Home Improvement by Beer

I bought myself new school shoes today.

And new sexy pointy boots . . . but that was an impulse purchase.

All because I fixed my toilet yesterday.

My toilet has been running intermittently forever. Getting more and more frequent over time. And yes, I know how to use the internet. And I have installed a toilet in another house. And toilet innards in a few other houses. But my currently facilities, when checked, already had relatively modern innards and the new innard kit that I bought had me taking apart the whole tank and taking if off the bowl. Sigh. That's just a job you have to be in the mood for.

So I just replaced the flapper, after modifying the new one a bit. And there has been no running for 24 hours. In my mind, that's fixed. Hopefully, my water bill will go down. Maybe, if I'm in a plumbing mood tomorrow, I'll take out my bathtub faucet thingies. Makes me anxious, although my father went through exactly what to do. I'm the kind of girl that would get them out, go to Universal Plumbing Supply and find that they cannot be replaced . . . and then not be able to get them back in and not have a shower.

Like my cart. Harold (house's previous owner) left a cart from the kitchen. And I should know better. I should just throw things away that Harold left. But it's a nice cart. Ugly contact paper, but nice cart. Harold was all about the ugly contact paper. So I start peeling . . . to find another layer of even more ugly contact paper. Ugh. Sticky mess. I didn't even know they made contact paper in the early sixties. The point being, I thought the cart was going to be simple. Peel contact paper. Paint yellow. Now there is peel contact paper. Peel more contact paper. Ungoo somehow. Sand. Paint.

Yes, I did check the cost of new carts at IKEA.

And my parents, the kind and queen of "do-it-yourself" when I was a child, are suddenly the evil duo of "just get a new one". Including, it seems, a new mortgage. "You could just call Father and Sons, or Kearns Brothers and they would finish your attic." So says the woman who laid sod while eight months pregnant with my sister. "You can get a whole new toilet for a 100 dollars" says the lady who had either painted or stripped a whole house of hand-me-down furniture. "Just take a sledgehammer to the beep thing and throw the beep thing on the curb in pieces" says the man who did copper plumbing himself (in one afternoon, according to him, though it seemed longer to me) in his first house . . . and I think he did his own roof once. I can't figure out if they have forgotten how hard it is to have the capital to pay someone to do stuff (plus the stress of trying not to get ripped off and the resurrection of Buck the imaginary husband) or if they do remember and have figured out that they should have just "paid the man" all along.

Nah. They make my brother do stuff all the time.

Now granted, I remember my parents having a tribe. Which I do not have. Well, I have Princess, E2, and M2 in town . . . and if you have some shoe shopping to do or a manicure emergency . . . or if you need to revise a code of conduct. And I remember there were just copious amounts of beer. It's amazing they didn't fall off the roof . . . or cut off a leg when building the deck. Perhaps I will just teach Princess to be more handy. Except she drinks wine.