Life Story Writing

The OTHER Toilet

Toilet Repairs

I seem to have more than my fair share of plumbing problems. MY toilet didn’t stop up … but it started to leak. Folks… what a place to try to stop a leak! Try it sometime!

At first, I thought it was… THE KIDS. Afterall, they were the source of the last problem and they were using my toilet in the interim! They were also using my shower while they were in my bathroom… which should be my next real life story!

Each evening, I’d step between the toilet and the shower doors to turn on the shower. I’d notice the wet carpet only if I happened to be barefoot at the time. Each time I noticed it, I actually thought the kids were being careless… (ah-hem, not in the toilet folks!) … but by leaving the shower door open while showering!

So I continued to ignore all the warning signs.

The carpet was so wet at 6 a.m. one morning, though, it finally dawned on me that it couldn’t be from the kids’ shower the morning before.

I tested the leak by turning off the water to the toilet and the leak miraculously stopped. When I turned the water back on, I felt around (on the OUTside of the toilet folks!!!) and thus deduced that the leak was in the seal at the bottom of the tank. I’m brilliant! (But, very frugal when it comes to my money)

So for just a couple of weeks, I placed a pan under the leak and would turn the water on just long enough to give me enough water to flush, then turn the water back off again.

This worked well for me until Friday…

I forgot to turn the water back off afterward!! When I got home from work… the floor was flooded. When I regained my composure, I decided NOW was time to make the repair.

On Saturday I went down to my friendly hardware store and got the replacement seal. Oh how proud I was of this, my first plumbing purchase!

While there, I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone and decided to replace the water line also… just in case. I also purchased a new sprinkler that squirts in square spurts, and bought a longer heavy duty electric cord for my mower.

Then I remembered I needed lawn bags and more protective face masks, plus I just had to buy the kids new keychain souvenirs.

Before I knew it, my $9 purchase turned into $95! Now I know why men spend so much time and money when they go shopping. There’s a whole n’other world in a hardware store!

When I got home, I know that this will be an easy repair for me. :::Ha!::: The nut was so tight and corroded, I had to borrow a wrench from my neighbor who stores such things at his house. To unscrew is the easy part… the hard part was trying to get the stupid water line yanked out of the bottom of the tank. I actually went so far as to put my foot against the tank to help with the leverage to yank that water line but to no avail!

So… humbling myself again, I went back to the tool guy across the street and asked him if he’d mind helping me with the water line. He does “honey do” home repairs for a living. His eyes brightened up just long enough to learn that I wasn’t planning to pay him for his services …

But I wisely asked for several of his business cards to make up for it though and promised to watch his dog one evening while he went out on the town. This seemed to pacify him long enough to help me out! (Men! They’re so easy!)

Tool guy complimented me on my purchases and said he’d be glad to help me but mentioned that I got the wrong sized water line; I needed one with a bigger end.

So… back to the hardware store I went. Another 30 minutes later, Tool Guy is back, helping this frustrated little mother out!

He didn’t mind, but all the while, he felt that my problem was the ball-cock.  Ever notice how the plumbing industry uses the male-female terms to describe the parts? Where’s their minds anyway?  I wonder how a guy would feel if we women told them that they needed a bigger end or even a newer ball-cock? I don’t mean to sound naughty, but they started it! The whole story changes when we start dishing it back to them, eh?

Back to my senseless toilet story…

Tool Guy was right all along. I did need a new ball-cock and my, my, what an impressive selection they have at the hardware store! I thoroughly enjoyed checking out the various styles on display! There were 3 types to choose from. One of which seemed way too short and the other had a shape that just didn’t look right to me. I finally settled on the old fashioned style. I wanted to go with a sure bet, tried and true. I figured if they were still making them, they must still work! Sometimes older is better.

Visit Toiletology 101 – A Course in Toilet Repairs will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about repairing toilets.

Technorati Tags: Homemaking, plumbing, toilet, toilet repair, Toilet Repairs

I have not yet referenced the book, Confessions from the Bathroom, to confirm this as fact, however in respect to his request and until/unless I learn otherwise, I have removed the “verbatim” text of The Perfect Dump from this page.

This was a higly visited page and I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

Please purchase Marty Riskin’s book, Confessions from the Bathroom. If the book, Confessions from the Bathroom, is as good as The Perfect Dump exerpt from it, I recommend it highly — The Perfect Dump is hilarious for those of you who like toilet humor.

