It Began With the Blind

Bill and I stood in the backyard of our beautiful new home and stared at the street lamp. 

I looked at Bill. "Why would anyone put duct tape on the backside of the light?"

"I don't know. It'd be a lot prettier without the tape."

"Yes, it would. Maybe after we are unpacked we can climb up there and pull that ratty tape off."

Shaking our heads at such insanity, we went back to unloading the U-haul.

Several grueling hours later, we crawled into bed. I rolled over and snuggled into my pillow. It was then the significance of the duct tape on the street lamp became apparent.

The Master Suite door, the one with the large glass window that led out to the back deck, was in a direct line with the street lamp. Due to that alignment, a shaft of of bright amber light seeped through a two-inch gap between the door and the blind, marched down the wall above the bed, continued across my pillow and slammed into my eyes. 

Tired, cranky, and in no mood to play around with the blind, I grabbed an old towel and hung it from the valance. The towel was a tad unattractive, but at least it did shut out enough light I could sleep.

We lived with our makeshift drape for two weeks while other more pressing moving chores took precedence. When we finally got around to looking at the blind, a careful scrutiny revealed the mounting brackets were what held the blind away from the door frame and the only solution was to replace it with a rolling blind. In theory, it would lie closer to the door frame, effectively blocking out the light. Everything went downhill from there.

First, after purchasing a shade and the needed hardware, we discovered the door was metal and not wood and the nails that came with the mounting hardware would not work. We needed metal screws. There were some in the large toolbox out in the garage. However, it was in a storage closet only accessible when our four-wheel drive truck was parked in the driveway.

Bill opened the garage door and slowly backed the truck away from the storage closet. At the moment the back canopy on the truck reached the garage door, the door malfunctioned and rolled back down. It hit the back window of the canopy dead center. Safety glass flew in a wide arc over the garage, driveway, the car and most of the sidewalk.

Two hours later, we had most of the mess cleaned up. Our blind was getting rather expensive at this point. A call to the repair shop the next morning would tell us how just how expensive this remodeling job was going to be.

Yet, we still had to do something with the now uncovered window on the door. With the old blind buried in the garbage can beneath tons of shattered glass, we had no other option but to finish hanging the new one. At least we'd found screws that fit, right? Well, sort of. They were the right size, but did not have a standard Phillips head. They had a squared head and required a special screwdriver. We had one - out in the large toolbox in the storage shed in the garage in front of the truck.

They say need is the mother of invention. I say fear works just as well. I am not sure how he did it, but Bill managed to sink all four screws using something other than a screwdriver, and voila! Four hours after  our initial beginning, the blind was up and there was not even a sliver of amber passing through.   

I crawled into bed and rolled over onto my side, facing the door. With horror, I watched the vertical edges of the new blind slowly curl away from the door frame. Bright amber light poured through the widening gap, crawled down the wall, crept across my pillow and slammed into my eyes.

You know, duct tape works great on door blinds as well as street lamps.

The repair shop for the truck canopy quoted a five hundred dollar price tag for that repair, and our new blind, now fashionably decorated with duct tape seemed a bit overpriced. However, miracles do happen. Another call, this one to our insurance company, let us off the hook on the repair. We have a hundred percent coverage on all glass for the house, the vehicles and the RV.

When the adjuster asked Bill what happened, he shook his head and said, "Well, it all started with the blind…."