Could It Be When I Was Young Someone Dropped Me On My Head?

Some things sound easier than, in fact, they will turn out to be. Like putting up curtains in Avocado's room before she returns. Since we replaced the windows two years ago the child has had neither drapes nor shades, and as her room faces out on the street, this knocks her privacy down to nada. The delay was largely due to a huge tangle of indecision on the part of the girl and her parents as to the drapes/shades question itself, as well as to matters of color and fabric. As a welcome home gesture I decided to take the drapes by the finials, as it were, and put up curtains. In the name of sanity, I bought curtain rods and curtains at Target, rather than making the curtains ourselves. Simple as pie, right?

Not so much. First, the battery charger for our drill is not functioning: after several hours of charging, the battery was dead. After several more hours charging a different battery at a different outlet, still no power. Tried buying a new charger, but no one had them. By the time the one I ordered on line arrives, Avocado will have been home for five days. So I borrowed a drill (and charger) from klages and happily began drilling holes. Only (of course) there is masonry behind the plaster, so some of the holes aren't deep enough. I go out and buy a masonry bit (I don't know where the old one went) and excavate the holes. Deep enough. Great joy. I start putting in the plastic plugs supplied with the hardware for the curtain rod. They are badly made, wedge into the hole, then break off, necessitating the sawing off of the above-the-wall portion. Not what I had planned to do with my afternoon. Finally I have all the holes organized (and yes, thanks to much "measure twice, then measure again with a level" finickiness, the hardware all aligns properly). Only the rod holders are made in such a way that you cannot actually screw in the top screw because the rod holder extends over it. So I have to go in and do that by hand with a screwdriver rather than the drill driver, which takes forever and is a pain in its own right.

And then. And then I realize that the damned finial of one of the rods won't come off, which means I have to unscrew one of the rod supports in order to feed the rod into it, then rescrew it. All done.

But of course the curtains I bought came in two sizes: too short and too long. Better too long than too short, of course, but... Time to haul out the sewing machine and do a quick hem job.

The dog has been steering a wide berth of this whole damned business. In this she is likely wise.