The House is a Wreck!

Holy Hathor!  I've got boxes upon boxes of Christmas decorations strewn all about the dinette and kitchen, and no room to walk let alone unpack anything.  No pictures.  At any rate, those boxes are now out of the garage, thank goodness. I'll probably have a major daddy long-legs spider infestation shortly -- you don't want to see what I vacuumed off the Christmas tree.  I can just imagine what's lurking inside the boxes of ornaments after spending the summer in the garage.  Oh my!  Meanwhile, I'm flitting from this project to that project to this thing to that thing, and getting nothing accomplished anywhere, although I believe I finally did manage to get the top branch on the Christmas tree centered and straight after hours off and on putzing around with it today.  Geez!

The den/library is a wreck.  I'm suffering major brain-lock on how to arrange the furniture and instead of decorating for Christmas I'm driving myself crazy trying to come up with a plan.  I HATE THIS ROOM!

Here are the bookcases that Kevin the Handyman and his step-daughter Ms. Handywoman put together for me yesterday:

Although the picture is blurry, you can see that the cases are not coming together lengthwise as should be the case if the floor was level!  The gap gets wider as you rise from the floor to the top of the bookcases!  I know the bookcases are level because my wonderful duo of handy-people measured for square several times while putting them together -- I heard them doing it - "square checks."  Soooo depressing to have to deal with this issue.  The gap at the top of the book cases was over an inch wide, no matter how I slid the cases this way and that, to and fro, angled in, angled out.  I couldn't get it to close very much.  This corner arrangement ain't happening. It made the room feel way too closed in.  Ach! Want to see the chaos -- take a peek:

Cords all over the place, furniture mish-mash, stuff all over the place, nothing organized and no idea what to do.  And two lamps!  My wonderful elephant lamp was moved from the living room when the Christmas tree went up before dawn this morning, because there's no room for it or the table it sat upon in the living room now.  Oh for Pete's Sake!  There is no way the house will be ready for Sunday's investment club get-together on December 7th.  What was I thinking???

In other news, yesterday I had Kevin the Handyman remove the brackets that held the blinds above the windows by the kitchen sink. He had removed the blinds during his previous visit to Maison Newton, and my intent had been to take out the dirty screens, wash them, and wash the windows and inspect what appeared to be major moisture damage on the window frames, too.

I tried several times, but I had not been able to budge the screws in those brackets a fraction of an inch despite my best efforts several times, precariously perched above the kitchen sink on my knees with a screw driver.  I wasn't able to remove the screens because they were blocked by the brackets for the window blinds.Talk about frustrating, not to mention it's not exactly the most cleaner-friendly place to work, as I have to balance myself on the countertop straddling the sink!

Kevin is a tall man, and he was able to reach up (hardly stretching) with his super-duper power what's-it and unscrewed those brackets in short order.  It's so damn frustrating not being able to do those simple kinds of things myself!

Anyway, this is what I saw close up once the screens were removed:

What the Hell am I supposed to do with that mess!  Seriously, I'm afraid that if I get up on the countertop (straddling the sink) and try to clean those windows, they'll just fall right out of their frames!  Seriously, I'm thinking about bringing a law suit against my home inspector.  Why didn't he see this shit and point it out to me???  Was he dazzled by the faux-wood blinds (lowered all the way to the sill and closed) and the spiffy black and cream geometric patterned pelmet above?  Fooled -- just like I was.  But I paid him $400 not to be fooled.