The curtains that are to hang on the rods are simple tannish-beigy-with-an-undertone-of-rose panels. Unfortunately they are about a half a shade and two hues away from the color of the wall, so every time I look at them I will think that they’re trying to match, but are just a little bit off. My inability to gauge color is, however, another story.

I ironed the one panel (linen is one of the worst fabrics to iron – the wrinkles just stare at you and laugh) and hung it up on the dipping-in-the-middle rod. I took the second panel out of the package, unfolded it and realized that there was an enormous stain across the bottom of it, a sickly yellowish mark that looked like the Volga River marching across the landscape. The color reminded me of cat pee (which it was not, because there was no tell-tale reek). I doused the curtain with some sort of industrial solvent and washed it (there had been no others at Target, otherwise I would have just returned it). My prayers to the goddess of laundry were answered and the stain came out. The curtain was ironed and hung on the other end of the rod. And I stood back to assess the effect of the curtains I noticed that the one that had been laundered was now a good six inches shorter than its virgin companion. I started to see little pinpricks of light behind my eyelids and decided this was not a good sign and that I should leave washing and re-ironing of the other curtain for another day.

I also realized, rather incidentally, that the curtains, which cost about $20 each, block a substantial part of the view of the landscaping we had done last week at a cost in excess of some college’s annual tuition rate. I sense another trip to Target to pick up matching hold-backs to keep the curtains out of the way of the view. Those will have to be installed in the drywall. Maybe I should pick up some more spackle too.

The second curtain rod went up pretty easily, although that one too needs some support in the middle (there’s some comment in there about middle age and sagging and all that, but I’m too tired to ferret it out). The ends of the curtain rods are, as I previously described with such great precision, vaguely leafy looking appendages. Because they are somewhat large (not tackily so, just enough so that you can tell what they are from across the room, sort of) they unscrew so that you can slip the curtains onto the rod. They cooperated fully in this respect on the first rod (good thing, since that was the only successful aspect of that fiasco). After installing the second rod, I was standing on the ladder (actually a glorified stepstool with three steps instead of two), wrenching my back to reach up and unscrew the one end to slip on the valance (no, I did not do the unscrewing before the I put the rods up, that would have taken all of the adventure out of it), and lo, the end would not unscrew. I moved the ladder and discovered that no, the other end would not unscrew either. Not only would they not unscrew, but they seemed to have been welded to the rod. Too tired to fight with them further, I left the ladder, the drill, the screwdriver, the unused plastic wall anchors, and the boxes the rods came in strewn all over the breakfast area. It’s probably a fire hazard and I think it scares the cats, but it’s still there and I’m headed to Chicago for the rest of the week, so there will no more messing with window treatments until the weekend.