Technorati Tags: Confessions from the Bathroom, Humor, Marty Riskin, The Perfect Dump

We’ve certainly had our fair share of thunderstorms with lightning here lately (applies most summers in August, living in Phoenix, AZ.)

At the first sign of a thunderstorm, I already know to run outside real quick and turn off my sprinkler system! It seems like I bring these thunderstorms on myself by the simple act of watering my lawn!

I go back inside and watch from the window to see what the lightning is doing. If the lightning zotz are striking in my general direction, I begin to pay closer attention to the rumble of the thunder. When the sound of the thunder happens at the same time as the lightning, then that’s my signal that it’s close, VERY close!

When my lights begin to flicker because of the thunderstorms, my computer begins to stammer, studder, sweat and shake. It can’t function for naught.

At this point, of course, and only as a precaution, I make sure I turn my computer off and unplug it from the wall. I read somewhere recently that its the safe thing to do during thunderstorms.

Now it’s ANYone’s guess as to at what point one does this… Is it when you feel it (the thunderstorm) in your bones … or just when you notice there’s a thunderstorm a brewin’ clear across the valley?

Or, do you unplug at the first sign of a sprinkle, in anticipation of a thunderstom? Do you wait til the National Weather Service posts an on-screen warning on your TV? (I wait for the day when NOAA displays the warnings on my PC instead!) Or do you start counting at the first sign of thunder and unplug when the number between the lightning and sound of the thunder is under the count of “one”?

Some people in the valley here had some pretty touch and go episodes with the weather recently, i.e., tornado sightings, roofs being ripped off mobile homes, trees uprooted, cars misplaced.

Well, let me tell you this, folks. With the computer turned off, our family had to interact for the first time in months. Besides the computer being off-limits during the thunderstorm, I also placed a moratorium on television and telephone activity.

We held a family vigil for about four hours last night. It was touch and go for awhile … It wasn’t easy folks. We had to learn to talk again!

We spent three hours just arguing over whether there really was a thunderstorm outside!

We were so busy with our own fight-storm inside the house, we hardly noticed that the danger had subsided.

By the end of the evening, our little cyberless-wireless family learned how to play family games, solve differences, and actually laugh together.

This thunderstorm was refreshing!

Technorati Tags: Arizona, lightning, thunder, thunder storms, thunderstorms

To save time and energy, here’s what I do:

After my nightly shower, I slip into just one side of my bed. I lie in just one spot all night long, never to toss or turn (yes, very boring, but it IS what I do!)

When I get out of bed in the a.m., I very carefully make that one side of the bed. At the end of the week, I switch sides and go through the same routine all over again!

At the end of my two-week week, I change my sheets. It certainly saves alot of time and energy for me!

Isn’t that what life’s all about?

Now, it’s very important that you are of a sound, sane mind if you try this at your home… ’cause if you ever get mixed up, then you’ve done the unthinkable and slept in those nasty ‘ol sheets way too long!

And then what will people think?!!

Endnote: This does not, repeat, :::does not::: work for the very married or those who are single, but never alone!

Technorati Tags: bedding, linens, sheets

The funny thing is, it’s not that I have no self pride, it’s merely that I have a complete lack of discipline. Or is it total frustration in that nothing stays the same forever, especially with teenagers in the house??

I start out with the best of intentions…

Take my closet… please!
I have my two-piece suits tucked away off to the far side of my closet where I seldom see them. I save them for the job interviews I never go on anymore! Next are my dresses, then skirts, followed by my slacks, then my jeans, then my blouses and tops… sorted by short sleeves, then by long, then by sweaters. Lastly are my jackets, sorted by season. I ruin the whole setup by taking clothes out to wear each day. Come laundry day, it’s usually so late at night by the time my clothes dry, that I’m just lucky to find the time to hang the stuff up. I’ll sort it all LATER and later seldom comes!

Take my tupperware cupboard… please!
I sort all of my tupperware and stack ‘em on top of one another according to size with the lids intact. During kitchen cleanup, we’re always in such a hurry to beat one another to the computer for our “hour” that we knock ‘em off of their neat little stacks. Then, late at night, when I finally get around to emptying thedishwasher, I’m in such a rush to get my standard 6 hours of shut eye, that I throw the tupperware pieces in the cupboard and decide that I will match them with their lids LATER. The cycle then starts at kitchen cleanup time again the next night with us all frantically searching for the lids to match the bowls. You can only imagine the mess by week’s end! Come Saturday, my clean up day, I’m too busy with normal household chores to ever get around to the tupperware cupboard. I’ll do it LATER.

