A PARTY WITH A PURPOSE

The problem with not "finding my voice" until after I turned 50 was that I had so much stuff stored up that I wanted to talk about.  Which is why I have written around 1,350 posts on this blog alone, and a good number on my other one as well.  And, the problem with having so many posts under my belt is that, every now and then, I have trouble remembering whether I have actually told you about something here on the blog, or whether that was a conversation that's just been going on in my head for a while.  Take these shutters for instance:

I don't think I've told you about the party they've inspired, but I couldn't swear to it, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to dig back through a bunch of old posts this morning, so I'm just gonna chance it.  Forgive me if I'm wrong.

You see, these shutters and their fabric have become a big pain in my buh-donka-donk.  The toile fabric that was in them when we bought the house went just fine with that black and white checkerboard floor, but it does absolutely nothing for the hacienda-like tile and flooring of our recent remodeling project.  Change it out you say?  Easier said than done.  John, Lex and I have all spent a good amount of time trying to get the rods out of the shutters, to no avail.

The inside of the shutters.

So, I decided to assemble my think-tank and set them to work on the problem.  I've invited a few friends over for lunch tomorrow, and while I'm at the stove preparing their Pecan-Havarti Quesadillas with Pear Preserves, they can be studying the shutters to see if they can figure out how to remove this heavy galvanized steel rod -- the one with no break in the middle, no springs, and no way to bend.

I've even offered a prize -- a really good one, I might add -- to the first person who figures it out.  Which makes it especially funny that, while I was trying to take the photos for this post a little while ago, one of the rods just slipped right out in my hand!  Can you believe it?

Thinking I now had it figured out, I went back to work on the original toughie, but no, it's still not budging.  Since it won't do me any good to change out the fabric in just one of the shutters, I have adjusted the prize-winning-requirements to read "the first one to get the rods out of the most stubborn shutter, without breaking said shutter"!