My Life is a Laura Numeroff Book

I’ve been trying to change some habits.  One of them is the habit of sticking things in the back pockets of my work jeans.  When I wear my rain pants over my jeans it makes it hard to access the whatever that I stuck in my pocket.  Stabbing pains taught me long ago not to stick stuff in my front pockets, now I’m trying to self-train on the back pockets. 

I was doing really well getting myself to not stick things in my pockets, and it sure has been cutting down on the amount of odds and ends I fish out of the bottom of the washin’ machine.  Besides, I can’t stick all the things I need during the work day in my back pockets, even if I used both of them and then the weight, well let’s just say, I would definitely have issues.

Like I said, I was doing pretty well.

Last weekend it seemed as if there was something wrong with our only toilet in the house (heck, the only one on the farm unless you count the travel trailer.) Finally by this last weekend Dirt couldn’t take the slow and uncooperative toilet any longer.  He had tried everything. 

So out it came from in the house, onto our driveway and the maneuvering to dislodge the problem began.  Not being dressed in hazmat clothes, I stood back. 

Next thing I knew this sailed up the driveway to my feet.  “So how long have you been missing this?”

Well to tell you the truth, never, ‘cuz I always make sure I have several spares for when I misplace the one I have in my hand, or down the toilet as the case may be.  Drat! Just when you think you’ve cured yourself from a bad habit, you haven’t.

Or is it really “drat”? 

You know how it is when you have a really really old house, that needs some severe updating but you are too busy (and poor) to do it like you’d really like?  You’d like an actual shower where there is none at all, and change out the tub for a big soaking tub in a bumped out bay window area that over looks the pond (that one is really your husbands wish) and a huge sink to bath grandbabies. 

But because your house is old, actual bad things start happening, like leaks and drips and patches with linoleum, then rotting floors that you have to cover with area rugs until you can afford the time and money to do the project.  But eventually what started out as a little something now grows into what is in the above picture that you covered with a board and the area rugs.  You do after all, live in Roy.

You know you really need to do the project but it just keeps getting bumped and bumped and pretty soon you have to admit that the Big Project is not in your near future, a repair for safety and health sake should be, but you really want to wait until you can…

Then you do something dumb like drop your marking pen in the toilet and your husband has to take up the toilet to get to it.  When he takes the toilet up he can’t bear to put it back it is so corroded with iron and iron algae from over the years, nearly thirty years since you first rented here and who knows how long before that. The tank lid has been chipped for years and it is green, it matches the tub and the sink but it is green. (You never really minded the green but your husband hated it)

And because your husband hates it any way, he packs you into the car and you all rush off to the big box store and bring home a lovely new commode, in a nice faded iron algae color called “bone” .  But when he sets the new commode on the floor, to make sure the s-curve clears the water valve, he, and you mostly, can’t take the thought of that floor one more minute not to mention all the minutes between now and three years from now when you might have the money to really do things up right.

So back the the box store you go to get some subflooring and some inexpensive vinyl flooring to at least make it all livable until you can do it up right.   And now in the middle of spring, cold wet overworked spring, you have to go clear across the farm yard to potty, and you’ve decided to paint the walls as well, which because they are paneling is no small chore, and all this finds you in one big whopping project, in the middle of your busiest time, but the project still isn’t the big one you want to do.

All because you forgot you were trying to keep things out of your back pocket!