on her blog and I try to poke fun at myself as well as my family and their antics on my own blog!)

Anyway, they were delivered in just a few days......and they have languished behind my office door, waiting for me to develop enough intestinal fortitude to hang them.

The cleaning fit in the office unearthed them, yet again, and this time, I decided I'd try to get them up. Only this time, I was going to concede defeat, remove my Domestic Goddess crown for a week, and give up my title......and hire someone to hang the blessed blinds. I even had a great idea about hiring someone who did it for a living (a transcriptionist who worked for me long ago now worked for a blinds company, and might have been a source of a referral) and paying them under the table to just stop by on the way home one night and hang it for me.

Then while I was working this morning, I had a far-fetched idea fly through my brain. (This happens often. I was diagnosed with ADD before it had that name, when I was in third grade!)

Wouldn't it be grand if such things were standardized and all blinds fit the same brackets? So that if you had to replace one, and replaced it with a blind made by a different company, you could just pop it in the old brackets?

See, we had bought the originals and had them installed 15 years ago, from one blind company......and I bought the replacement with a 50% off coupon, on top of a half price sale on custom blinds at J.C. Penneys. So the frugal result was great, but I figured I'd have to hang it myself.

And I procrastinated. For FOURTEEN MONTHS.

So after that lightning bolt of a great idea flew through my mind......I thought.....I wonder if the new ones might actually fit the old brackets......

What the heck - It couldn't hurt to try, right?

So I ripped down the old curtains (tattered and torn) and threw them away. I took down the old blinds. I opened the new ones.......I climbed up in the chair and I tried to fit the new blinds into the old brackets.

And.......

The pendulum swung back the other way...............



















It worked! The top piece of these blinds is actually smaller (vertically) than the one I was replacing....it was a tight squeeze horizontally, but when carefully lined up and gently pushed, they popped into place....


I was speechless. Then I did a dance. Then I took a look at the 8 plastic parts and screws needed to hold on the valance (piece of wood that covers the brackets and top of the blind). I remembered the previous one was held on with Velcro. Hmmmmm........ "screw that!" I thought (no pun intended). Five minutes later I had installed four strips of Velcro in appropriate spots and slapped that wooden valence up there....















I was positively giddy with happiness. Of course, I could have been giddy with happiness fourteen months ago if my feeble mind had just had that lightbulb moment sooner....

but being this giddy today? this will do!