Dear Reader,
I had a blog post prepared before this one. I read it. Meh.
Rilke was amazing; he inspired me; I wrote 3½ poems, blah, blah, blah.
Then, despite having had a full day already, Word Raccoon and I decided to tackle one little household project.
It should have taken half an hour.
Forty-five minutes later WR was yelling that it was an effing mess.
Of all the transformations we’ve done lately, this one earns a C- at best.
Did it go wrong?
Let us count the ways.
The tape holding the wallpaper roll together promptly ripped part of the paper. Great start. Then, while distracted by a podcast discussion about books, we cut one section too short. Fine. We would patch it.
The patch immediately folded onto itself and looked like a towel on a clothesline in a storm.
No problem. We’d replace it.
Except there wasn’t enough paper.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Drema, do you own a tape measure?”
I do.
But I was listening to people talk about books.
The wallpaper itself was ridiculous in the best way: flamingos, toucans, and elephants. Since this was a tiny clothing nook few people would ever see, I thought, why not?
The second side of the nook looked promising until I discovered the wall and the wallpaper hated each other. The paper wrinkled immediately. When I tried to pull it loose, it threatened to remove part of the wall with it.
At this point my mood was deteriorating.
No worries. We would hang the hooks.
Reader, I had ordered a flamingo hook rack months ago and somehow had also ordered flamingo wallpaper. Fate had spoken.
Unfortunately, fate had not included assembly instructions.
I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to force screws into places they had no business going. Stanley, my digital P.A., kept telling me the holes were on the back. I was too frustrated to understand what he meant until I finally flipped the thing over and discovered that yes, indeed, the holes were on the back.
Merde.
After chasing escaped screws around the room and finding a smaller screwdriver, I got the thing assembled. It is hanging. Technically.
Whether it will support actual clothing remains a mystery for Tomorrow Drema.
Meanwhile I mounted what Stanley calls “poo pegs” on the opposite wall. This name originated with me in a stronger form and, frankly, despite their billing as carefully carved wood, remains accurate.
No, I didn’t look at those until I was ready to use them either. Reader, are you sensing a theme?
A measure of my frustration can be found in the fact that I became annoyed with a Hank Green video. I don’t even know what he was talking about. Something involving colors. I turned it off in irritation.
That’s how bad things had gotten.
And yet.
I hung different curtains.
I stepped back.
I saw the proof of concept.
The wallpaper really does feel like a tiny vacation on the wall.
And I just read a Rilke poem about flamingos today. (You know how I love birb watching.)
Will I order more paper and do it over someday?
Almost certainly.
Not today. Not this month. But it still looks better than it did. And I’m proud of WR for ordering something so fun when I would have hesitated.
Let this be a lesson, friends: do not begin wallpaper projects when you are tired and demoralized.
Read a book instead.
But if you ignore that advice and find yourself one flamingo away from burning it all down, eat supper first. Then step back and look again.
You might discover there’s something worth saving.
Flamingos, toucans, and elephants,
Drema
dremadrudge.com 