Sometimes I Am Too Optimistic

This past week was not very good. I was tired and didn't sleep well most nights--I should have been writing a draft of my paper that is due next Sunday, but I haven't done it yet. There were several nights where I felt exhausted and decided to try going to bed early instead of writing, and instead I didn't fall asleep right away so I was still tired and I have no draft of my paper. I also spent most of the week stressing about our final exam that took place this morning. Spoiler alert: I took the exam and think I did a pretty reasonable job even though it's hard to write seven decent short essays in 75 minutes.

We're all adjusting after the death of our sweet kitty last Saturday. Surprisingly the kids have been mostly fine with the new state of things. My other kitty spent the first few days wandering the house and meowing, which was more heartbreaking than actually saying goodbye to the other cat. She peed on the couch on Monday but has otherwise not changed her behavior too much other than spending more time hanging out with us. I've also felt discombobulated all week because last Saturday night someone in Illinois tried to use my credit card number (I have the card here in my hand), and my card company cancelled it immediately. Thankfully I have excellent fraud protection included with my card. Unfortunately my new card hasn't arrived yet and I've had to use my debit card all week. Normally I put everything on the credit card and pay it off monthly so I can maximize my reward points. This week has also included quite a bit of drama at work, which is unfortunate because we usually don't have drama at work. We're making some changes in our department, and change has a tendency to make people unhappy and scared. I've resolved to do a better job next week of staying out of it, because I have a bad habit of jumping into the middle of everything. Time to be more positive and patient. Oh, and I had applied for a different position at work, one that I thought I might be qualified for (and had several people urged me to apply for), and found out that I didn't even get an interview. That was a bit disappointing too. I really do like where I'm working and look forward to the opportunities I have--especially once our departmental changes actually happen and things settle down a bit. 

By the time yesterday rolled around I was feeling pretty tired and worn out. The perfect time to start a home improvement project, right? Earlier this week, the flusher in the kids' bathroom toilet broke and we've had to flush the toilet by hand. Yesterday morning S-Boogie and Little Dude were busy, so P. Bibby and I went to the hardware store to figure out what we needed to get to fix the toilet. Instead of just buying the one part, I discovered that you can completely re-do the inside of the toilet for not much money. This seemed like a good idea since this toilet is very old and didn't work very well. We came home and I optimistically estimated that it would take an hour or so to swap the parts out. An hour later, when we had to go pick up S-Boogie and Little Dude, I had not yet finished the first step of removing the toilet tank. My toilet was so old and covered in hard water deposits that it was taking forever to get the old nuts off and the old bolts out. My fingers were bruised and aching from the effort, and I wasn't even finished yet.

After picking up the other two kids, we all decided to go see a movie. We saw Home because Little Dude read the book last month--he thought the book was better. I've seen worse movies, but I've also seen better. After the movie we came back to our house and Little Dude started helping me with the toilet. After we finally got the tank off, we realized that our toilet was the kind that has a special gasket that you have to buy separately. Back to Lowe's for the gasket. Then back to the house, where Little Dude noticed that the kit we bought probably wasn't going to work with our toilet (today we realized that it probably would have, but yesterday we weren't quite expert plumbers yet). So we packed up the kit and took it back to Lowes, where we exchanged it for a different one. Back to the house to finish the installation--but by then it was close to dinner time. We took a needed break for food and then Little Dude and I tackled the toilet. Once we had the old parts all taken out, it really was easy to install the new set-up and it was mostly done within a half hour. However, we couldn't figure out how to make the flusher handle we had work with our particular toilet. I was tired and stressed out and decided that it could wait until Monday when we could go back to the store to look at our options. 

Then this morning I woke up to the sound of Little Dude in the bathroom fiddling around with things. He'd figured out how the flusher was supposed to work, hooked it up to the flapper, and was trimming a tube that completed the set-up. We tightened up the last few nuts, hooked up the water, and the toilet worked! Sometimes all you need is a good night's sleep and a new perspective. That's my lesson I learned today, and I hope next week is a better one than last week. 

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