rachel's blog

Who rang your doorbell tonight? Princesses? Pirates? Witches and ghosts? How about three cute little engineers?

Aren’t they adorable?! I wish my nephews lived close enough to ring MY doorbell!

I spent the evening camped out on the couch, not because I was sick, but because my mental health depended on it.

The past couple weeks have been busy. In addition to working full-time, I’m doing an 8-month, 12-hour-a-week internship, which doesn’t include the time I spend reading, writing, and reflecting for class. And in the midst of all this, I’m trying to have a life!

This morning I did the unthinkable — I canceled my blood donation appointment for this evening. Donating blood is one of my hobbies, but I desperately needed a free evening. On the way home from work, I stopped by Mr. J’s and picked up a sandwich, knowing that I didn’t even have the energy to cook dinner.

Upon arriving home, I turned up the thermostat, ate my sandwich, and flopped down on the couch with a blanket and a book I picked up at the library last night. When the phone rang a short while later, I decided to let the answering machine pick it up. Instead of getting up to answer the phone, I got up and updated my Facebook status message to read:

“Rachel is ignoring everyone and everything… and curling up with a good book.”

I highly recommend being an occasional couch potato.

My Fall Break was more like a Fall Broken. According to the university calendar, yesterday and today were Fall Break, but like all of the other staff, I had to work. In a lame effort to make Fall Break seem like a change of pace, I wore jeans to work both days. I also decided to arrive a little late yesterday and leave a little early today.

After leaving work today, I ran an errand before heading home. I felt like a kid playing hooky. I was sure someone I know would see me and ask why I wasn’t at work. After I made my purchases, I headed out to my car, but when I went to unlock the door, I was absolutely horrified by what I saw. The last half-inch of my car key was bent at a sharp angle. Thirty degrees, maybe?

I was stunned. My keys had been in my purse ever since I got to the store! How could this have happened?! I began to imagine how I would explain to a friend that I was stranded in a parking lot and needed a ride home. And then it all became clear. The bent key was my fault.

The doors of my car can only be locked after the doors are closed. Closing a locked door causes the door to become unlocked. This may seem like a nuisance to some people, but thanks to this feature, I never have to worry that I’m going to lock my keys in the car. I have a remote, but it’s a little bulky, so I prefer to leave the remote at home and simply lock the door with a key after I get out.

When I locked my car after arriving at the store, I somehow managed to not quite pull the key the whole way out of the lock before trying to walk off with my set of keys. The key remained in the lock, and I had to pause a moment as I reached back to grab my keys. No big deal, right? Wrong. That little forgettable incident was quite momentous in the life of a certain car key.

Knowing that metal becomes brittle when it is bent back and forth, I had visions of the tip of my car key snapping off as I tried to make it straight again. I knelt down and put the tip of the key on the pavement as I gently but firmly pressed on the bend with my thumb. When the angle was down to a respectable 10 degrees (I measured with an online protractor when I got home), I was able to successfully unlock the door and then insert the key in the ignition.

This is what the “straight” key now looks like.

I still can’t quite believe that I bent my car key without realizing it!

Two months ago he was playing at the Kennedy Center on a Friday evening, and tonight I had the privilege of enjoying a private performance in his piano studio. In fact, the guest list was so exclusive that nobody else was invited. Steinberg on a Steinway. An hour of Brahms, Mozart, and Liszt. Lucky, lucky me.

Today I had one of those Proud Moments in the Life of a Single Female Homeowner. Actually, there were two such moments, although I am slightly less proud of the one.

When something in my house is in need of repair, I have a tendency to ignore it for a while, hoping it will somehow fix itself. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to indicate that this ever happens, so this afternoon, I finally decided to tackle the two plumbing problems in my bathroom.

Quite a while back, the faucet on my clawfoot tub began to drip. At first it was just an occasional drip, but the drip became more frequent and eventually turned into a small trickle. Sometime during the frequent drip stage, I began turning the water supply on and off each morning before and after my shower. This isn’t as much of a hassle as you might think, as the two shutoff valves are in plain view next to my tub, and all I had to do was turn each of the valves 90 degrees.

This afternoon I grabbed my toolbox and began taking apart the left handle and hot water supply. Please do not assume that this means I knew what I was doing. I did not. Before I was able to find anything wrong, I got stuck and didn’t know what else to do. I scoured the internet for tips, but to no avail. Feeling defeated, I put it all back together again, knowing that I would need to shower tomorrow morning. To make sure everything was working properly, I turned on the water supply and turned on the faucet. When I turned the faucet off a moment later, a strange thing happened — or rather, didn’t happen. The faucet didn’t drip.

I would be more proud of myself if only I knew what I had done to fix it.

The moment of greater pride occurred just a couple feet away. (Germaphobes, you may wish to stop reading now.) The water in my toilet tank had recently begun to run unnecessarily, so I removed the tank cover and went exploring. I found the part that was causing the problem, but before I headed to Lowe’s, I headed to the internet and learned what the part was called. It’s a flapper valve, and I’m proud to say that I replaced it all by myself. Yes, it was pretty simple, but that’s beside the point. The point is that I learned to do something new.

Plumbing repair doesn’t happen to be one of my areas of natural giftedness, but as a single female homeowner, I have learned to do many things that I wasn’t exactly eager to do. And every time I do, I’m thankful for the internet.