Looking for the Right Screw and Not Finding It

The scene: our house.

The goal: to fix the shutter that is hanging at an odd angle from a second-story window.

Well, you'd have thought it would be simple. But so many household tasks are like that, am I right? So there was the husband, up on our biggest ladder, which wasn't actually quite tall enough.

And there was me, hunkered down, holding the ladder, because we have rules at this house, and one of them is nobody goes up on a ladder without a helper/spotter on the ground. No exceptions.

He took off the shutter, which was kind of easy actually, as it nearly FELL OFF as he removed the lone screw that was holding it up. And we pondered the fact that we've been driving cars in and out of the garage beneath it, with the risk of the shutter falling as we did so!

And then we found a nest. Wasp, hornet, whatever. It was empty, thank goodness. So I cleaned it off, and wiped down the shutter. But when it was time to put it back up, there were two problems:

1) Above is our collection of hardware. Do you want to know how much time was spent looking for the right screw and not finding it? More than you might think.

2) The prior screws' points had snapped off in the holes we needed to put the new screws into, so it actually wasn't possible to do the task that we needed to do.

Current status: so the shutter, newly cleaned and ready, sits in the garage until we figure out what to do next. More screws, to be sure; oh yes, MORE SCREWS!!! That's what we need! And maybe a new drill to drill out those stuck parts so we can proceed. Isn't home repair fun!???

I thought I'd share this photo of hardware frustration with you. Because, haven't we all been there? With a task at hand, at least an hour and a half to two hours into it, and no chance at all of actually finishing it on this day? Yeah, good times!

I did admire the way everything was sort of arranged in this shot, which was totally accidental, as my husband simply dumped out the jar. The safety pin was a nice touch, don't you think? I just left it in there. My OCD self wanted to take it out, as it was an only. But it's perfect in its own ridiculous way.

When I was thinking about this blip, the song that came to mind was the Police, singing about how they can't stand losing. And that's sort of how we feel about home repairs. Here's the song: the Police, with Can't Stand Losing You.