major mishap

[low_delta]

Today was the day to replace a bedroom window in the duplex. (Actually, yesterday was the day, but a friend stopped by and blew an hour and a half.) I had set it in place and was kneeling in front of it trying to do something or other with some tools or shims or something. I heard a little noise. I heard it again, and looked up. It was the window shifting. A breeze had come up and pressured it into nearly falling inwards. I'm not sure what I'd have done if it had actually fallen. Dove out of the way, I hope. If I hadn't noticed it falling, the glass would have hit me on the head, possibly knocked me out, and probably given me some very serious cuts.

After that, I got up, steadied the window, and contemplated fixing it in place, somehow. Then I left the room. Did you catch that? I recognized a problem and did nothing about it, except hope it would be fine, just like I did when I first set it up there. Even though I had seen that it could very easily fall.

I wandered around the apartment doing things for a good fifteen minutes. Then Cyn came back. I was standing in the living room, loooking past her at the window, remembering that I should probably have done something about that window. I went back to what I was doing. Did you catch that third crucial mistake? It was really the same mistake, made for the third time.

About a minute after that moment where I noticed the window, I heard a strange noise. It didn't take me a second to realize that the window had fallen.

I almost cried. I haven't felt that way... ever, I guess. Ultimate failure. Total helplessness. This whole project has been very stressful, and every difficulty hits hard. This was too much to take for a short time.

We got past it before too long. We picked up the glass. The one thing that made the window salvageable was that on both sashes, only one of the double panes had broken. This meant that we could still install it and wouldn't have to do a makeshift covering out of plastic sheeting. Additionally, if the frame had been busted up too much, or the sashes come out, we couldn't have installed it at all. So the mistakes only cost a couple hundred dollars, instead of another weekend.

Comments

[shoo.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I never realized just how hard you are on yourself until now....

[emschin.livejournal.com]

"ultimate failure" Oh, I think not. An enormous amount of stress over a long period of time. That sounds more like it.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

There's a pretty good chance I would have ended up in the hospital.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Why do you say that? I don't think I was particularly hard on myself. I saw a mistake, I did nothing about it, even though I had more than one reminder. It ended up costing me a couple hundred dollars. I'd say that's pretty stupid.

Thanks, though.
*hugs*