Yesterday I decided to hang the Mother’s Day gift I received, not this past holiday, but the year before.  Don’t want my daughter, the GAP, to get the idea I don’t like the present.  I might have been quicker had the bag of accompanying screws not developed legs and wandered away. 

She’d given me a beautiful gold wrought iron leaf wall hanging destined for the family room wall over the sofa.  But its placement there would cause displacement of one of my favorite “Mom” paintings.  It’s only been hanging over a couch for twenty, okay maybe twenty-five, years.  I’m not real good at change.

^[1]First, I held the wrought iron trees against the wall while standing on the couch, and visually eyeballed the placement of the two screws.  I might have used a tape measure had I three hands, but I don’t and one is still healing from my last encounter ^[2] with a dangerous object.  Needless to say depth perception wanes as one ages.  The trees sloped slightly off center.  I removed the screws and tried again.  I leaned my knee on the back of the couch and as I fell a tad, just a tad, I ripped the attached pillow from the back of the sofa.  I pushed myself back off the couch with a bounce.  The only thing that bounced was the hammer on top my foot.

“What was it your dad used to say?” the Reporter asked, as he casually waltzed in, sat on the loveseat, and turned on the fan. 

Why?  Are you going to write a exposé? I asked in my inside voice ^[3].  Instead I answered, “You’re like an accident waiting to happen?”

“No,” he continued, “the one where he called you Hopalong Catastrophe.”

I rubbed my foot.  “I think it’s still a little off,” he reported, turning his head slightly to glance at the wall.  I gave the hanging a quick nod.  Did I mention Reporters don’t do hammer, nails, or screws?  One day years ago when the Reporter had come in from grocery shopping and I’d come in from Home Depot at the same time, the GAP made an observation.  “What’s wrong with this picture — my dad’s my mom and my mom’s my dad.”  Did I also mention, in this house, if you don’t do the work, you aren’t allowed an opinion?

He was right.  The hanging was a little horizontally challenged.  I moved my mom’s painting of roses to the wall paneling in back of the big screen TV.  The whole room looked smaller.  Change wasn’t happening easily.  The trees over the couch hadn’t grown wider since I last looked.  It still looked too small. 

I googled “wrought iron wall hangings.”  Figured maybe if the tree had some matching friends at either end.  Sure enough, the super highway came through for me.  Only an additional $376 and I could have a mural of wall hangings that fit perfectly over the couch.

I walked back in the family room.  This wasn’t going to work.  I took the wall hanging down over the couch. Six empty screw holes stared me in the eyes.  No worry, the rose painting would cover most of them. 

The nail holding the roses painting in it’s new temporary location didn’t abdicate easily.  There was now a dent in the wall from the claw hammer.  Nonetheless, the painting found its way home behind the couch.  And the wall hanging now occupies a smaller wall.

^[4]The Reporter says the room looks like Woody Woodpecker’s been here.   He left his comfortable seat and walked out humming that irritating laugh, “ha-ha-ha-HA-ha.”

Some things just don’t change.

Related posts:

1. Hi, My name is Penny and I’m insane ^[15]
2. What’s in your purse? ^[16]
3. Memory lane ^[17]
4. Save a dollar, lose your mind ^[18]
5. Bob the Builder wannabe ^[19]

1 Comment To "Gifts that keep on giving"

#1 Pingback By Talk about In Security | So Humor Me On October 14, 2011 @ 9:52 pm