Even the simplest things aren’t really that simple to do, if your plan is to do them right.  Hanging a picture, installing curtains, retrofitting a cabinet.  All these tasks require the right tools, a good plan, more than one person, and an inordinate amount of patience.  Patience isn’t something I have in supply.  If a human possessed the attributes of an industry, I would be construction, and patience would be a long-lead item that would arrive long after the project was complete.  I’m not a perfectionist – an attribute that pairs better with impatience than mind numbing precision, but my tolerance for a picture that is crooked falls into the realm of OCD.  I’m constantly trying to make it right, and though I was never strong with math, my eye is pretty good at guiding me.   Measure, hang, observe, re-measure, re-hang, rewards, regrets.  What fun. Two done.

Curtains hung, re-hung, undone, hung again, tinkered with, toyed with, shimmed, not shaken, thank goodness nothing got to breaking.  Cocked eyed casings make for less than perfect draping.  Old houses, what’s a girl to do but accept it as it is, and grow to love it.

And then that built-in, looking all innocent like it would be no problem at all to retrofit it to accommodate the grossly oversized television that I bought a few weeks back. Cut, paint, attempt to install, recut, repaint, install again.  Phew, getting it right isn’t easy – no matter what they tell you on those HGTV Shows.

Finally, if a film crew had been recording my mishaps and small victories you would have been witness to me hanging on to my Parisian chandelier for dear life in the back of the truck down Massachusetts Avenue from Cambridge to the South End.  The chandelier lost an arm, and both of mine feel like they are going to fall off, but it was a sunny 60 degrees, and I’m through another major phase in the process of getting it hung.  I don’t want to shock and disappoint for those that have been following, but this is not the chandelier that I bought in Paris.  I was subject to the old bait and switch.  It’s a close approximation – a little worse for the wear, oh Regis – I’ve had to make the best of an imperfect situation before, and I’ll do it again, despite your shenanigans!

I feel a little bit like Amelia Bedelia – getting it all wrong, and somehow having it turn out all right.  Hope you all have a great week.