random thoughts – Day 1,587 – (Monday) – shopping and surprises

The results of my late-night participation in this year's Prime Day gigantic shopping marketing ploy arrived upon the doorstep. The delivery person had left it in the enclosed front porch and I never heard a thing, so it was a surprise to see the box when I went to check the mailbox. I couldn’t even remember what I had ordered. 

Uh oh.

There was another surprise discovered after opening the storm door to reach the mailbox. A chunk of wood had broken off the edge of the porch deck. It's probably a casualty of the wet weather front gutter water feature. What in the hell. Another item for the "damn I really need handy man to deal with the 10,000 little things going wrong with the house" list. 

Due to the late night shopping after being swept up in the Prime Day excitement, then forgetting all about it, opening the Amazon box felt like a Christmas surprise. And it actually contained a gift bought for Christmas, marking a record breaking early start. There was also a flesh tone mesh shirt to wear under dance costumes and a window valance bought for the bathroom. 

Bathroom window dressing.

The valance was the thing I was most excited about when I ordered it not even a week ago. It arrived with surprises. It was listed as a window valance, but there is no rod pocket to slide a curtain rod into. I figured out a way to MacGyver that thing onto the rod, but the secondary problem is that it’s also wider than the window. 

The size issue is probably because I had several of them in the basket in different colors and sizes and was considering them for both the kitchen window over the sink and the bathroom window. And now I see that when I scaled back to only one of them, I chose the curtain size for the wider kitchen window for the smaller bathroom window. Errrrrrr. And the color for the bathroom valance doesn’t come in a smaller size. Also, the piece that arrived is different that the photo I ordered from and has a lot more pink than blue in it.

There was a hunt for push pins. And nails. If I have push pins, and I’m pretty sure I do, I don’t know where they are. The nails I have are either too long or way too short. A trip to Family Dollar would need to happen. That worked out okay, because I had something to mail and a prescription to pick up.

A potential solution spotted in the home decor aisle at Family Dollar was a pack of four wall hangers styled like giant crystal knobs, but they are too large for the three cloth loops on the valance. The hardware aisle had a multi-pack of nails and several sizes of Command strip hooks. It was small clear plastic hooks for the win.

The hooks were trickier than I imagined. I ended up not setting them in a straight line, mostly because I dismissed my own idea to go get the yardstick from upstairs when making pencil marks for the spacing. The adhesive strip for the center hook was applied first. It wasn’t straight, and I tried to remove it to reposition it. That’s when a chunk of the paint came off the wall. Of course it did. But the thing is hung. For now, anyway. It may result in a changeout to new brackets and a different, longer rod. Whatever I decide, it will be easier to fix than the disintegrating porch step. 

Halloween already.

The other discovery in Family Dollar was the aisle of Halloween candy, which will most likely be all gone by the time Halloween rolls around. Back to school, one aisle over, wasn’t a surprise, since school starts in August nowadays, but Halloween? 

Seriously, do people really stock up in the heat of mid-July and hope the stuff survives until the end of October? I can tell you with certainty that it wouldn’t last until Halloween at my house and it wouldn't be due to melting. Even Labor Day has pretty slim odds. Heck, if it lasted until next week it would be quite the trick. A miracle, even. So no, I didn’t buy any Halloween candy. The line was drawn at caramel macchiato coffee creamers and small clear hooks for the bathroom.