Fried no more?

My home office has the distinction of being the farthest room in the house from the furnace.  That means I freeze in the winter and fry in the summer.

In winter, I have a heater.  Okay, it takes a couple of hours to get the place toasty warm, but isn't that why God invented sweaters?

In summer.  I fry.  Of course, we thought we'd solved that little problem by buying a custom-made blind.  When the sun comes streaming in around 3 p.m., the blind was SUPPOSED to go down, block all the light/heat, and I would be able to see my computer screen.

That was the plan.  And then came Fred.  Chester (hubby's cat) had already chewed the cord on his shade.  Chewed it right off, in fact, so Hubby can no longer lower or raise his shade.  Luckily it was in the raised position, but his window faces North, so it's not a BIG problem. Mine faces West.  BIG PROBLEM.

Fred is a copy cat.  I knew what the term meant, but I never actually saw it in action until we got Fred.  Fred watches everything every other cat does, and if it's something bad, he will copy that behavior.  So, Fred saw Chester chewing Hubby's blind cord, came in my office and did the same thing.  Chewed it right off.

We kept saying, "We'll get new blinds," and even went to look at them at Home Depot.  To get cordless blinds costs an extra $100+ to add onto already NOT-cheap custom made blinds. (Because you KNOW our windows are not a standard size.)

While we wrestled with the "should we or shoudn't we" cough up that much dough TWICE -- the very down-to-earth sales person said, "Look, why don't you just go on the cheap and buy a room darkening pull down shade.  It'll save you about $150-$200 bucks.  It's ugly, but it works."

Hmm.  How much is beauty worth?  I'm the only one who ever uses this room, and I never entertain guests here.

Let's go for it!  And we did.  Only we did not reckon with decorative molding and a very shallow window casing.  Hubby to the rescue!  Using little blocks of wood, and a little Yankee ingenuity, he was determined to make the cheapie blind fit.

Ahhh...no more frying in the late afternoon.  (And did I mention that hot sunlight also keeps the office hot for HOURS after the sun goes down?)

I'm looking forward to sitting in the dark on blazing hot sunny days.

Ahhhhhhhh...comfort at last.

Except . . . that shallow casing seems to have defeated us.  We're still trying to jury rig something that will hold up the shade.  So . . . it looks like I fry a little while longer.

Or I go back and buy another custom made shade.

*Sigh*

And the weather report is for lots of hot days to come.

I feel fried.