Birth of a Bad Mood

Several weeks ago, I ordered window shades for the most exposed areas of our living space. After three years of living in a fishbowl, this will be nice. Especially at night when darkness descends and the surrounding woods fill up with escaped convicts, their night-vision binoculars trained on me inside, alone, without even a dog giving the illusion of protection. The camera pans in.....

Steered in the right direction by a friend, I called The Curtainshop in Portland. The saleswoman, Janet, and the scheduler, Joyce, were both very pleasant. An appointment made within days for the measuring of our windows went off without a hitch. Things were then ordered on our behalf. The second appointment was made for the installation of shades and curtains--two separate treatments for two separate situations--and the installer, John, came today. He was supposed to come at 12:30, but then I got a call back a few days ago changing it to 1:30 and was that okay, and I said yes. Then he called today at 10:30 this morning and said he was nearby, could he come now, and so I said sure, even though it was sort of inconvenient and I had to change my schedule to accommodate his, which kind of sucked. But hey, whatever works.

John arrived and got right to work, but within minutes he requested a band-aid for a cut finger. Naturally I administered first aid, and soon enough he was back on the job. He then announced that he was missing the correct number of curtain rods necessary to complete the job. "One window will have to remain undone," he declared, "until I can get back here."  Considering his busy schedule it might be a couple of weeks. Will that be alright, he asked. No it will not, I already waited quite a long time and paid handsomely for these damn shades and the whole situation sucks, is what I thought, but I said, "Sure, no problem."

Then John, being nice, called The Curtainshop and explained that he lacked the right number of rods, which he was handed in a big package by someone at the warehouse, and could somebody bring them over. The lady on the phone said she was too busy to talk with him, and hung up. John said he will try to get back here next week but doubts he can, so how about the week after. Annoyed, I said no problem. Having by then installed all the shades, John hung two of the sheer curtains for which he was missing the rods, and they were hideous and clearly unacceptable. Not even close. "Those are not sheers," I tell John, "those are crappy polyester trash!" He said Janet is on vacation this week and he will have her call me next week. He left with half the job done, and there are holes in the window trim where the curtains were that John put up before I made him take them down.

Honestly, I'm not even all that crazy about the shades. Plus, I have skin cancer and the biopsy is not back yet so how do I know it is the good kind? And then my son called asking for help with his taxes and I said that's what accountants are for. And now as far as I'm concerned, everything sucks, even though when I woke up this morning, everything was fine.