I am woman, hear me roar

Gather 'round, folks - I need to brag.

Because bending over will soon be a chore, I went looking for a pooper scooper with an upright handle.  The two part kind - one piece rakes the stuff into the box of the other piece.  I did find what I was looking for, but it looked kind of flimsy and cost $45.  To clean up poop!  I couldn't bring myself to buy it so I went down the road to the Mecca (AKA Home Depot) and picked up a dustpan with a long, upright handle.  I paired that with an old spade from the garden, and I'm good to go for $10.

I set up my own wireless network last night.  I'm pretty proud of that, even though it was dead easy.  My first wireless router/network had been set up be a very technically inclined friend, and it looked quite complicated while he was doing it.  I'd always figured I would need vast amounts of technical knowledge, and probably a secret handshake or two to do it myself.   It wasn't bad, though.  I plugged it all in, ran the disk, answered a few questions and Bob's my uncle.   Once I finally found a router that came with a setup disk compatible with Macs, it took all of five minutes.

I made pizza dough today.  I'm new to bread making, and have never successfully attempted pizza dough from scratch.  Knowing that I'm trying to learn, a friend passed on a no-fail (she says) pizza dough recipe.  Today, I decided to take a chance and make homemade pizza for my dad's birthday.  This recipe contradicted all my mom's advice (Mom is an incredible cook, and normally whatever she says goes.), but I trusted my friend - only called her in a panic once - and followed the recipe.  The pizza dough was a roaring success.  The pizza was worthy of my dad's birthday dinner.

Finally - this is the big one - I thought I was going to have to replace both of the toilets in my house.  After they are flushed, they run for at least 15 minutes.  They don't leak water, but the noise is beyond aggravating.   If there's one thing I knew I needed to get done before I have my surgery (before I'm stuck in this house with nothing to do and nowhere to go), I knew I needed to get the toilets fixed.   I looked into a plumber, and they charge $130 to walk through the door, and that doesn't include their marked up  parts.  So, when I went to the Mecca (AKA Home Depot) to get the dust pan, I stopped in the plumbing section.  I asked the guy there, and he sent me home with a $10 part.  $10!    This was a job I had to work up to... it was a little intimidating.  Even though I needed the same part for both biffies, I only bought the one until I was sure I could get this done.  But, it wasn't really that bad.  The hardest part was awkward angles because you have to work upside down and backwards while wedged between a toilet bowl and a cupboard.  I can assure you that F bombs were dropped and thrown.  But.  The new part has been installed.  The toilet flushes and then the water shuts off.  The silence is golden.  Granted, I am still running back to the bathroom every ten minutes to check to make sure that nothing is leaking; but if there are no puddles by morning, I'm going to declare this mission a success.