Take my silverware drawer… please!
Sheesh, I put clean silverware in the drawer directly from the dishwasher. I retrieve silverware only at meal time … the only time the drawer is ever opened. Why is it that there are always yucky food crumbs in the trays? The best time to clean these trays is when all of the silverware is OUT of the drawer. I keep waiting until I’m out of silverware to do the tray clean up, but find that I’m usually on top of things and am seldom out of silverware. So, then I’m left with the dilemma of deciding whether or not I want to empty the tray to clean it … or just wait. I have found one little short cut though … I pull the tray out of the drawer, then huff and puff and blow real hard. Most times the crumbs blow right out of there! But usually, I just do it LATER.

Take my bookcase… please!
I sort my books according to size. The bottom shelf, naturally has all the dictionaries and large educational texts. I reserve the middle shelf for hardback novels, etc. and the top shelf is especially for paperbacks. Each shelf is again sorted by size, with the largest on the left, followed by the next sized book, and so on. Why is it, after looking something up in the dictionary from the bottom shelf, that the book gets returned to the TOP shelf? There seems to be no room most of the time, so we seem to turn in on it’s side and place it on top of the paperback books. I am now to the point where I actually question why I even save my books to begin with … but I hang in there, because I know I’ll organize it LATER.

Take my junk drawer… please!
I started out having a junk drawer specifically for my little collection of household tools like my hammer, both kinds of screwdrivers and my wrench and a box of nails. Then I started adding the broken refrigerator magnets that I intended to re-glue. Of course, I also added my various sized rubber bands from the newspaper, bag ties, extension cords, batteries, playing cards, dental floss and toothbrushes from the dentist, nail clippers, the broken parts off my arcadia door draperies, picture hangers, extra window locks, the kids savings account passbooks, extra stick and book matches, lighter fluid, shoe polish, paper clips, old glasses, pictures and their negatives, broken pencils awaiting the next trip to the garage for sharpening, utility bills, free sample colognes and cereals. The list is endless and the space very finite! The drawer is only about 6 inches deep and I’m now seriously considering switching the contents to my pantry closet so I’ll have more room for new much needed junk. Hey, I think I’ll do that LATER.

Take my computer… please! (Did I just write that? OMG)
I was so proud of my state of the art computer back in 1988. My friends only owned XT’s and I was the first to get a 80286. I had a hard drive with 35 meg’s! I had DOS 3.1! I got the latest in software such as Lotus 123, Harvard Graphics, Formtool, PC Tools, WordPerfect. Then I had to have Quattro Pro, Fastback, and Print Shop. I kept acquiring new software and couldn’t bare to delete anything from my pc. Somewhere along the line, I became maxed out on space. I needed way more room, so I acquired Stacker and doubled my space! I still had not changed my methods though and continued saving everything … every form I created, every spreadsheet I designed, every birthday card I made, every letter I ever wrote. I soon maxed out again and lost interest in the whole computer. Before I knew it, I was the one who had the obsolete equipment. In fact, I STILL have obsolete equipment … there’s such a thing as a gigabytes, sound cards, web cams, and Win95/98??? Where’ve I been all these years?? I know, I’ll upgrade sooner or LATER. (update – now upgraded to Win98 – and Windows ME is already out!)

Does anybody else have trouble keeping up with things … or is it just ME?

You got it gals and guys! The alluring world out there wins every time!

My solution to housework is that if you deny that it’s there, and feed your addiction instead, eventually the housework isn’t even a problem anymore.

Just like the valley girl once said, “Golly, anyway, like, what’s … housework?”

I’ve found that I no longer care about it!

Who’s got time for it anyway??

After housework … then there’s cooking! Thank goodness my teens won’t eat anything I cook anyway! Teen’s are so self-sufficient! They look in the frig. (you’ve just gone grocery shopping) and there’s nothing to eat! So … they just sneak a little money from Mom and it’s off to Fast Food they go!

Well, I gotta go find another BBS to post on or check out another free-net, or I know, surf the web for the rest of the day, no wait … I just gotta send some more e-mail before I get my 5 minute warning on my freenet, no, it’s more EXCITING to wait for the 1 minute warning, push it to the limit … no, better yet, I could go CLEAN out my mailbox!

Oh – No! I said the “C” word again!

