Car Problems, Potty Problems

Coming home from work the other day, my car suddenly downshifted as I was easing off the gas on an exit ramp from the highway. After the stop light, it wouldn't shift out of first gear (it's an automatic). Ben and I took it to Car X - they don't do transmissions so they referred us to some transmission people down the street. Those folks did transmission work but didn't work on Volkwagens. We ended up taking it to a foreign car mechanic. When the called the next day, the news was not good. The transmission needs to be replaced or rebuilt and the cost to do the work would be just about as much as the car is worth. When we went to pick it up, I asked how long they thought it would last ("could be a month, could be a year"). Since I'm in the last month or so of my coursework for my doctoral program and have ZERO time to be dealing with a new car search and all the insurance and registration paperwork, I was hopeful that this car would get me through this quarter at school. "Tell me this," I said, "When it finally stops working for good will there be any explosions or fire?" "No," the mechanic replied, "it will just stop running." "Give me the keys. We're gonna see how long this thing lasts." And with that, we were out the door.

The next day, Ben noticed a crack in the porcelain base of our toilet. Water was leaking out so fixing this became the immediate priority. Ben and Dex picked out a new toilet at Menards and Ben scheduled the plumber to come out the next day to install the new toilet. Before the plumber came, Dex realized that installing the new toilet meant that the old toilet had to go somewhere. He wanted to keep it. I told him that was not an option. He had lots of suggestions for where in the house we could keep it and how we could repurpose it. When I nixed those ideas, his anxiety about where the toilet would go and how he would "remember" this toilet came flooding out.

I eased his fears about letting go of the old toilet by suggesting he take pictures of it so he could "always remember it." He took about a dozen different shots of this potty.