Defeat

Events transpired against me and my painting clock ran out of time. Rats. We leave tomorrow for Small Town to get our furniture (YAY!) and the rest of our junk (not so yay). My in-laws left this morning, so I thought I would get at least a good start on Q's room, but it was not to be.

First, I had to move Q and Z out of there and into Z's room. This would have been fine, but Z doesn't have light-blocking shades for nap time. Q has a hard enough time sleeping with his sister singing/banging toys/actively disturbing him without having to contend with light, too.

So off I went to Home Depot for a roller shade. Easy peasy, right? Well, it might have been if I hadn't managed to pick up the one shade on the entire shelf that was missing one of the end pieces. After a return trip to the store to exchange the shade, we were back to the house to install the blind.

I am a girl who has my own power tools, so I know my way around a drill. My dad and I remodeled a kitchen from the studs out. And yet somehow I was defeated by a dang roller shade. I installed the first bracket without a problem. Then I measured and marked for the second bracket. So far, so good.

When I drilled the holes in the wall, the screws missed the stud and were just spinning. No problem, I'll just insert a wall anchor. I have never ever had a wall anchor spin. Until today. I guess the walls had been repaired with toothpaste or something, but it would not hold an anchor. The second anchor was holding, so I figured I was okay.

Until I tried to hang the shade. I somehow managed to install one of the brackets backwards/upside down. That shouldn't matter, should it? Well apparently it does. Those little flimsy pieces of tin bent all to pieces when I tried to hang the actual shade. I managed to get it hung up after working myself up into a full-body sweat and teaching the kids a few new vocabulary words.

So now I can put the kids down for their naps... except that they are wired for sound from all the installation excitement. The only way I can get them to lie down is to lie down with them. There goes my painting time.

And to top it all off? When I tried to open the blind? It fell on my head. If T loves me he will re-hang it while I am gone and we will never speak of it again. Unfortunately, that isn't how things work around here. He will re-hang it, but then he will tease me about it until I am dead. I can hardly wait.