Pardon my ignorance … but I’ve never lived in a place long enough to run into this dilemma:

How do you clean your HOUSE?

No folks … I don’t mean the IN side of the house! I’m talking about the OUT side! I’ve been here about 3 years and up until last year, I didn’t have to do a thing to the outside of the house. Now I’m trying to keep up both the inside and outside of the house.

Looking at it from my perspective, I’d say first off, “just paint the darn thing and get on with life.” I figure it’d cost $800 or more in supplies to paint the house… so therefore I’m looking into a cost effective alternative.

I thought about using my broom on the little grooves in the outer panelling of my house, but that seems like WAY TOO MUCH WORK!!!! Of course, if the broom was used regularly in the first place, I suppose it wouldn’t be any more work than its use on the inside of the house.

I don’t know about you, but the broom (or mop) works quite well to get at those pesky cobwebs way high up in the corners of your rooms.

I’m not sure exactly what is cluttering up the grooves on the outer paneling of this house. The house is NOT made of block or stucco construction, and I’m afraid to get too close in case the “stuff” is something creepy or worse yet … UNidentifiable! Arizona is definitely the ideal location for creepy things showing up in strange places. Or is it just at my house, I wonder?????

My other thought was to hose the house down like I do with my windows, but I’m not too sure how airtight the place is. Although I haven’t noticed any leaks when it rains, it only rains on top of the house, not all over the sides … so I’m a little hesitant to try the hose method … especially with my power sprayer nozzle. My luck, I’d blow the house away!

Then I’d have nothing in common with you folks and then what would I write about in my spare time?

A dishwasher really helps me out a lot though. Here’s what I do and it really saves a lot of time …

1. You keep puttin’ the dishes in until you can’t
2. Then you run the dishwasher
3. Now you’re supposed to put the dishes away… skip down to #4
4. Skip #3
5. You need dishes for the next meal, so you take what you need out of the dishwasher. You’ll find this step saves on cupboard space also.

Occasionally I do get behind on #2 & #5, but (Shhhhhh!) I found the perfect solution for that!
I just pretend that I don’t know that the dishes in the partially emptied dishwasher are clean. I begin at #1 again, and just keep on puttin’ the dishes in until I can’t!

I would like to take 100% credit for the above helpful dishwashing hints, but as you all know, I have 3 teens at home and boy do I learn a lot from them!

And you know what, their ideas make perfect sense to me!

My vacuum cleaner barely has the suction to pick up lint. With a little coaxing from me, I can usually get the lint to adhere to the roller and move on through to the bag inside. Now with the date droppings … that’s whole ‘nother story! All my vacuum does is suck them up to the roller and conveniently shoot them to the opposite side of the room I’m vacuuming. It’s ve-e-r-r-ry fRuStRaTiNg to say the least and there is NO trick NOT tried to force those little boogers up my vacuum!

Date palms and palm trees in general invite many creatures to make their home in the palm. I don’t mind the mice so much. So far they haven’t entered my home. I’ve only seen one lizard and we caught it real quick. Did you know their tails break off real easy when you grab them while they are in their getaway mode?

Now it’s the pigeons that are really getting to me too. Not only do they share my dog’s food, they perch themselves on my roof when they want fresh air and sunshine. Who knows what I would find up there if I bothered to look. I’m sure their curved little claws will eventually wear out the roof. What irritates me the most is that they drop their gray and white poopie on my car when I’m home. I used to turn on my windshield wipers every morning so I could see to drive to work. I know better now! After just a few times, I soon learned that smeared pigeon poopie isn’t very transparent. 

I have been trying my best to set a good example to my neighbors. I try to take pride in my home ownership. Every weekend I’m outside with my steel brush, scraping the pigeon poopie off the driveway.

I even hose my driveway off every day to rid the concrete of all of the unsightly date debris. Once I get the stuff out to the street, I hose it clear down to the end of the cul-de-sac where the storm drain resides. (You don’t think I’d think of sweeping a multitude of date droppings up and trashing them in bags, do you? Sure I do … but who’s got the time?) Thank goodness for my power spray nozzle!

Sheesh, in what I pay in water bills, it’d be real nice if I could get the city to sweep the street as often as I hose down my driveway! With all of the cost cutting they do nowadays, I’m lucky to have street sweeps done once per quarter.

I seem to spend more time keeping up appearances on the outside of my home than I do on the inside. No wonder I can never seem to keep up with my house.

