DIY

Categories Homemaking

I take pictures of my toilet

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I do.

You don’t believe me?

Here’s proof:

back of toilet bowl

My toilet had been running continuously, so I set out to replace the flapper.

Flapper replaced, I filled the tank (sans the space taken up by my Dorothy Lynch dressing bottles of water) with water and added food coloring.

Toilet bowl with blue dye

Unfortunately, the blue food dye quickly leaked into the bowl, indicating that my fix had NOT solved the problem.

So I disassembled the toilet again and did some troubleshooting.

Maybe it’s that hard water deposit on the what’sit there.

My Xacto knife came out and I scraped the deposit off.

I refilled the tank and added red dye this time.

back of toilet bowl

Nope. That wasn’t it either.

Then I broke the ceramic urn thing I keep on the back of my toilet.

So I super glued it back together.

Then I super glued a ceramic figurine I’d broken months ago back together.

Then I discovered that I’d super glued my fingers together.

Xacto knives are great for removing excess glue from random surfaces–but be careful when removing excess glue from fingers.

Postscript: My pastor preached out of Proverbs 31 this Sunday–and I can’t help but think of Mrs. 31 as I go about my not-always-routine day-to-day tasks. Did Mrs. 31 ever have to deal with a toilet that just won’t be fixed? I know Mrs. 31 wouldn’t leave half of her dishes over to the next day. But then again, Mrs. 31 didn’t have to spend 8 (or 10) hours at work each day, did she? I vacillate between inadequacy and pride as I compare myself. Which completely misses the point, I remind myself. FEAR GOD, Rebekah. That’s what make you a Ms. 31 (not whether or not you leave dishes on the counter or succeed in fixing your toilet.)

Categories Everyday Life

In Which Rebekah Says Much (Little of Note)

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I got home rather late last night and decided to take apart my planner. It’s started to get a bit ratty, and I’m a young professional and feel I should try for a more polished look. Problem is, I love my planner and I hate spending money. I’ve been considering making my own planner using the old shell–last night I just made it official by taking a utility knife to the planner so I can figure out how to make my own.

So far, I’ve got…

Cardboard planner

The finished product is intended to be covered in black vinyl, with lots of interior pockets, room for pens and pencils, etc. There’ll be a large flap that closes on the front with a frog closure (aren’t frogs just the funnest things?)

Now that I’m officially working and unofficially residing in two towns, I’ve decided I need to get the blogs I follow into a format that allows me to easily read them on the road (when I’m away from my desktop). So I’ve been resubscribing to all my blogs on GoogleReader.

Not that I expect to do much blog reading on the road. I’m gonna be working 20 hours out of the 43 I’ll be there. Hopefully I can get 7 hours of sleep each night, which will leave me with 9 extra hours to eat, go to Bible study, dress each morning, pack my stuff up, grade a few papers for my other job, etc. etc.

I’m also considering going back down to one post a day. Two is a lot to keep up with while working–especially with a commute. On the other hand, I want to keep up a mix of “thinking” and “fun” posts–and have a hard time doing that when I’m just writing one post a day. Grrr!!!

Why have I never noticed all the agains in Matthew 13?

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field…” (v. 44)

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls…” (v. 45)

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea…” (v. 47)

This suggests that in each of these parables, Jesus was RESTATING His original point. Which is curious since His original point was explaining the parable of the tares to His disciples.

I’m looking into this further…

In other news…

On Tuesday I asked whether anyone could guess which two Dewey Decimal categories account for over half of my nonfiction reading.

A total of 3 people guessed–and came up with a total of 4 categories amongst them: 200, 300, 700, and 800.

The answer?

300 and 600

Nobody guessed 600–but the 600s contain some of my favorite types of books (although not always ones that I blog about.) I have read 173 books from the 600s, including books about medicine, nutrition, time management, cooking, sewing (for the home), and parenting.

My second highest category was the 300s with 103 books read. These books included books on politics, marriage and family issues, money management, and books of etiquette and traditions (I read Emily Post for fun. Honest.)

Coming in third was the oft-guessed(?) 200s (religion) with 53 books. I only started reading items from this section in earnest this year–along with my goal of exercising my mind towards the things of God. Furthermore, I tend to take longer with these books since I really want to fully explore the issues the books raise. These are, however, the books I’m most likely to blog about–so it makes sense that my readers would guess them!

As for 700 and 800? They’re fourth and fifth (go figure!)

So y’all are pretty good guessers. Give yourselves a pat on the back you who participated.

And the rest of you? I really like comments. Please comment, even if it’s not much. (Although you’re certainly welcome to take a page from the spammers’ book–“This is the most fascinating treatment of this topic that I have ever heard. I have read a lot about ____, but no one has ever explained it as well as you do.”)