Things Require Maintenance, Though it would be Nice if Their Maintenance were Spaced Better.

1.  Products that work well, like Bert's Bees Lip Balm.
2.  "On Writing," by Stephen King.
3.  Opposable thumbs.

Why do bad things happen in groups?  Well, I shouldn't say bad.  What happened was really just par for the course (yep, a little Buddhism coming your way).  We own a toilet, so it would make sense that said toilet would eventually break.  We actually haven't been able to use it for a couple of week because I've been too busy/tired/lazy to fix it, and we have another, so there wasn't a lot of pressure to do it.  I fixed it pretty quickly, because the guy at Home Depot didn't give us good info on how to reinstall toilets after installing tile (for the record, the 'extender kits' do not actually work, you just have to get three or four wax rings and play a stacking game).  So, that went quickly enough.

After fixing said toilet, I put the towels I'd used in the washing machine and went to lay down for a bit, when my wife suddenly yelled that the washing machine was leaking.  Sure enough, there was a puddle of water under the machine as it rhythmically bumped away.  So, I quickly turned it off and called for towels as I tried to assess the problem.  The hose where the water leaves had come loose, so, like an idiot, I pulled it out.  Here's a physics question for your final exam:  Does gravity move gallons of water to a lower or higher geographical position?  If you said lower, you'll know what happened when I pulled that hose from the bottom of my washing machine.  I don't know if I've ever called for a bucket or tried to stop a hole with a towel faster in my whole life.  We did finally get that fixed though, and our hearts calmed down until the next day.

The shelf above our toilet has always been an issue.  It's one of the ones where you screw a piece of wood to your wall, and the shelf has a hole that fits that piece of wood, and you screw the shelf to the piece of wood.  Those of you who have these probably know that if you don't have a stud right where you want that shelf, the shelf will sag.  Ours has sagged for as long as I've known my wife, and just this week, it decided its lotion holding days were over because it sagged enough to make everything fall off of that.  It was wrong about those days being over though, all we needed was a couple of brackets, a couple of screws, and a drill I got for our wedding and it was holding lotion again (thanks to everyone who gave us money to Ace Hardware for our wedding, the drill has been used).

Now, I don't complain that this all happened.  Part of owning a toilet, a washing machine, and a shelf is that each will eventually require maintenance.  This was all part of the human existence.  Though I would have been cool with them being spaced a bit farther from each other.  Anyway, I'm going to go and meditate on life now, and invite you to do the same.  Have a nice day.