I am one of those truly neurotic individuals who :::thinks::: that my creditors are real live people who analyze me and my financial habits. I’ve always taken my credit entirely too personally. When a bill gets crossed in the mail or mis-applied and I receive the standard dun notice, I go into a panic attack, frantically reviewing my records and answering with lightning quick Fed-X replies to solve the problem prior to immediately.

I picture an old fashioned circa 1870’s western style Banker/CPA dressed conservatively in black trousers, black bow tie and vest. He’d be wearing a black arm band over his white long sleeved shirt that was rolled up to the elbows. Daily, he’d be reviewing my credit file – just waiting for me to *BLOW* it financially … bounce a check, exceed my credit limit, use the standard snail mail and accidentally pay my bills two days late when there’s already a ten day grace period, make an error in subtraction in my check register, or — heaven forbid, double pay a bill when there’s seldom enough to pay it the first time around!

As a single parent, I cannot afford any bad marks against me because I have no significant other to bail me out! So … naturally, being the thrifty homemaker that I am, I have developed a plan that works for me. It does require just a tad more work, but isn’t budgeting a big part of our happy homemaker’s job description anyway?!!

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I do not have a check guarantee card. It makes writing checks all around town, a pain to deal with the merchants. I hate to carry cash — don’t want to give the would be robbers anything to take!! But … I do have a credit card! Since I cannot afford to be in debt nor can I afford to have no credit, I write checks for my house payment and utilities only — all other expenditures are by way of credit card usage.

This is what I do every month:

I charge every purchase I make that can be charged. Yes, from groceries (a major monthly expense) to greeting cards, from shoes to doctor’s visits and prescriptions. The list goes on…

In order to make sure that I don’t over-extend, my golden rule is that I never charge more than what I have on hand in my checking account. As soon as I charge a purchase, I immediately assign a journal entry number to the sales receipt and make a corresponding entry in my check register. I keep all my sales receipts in an envelope to reconcile to my credit statement when it comes in.

A sample check register follows so you can get a clearer idea of what I’m talking about. (My figures have been exaggerated for this example to make me feel good this month!)

When my bank statement comes in, I reconcile it the very same day. Now that’s DISCIPLINE if you ask me!!!

There’s a little more work involved at this point … I must list my visa charges as outstanding checks! What I do is list my outstanding checks in one column on the back of my bank statement and list the credit card purchases in another column. Really, this only seems like extra work! If I had written as many checks as I have sales I have charged, I quite possibly could have as many outstanding checks anyway!

A couple of days later, my credit card statement comes in. Now here’s the “little bit of work”.

• First I match the purchase against my check register to make sure that I have indeed entered every charge. I check each charge off with an “x” to distinguish it from the “checkmarks” I use for when reconciling my bank statement. This also let’s me know which charges have not hit my bank yet!
• I also write the JE number on my credit card statement. This way I can pull all the corresponding sales receipts out of my envelope and staple them to the credit card statement. This process makes finding the receipts simpler also, if there happens to be a need to return the product.
• Now, the last thing I do is make an in and out journal entry in my check register. Remember, I have been marking the credit charge purchases in my check register as I charge. Same as “pay as you go” only a little different! So now, my check register looks like the following example:

The reason for the “adjust je” as a deposit above is so that I cancel out the charges I’ve already deducted from my check register. This way, I can enter the check that I have just written for the Visa payment, so that there is a record of the check for my bank account the next month (whew, out of breath with that last sentence!). The balance does not change after this … as you can see.

Every month, there are no surprises when my credit card statement arrives. No “Uh-oh’s” because I charged just a little more than I have the money to spend. No … “I’ll pay the minimum amount due, just this month only,” scenarios. No regrets that I cannot pay my credit card bill at all. This process enables me to pay my Visa bill right when it comes in and be consistent about it!

And lastly, if I ever make an error in subtraction, I will NEVER bounce a check even if I was cutting it close! As you know, some charges do not show up on the currrent month’s statement, so there is a little cushion in what I think I have in the bank vs. what I actually have in the bank. It’s kind of like having a little pretend ready reserve!

The end result: I have a fairly high credit amount charged every month, I pay my bill in full every month, and I am establishing a good credit payment history.

It may seem like a lot of work for some, but as I say, this works for me.

Plus… it always looks like I have a lot of money in my checking account and that gives me a certain sense of security. Plus — considerable comfort when I’m feeling the financial crunch these days!

Technorati Tags: budget, budgeting, credit, credit card, credit card debt