A six-foot curtain rod lies on the floor in front of the patio door in the dining room, and I'm too damned sick to get on a stepladder and put the damnable thing up. Dizzy and shaking from this damnable cold, I just don't dare. Besides, I'd probably get it crooked.

Patrick the painter is finishing the first coat on the stairwell, and the improvement is dramatic. No more baby-shit brown, but a pale shade of duck-egg green that brightens up the whole going downstairs experience. This is important, because the light fixture in the upstairs hallway was located so as to ensure that no light from it would fall more than five steps down.