A life lesson

 This post is for those of you amongst my Tribe who tend to procrastinate and then get fired up (almost as if someone had lit a fire under one's nevermind) and tackle a bunch of stuff at once, because you are My People and you'll get this.

Last year, I never hung our heavy drapes in the Old Lady Room. I left up the sheer cream and wine colored curtains because I wanted more light in a room that has a wine colored carpet and greenblack walls and no overhead light. What the builders were thinking when they left no light fixture is beyond me. We've since found wine colored lamp shades for two of the table lamps in addition to the halogen lamp stationed in the corner. It's still darker that we'd like most of the time, hence the light-penetrating curtains.

However, this week it got down into the 30s at night and I definitely noticed a chill on the back of my neck and shoulders whilst I was sitting on the couch which abuts the big windows. I figured I should probably rehang the cream colored, insulated drapes. Sometime. Soonish. Probably.

For some reason, I decided that time would be this morning.

Before I had taken my allergy meds.

Before I vacummed up what used to be spider webs and moths and stinkbugs.

Before I remembered that drapes require curtain hooks, I was already behind the couch, but before that I had said, "move, Couch."

Couch merely snickered at me and said, "yo, move this."

So I attempted a shove. Not a big one, just a "get outta my way so I can hang the dang curtains" shove. 

Couch wasn't having it.

I realized, in fact, the slider thingies were not permanently under Couch, something I should have checked first. 

"Fine. I will get behind you and do this anyway."

Lest you think the other members of my household are awful people who could have lent a hand, they were already working on the sink in the loo which has been dripping and dripping faster and is now drippingdrippingdripping alarmingly fast. We've kept a mixing bowl underneath and have been using the water to keep the water bowls full for the dogs and have been watering plants with it but I know we are losing some down the drain. I didn't want to deter that progress.

So there's me, squashed in the less than a foot of space behind Couch and the window wall. I'd had the foresight to dump all the drapes onto Couch, but they were still all folded into each other from two springs ago when I put them away. I'm twisting to reach and detangle the drapes when I realized, "oh *insert pirate-y talk here*, these need the dang hooks!"

I holler to Damon, who is in the room we call the Library as he has the day off school, and he appears in only his underpants, device in hand, as I try to twist further to gesture to what I need and where they are across the room from me. As he retrieves the plastic cup containing all the hooks (yes, we run a classy establishment around here, I know), they dump out and he's trying to simultaneously stuff them back into the cup whilst watching his video. 

Eventually, he hands me the cup (and had fetched me the vacuum, as well) and I start threading those into the drapes, all the while cursing living in a climate where anyone even needs to have summer and winter curtains and the fact that I was smashing the Count Chocula that I'd had after my Cheerios and that I probably should have pooped first.

I'm reminded of something my Mary Alice had shown me years ago; a sign that started off in huge letters cautioning PLAN AHEAd with a tiny, smashed letter d because they ran out of room. Somedays that is my life.

But the drapes are up! Just in time for it to be in the 70s again most of this week. If anyone needs me I'll be washing the sheers.