I am feeling guilty about blowing off the beach until the
six o'clock news comes on the television.
I planned on going to the beach a few times this week, and so far it
hasn't happened.
Don't get me wrong: I love the beach and I really do have
good intentions of getting there more often than I actually do. The beach and I are like this (pretend you
can see me crossing my index finger over my middle finger and accompanying it
all with a really interesting facial expression). I even have the whole day planned out and it
revolves around the three hours I plan on spending at North Beach.
But I toss and turn this morning, unable to get back to
sleep, because my To Do List is gnawing at me while the summer clock ticks down
to my Ground Zero -- The First Day of the School Year. I still have not gotten my passport, nor have
I cleaned the basement, finished the spare room, painted over the stains in the
living room ceiling from an ice jam a few winters back, reviewed Spanish for
the language exam I must pass this fall, nor turned on my school laptop to
teach myself how to use the SmartBoard program.
I decide that my day at the beach will only turn into me
watching the clock and thinking about all the things I should be doing instead
of lounging around enjoying life.
Grudgingly I get into regular clothes and head out to Home Depot.
Today I will replace the window shades that are so old most
of them have broken and no longer open without serious machinations, loops of
yarn, and other homemade contraptions. I
have been to Home Depot before to solve this dilemma, but they never have the
cheapo shades I need because I'll be damned if I am going to replace the
mounting mechanisms and start from scratch.
Damn. I've been
damned.
Even though Home Depot.com claims the store has the shades,
I've always been unable to locate them.
Today I am determined to re-shade or bust, only there will be no busting
this time. I'm not leaving here until I
have the shades I need. I wait and wait
and wait for someone to come along, and then she has to cut a rug (literally,
as in truly cut a length of carpet on a giant bladed machine, not dance around
the store) before she can help me.
Cue the grumpy old guy.
Grumpy Old Guy is not the person scheduled to work that
department today, but he agrees to help me.
He convinces me that if I really want to go cheap, mini blinds are the
best bet. I've had mini blinds before,
even put them up myself, but I remember they are dust magnets, especially in
the spring when all the pollen gets into the house. In the end, I am far cheaper than I am lazy,
so I go with the $5 mini blinds. I need
eight of them. Good deal.
Until Grumpy Old Guy discovers I need two of them cut to
size.
Of course the ones to be cut are the $15 blinds. They can't cut the cheap ones because they
are the cheap ones. It turns out that
half my total bill is for the two cut blinds
Pissah start.
I get the blinds home and realize that the directions are
too convoluted to follow. They're done
in pictures. I am not a visual
learner. To make it worse, the two
expensive blinds have totally different directions than the cheapo ones.
Pissah again.
I realize that I don't have all the supplies I need because
my children have pilfered my tool cabinet over the years. I do not have a single Phillips head
screwdriver left out of the half dozen I've owned over the years. I scour the house and eventually find one, so
I get to work with the flimsy Phillips head screwdriver on the brackets, first
taking the old brackets out by hand and then putting the new brackets in. Sixty minutes later, one window is finished.
Halfway through the second window, I realize that living in
an old house totally and completely sucks ass.
One reason is because the walls leak cold air in the winter. Another reason is because it's infested with
silverfish, which I find offensive and disgusting and absolutely hideous. But mostly this old house sucks ass because
it is completely plastered. The guy who
owns it is an exceptionally talented Italian artisan who plastered this house
old school style. As soon as I start
trying to work on hanging the blinds, plaster dust is everywhere.
I give up and go get the electric drill that I own. It's cordless, and I've only used it a few
times. I can't even remember how to work
the damn thing, so I peruse through the directions again while the battery
charges. Instead of an hour, this time
it takes me forty-five minutes to get the blind in, but I'm starting to get the
hang of this whole fiasco.
By the time I get to windows #3 and #4, I am a two-fisted
drilling monster who can remove a screw as easily as plant one into the
alabaster-like finish. I don't even care
that paint is chipping away as I go.
Fuck it. The landlord should've
used wallboard, paper tape, and mud (joint compound) like normal people and
French Canadian contractors (which I suppose somehow implies that the northern
contractors are not normal, which may or may not be entirely untrue) do.
The only problem now is that the cheapo blinds are short. They're not 30" like the box
claims. They're 29". Here's where some of you say, "Oh she
shoulda known better," to which I respond by putting my hands around your
collective throats and squeezing. I should've
assumed since it was probably packaged by men, that anything written on the
outer box would be a gross exaggeration of one's … uh … length … yardage,
YARDAGE, I meant.
By windows #5 and #6, I am taking the old brackets down
first --- brrrrp brrrp brrrp brrrrp --- easy pickings for the electric
screwdriver. Then I switch back over to
a drill bit, mark the spots for the brackets for both windows, then ---
brrrrrp brrrrp brrrp… Twenty-five minutes later, the blinds for
both windows are up and secure.
Windows #7 and #8 also go great … great, I tell you … until …. until I turn funny while stretching
to reach one of the screws. I
accidentally tweak my left knee. It
hurts, I mean it really totally and completely hurts, and I cannot put any
weight on it.
Pissah once again.
I limp upstairs because I know somewhere up there I have a
Velcro knee brace. I locate it, wrap it
around my knee, and try to get back up onto the chair to finish the
installation. I'm so close, so very
close, to marking this project off my To Do List.
I finish all of the windows while watching the news and my
heart stops for a moment when I hear, "Shark spotted at Wallis
Sands…" That's just north of where
I would've been swimming, and by "just north" I am talking probably a
mile or two. My biggest ocean fear. Shark.
In the waters off Rye/Hampton, NH.
Again.
This is why I scoff at people who laugh at me when I tell
them I only go waist deep in the water.
Lately I've been venturing deeper, getting more daring, trusting that I
won't be the shark's first meal choice. Or last meal choice. Or dessert.
Or any damn choice at all. This
is why I swim in clear pools. (If it's
any consolation, I'm not overly fond of leeches, either, so I avoid ponds and
lakes that look reedy or skeevy.)
I am suddenly looking at my blinds in a new light. Well, that and because they are
light-filtering blinds so more light is going to be filtering through. Now my blinds are not only making the windows
look bitchin' but they may well have salvaged my limbs for me.
Except my knee.
Apparently I have sacrificed my knee to stave off sharks.
I can hear myself now explaining this one to the
orthopedist. "Well, ya see, Doc, it's like this.
I was going to go to the beach but I decided to put up blinds today and
then I tweaked my knee because sharks were going to eat it anyway."
To put it into medical terms, the blinds saved my
ass. Er, my knee. Wait, no.
Blinds broke my knee. Okay, my
ass. Blinds did save my ass.
Pissah at last.
I no longer have any lingering guilt about giving up a perfectly
good beach day for the sake of a bunch of blinds. But I will say the effect is bitchin' Such a difference from broken paper accordion
shades being held open with scraps of yarn and trim. Maybe I'll hit the beach tomorrow. Time's a-ticking and my To Do List is
shrinking, and that, kids, is what's really pissah, wicked wicked pissah.
