On Wednesday, I had a phone appointment and a Zoom presentation, as well as the usual load of worky stuff. I also stepped into a bit of a tar pit first thing in the morning morning. In the course of the past few months, the blinds in the kids’ rooms had both gone kaput. The pull strings were all messed up, and the final straw came when one of the blinds in Henry’s room actually broke in half.
I’ll admit to you that after it happened I may have had a fleeting moment’s thought of, “I wonder if I could tape that back together?” That thought may have only lasted 3 seconds, but let’s be honest. That’s 4 seconds too many.
Erin took the much more sensible approach of calling the manufacturer to check on the warranty. Indeed they were covered and would be replaced, free of charge. Huzzah! That is “free of” is definitely my favorite charge.
It turned out that the model we had in the kids’ room has bene discontinued, so we were getting a slight upgrade for the replacements. Hooray, again!
I was assuming I’d just easily slide the old blinds out and put the new ones in the existing brackets. Since the new blinds arrived late the previous day, I figured I’d quick tackle it in the morning. I got the old ones removed and was well into trying to shove the new ones in when Erin calmly and intelligently pointed out that the new ones were wider than the existing brackets. My usual approach of, “if I just shove this a little harder,” ran afoul of the basic law of physics that says two physical objects cannot occupy the same space.
So the downside of the blind upgrade was that it, of course, required an entirely different mounting system. So what I thought was a five minute job went a little longer. Not that it was terrible, or anything. It took me a little more than an hour, and probably would have taken a competent human being about 20 minutes.
I probably spent a good 30 percent of that time going up and down the stairs each time I realized, “Oh wait, I need the other screwdriver,” or “oh wait, I left the other set of brackets downstairs.” It was a real organized, cracker jack operation. And an excellent example of why you don’t want to call me for help with your home projects.
But it got done and the new blinds are pretty sweet. They hang there and keep out the light, as blinds are supposed to do. And I didn’t even have to use any tape.
After work, we hung out in the backyard and decided to play a little baseball, just as hurricane force winds whipped up. Still, we got some good hits in.
After that, we packed it in and called it a night. It was another long and tiring day, and at least we had some sweet new blinds to keep things nice and dark for a good night’s sleep.
