"That's a little high" OR Why I Shouldn't Start DIY Projects at 10:15 at Night

So J went to see Speed Racer on Friday night. It was awesome. He left at 7 and got home around midnight. While most would not normally say that it is awesome to see their spouse leave the house without them, it's totally wonderful where I live. J's not working means he's here. All. The. Time. With me. Wanting to be social with the one live person he's guaranteed to see in a day. I keep looking for ways for him to get out. I can't be the only source of entertainment to him. It will make me stir crazy too. So, J left here at 7 for dinner and a movie. I was going to work on assignments for my course. As time passes, I realize how much I hate homework. Not like my students hate homework. I see the point. I just don't want to do it. I have a husband who hangs on my every word and expects dinner at a normal hour. So he left, and I started surfing on the computer. It was around 9:45 that I realized that I hadn't eaten, and had yet to start an assignment. I ate a toasted bagel, thought about how it was like I was living alone again and eating weird things at weird times again, and decided that I should really have something productive to show J when he got home. Seeing as my mother cleared off my dining room table, I thought I'd hang our wedding picture and the needlepoint that my aunt did for us (one of those, "J and Sarah have been joined in holy matrimony needlepoints. It's nice.) that is in a matching frame. Last August, when I had the enlargement done, I was thinking. I was even thinking about where they'd hang, side by side. So when the picture came home, I took it and the needlepoint up to our bedroom and set them on the floor behind the rocker. I'm not good about actually hanging pictures. The first year in the house, I hung pictures on preexisting hangers, and to cover the odd, white rectangle on the living room wall. The previous owners probably had a cabinet that they'd painted around there. While I will look at a room and know what colour to paint it, and what the window dressings should look like, I never want to hang pictures. I am starting to think it's because I know where to put the pictures, I just suck at getting them on the wall. Case in point: The zebras in the bathroom. After I repainted the bathroom, I went to IKEA for artwork. I found exactly what I wanted: 3 large, matching zebra prints for equally huge shadowbox type frames. They're heavy and massive. Seeing as I knew where I wanted them, they went up fairly quickly: only 2 or 3 months after I bought them. The zebra print hanging was the last expletive laced afternoon I spent hanging pictures independently. 2 of them are side by side, and while they don't exactly line up, they're darn close. I tilt the inner corners in slightly so that they do look the same. Undaunted by this and the Alhambra picture fiasco when I hung frames side by side in the hall, I got my toolbox and a pencil. The needlepoint was first, and it went up well. The first picture is always the easy one. The nail went into the wall with some, but not a lot of resistance, and it was up in about 10 minutes. My mother and I had already decided exactly where we were going to hang them, yet we didn't follow through. She was involved in the Alhambra fiasco, so I think she was cutting losses. I measured and started to attach the second hanger to the wall. I think I found a stud without trying the second time. There was a lot of resistance, and I had to hammer quite forcefully to get the nail all the way in. This was my first mistake. When I hung the picture of J and myself next to the needlepoint, they were way off. Like I hadn't even measured. But I decided that the hole would be covered by the picture, so I should just move to the right a bit, and try again a bit lower. This was really my second mistake. Remember how I said that I had hammered the nail into the stud? Yeah...it wasn't coming out. I spent the next 35 minutes using the hammer and a pair of pliers to cajole the nail out of the wall. That could also be read "wiggle wildly, curse and generally bemoan the fact that I ever started this project in the first place". We did end Sarah: 1, Nail: 0. Crater in the wall: big. Not as big as when I ripped a molly bolt through the plaster trying to remove it from the wall. That required screen to fix. This is just going to be many thin layers of polyfila. So I went to the right, a little lower, and realized that I still hadn't cleared the stud. The nail is still not all the way in this time. I was thinking for the next owners of the house who may not want a picture there, seeing as they're high on the wall as well. But it's in, and the pictures are hung, and J's only comment was, "They look good, but was that all you did while I was out?" Apparantly, he takes lessons from my mother.