Teeny Tiny Triumphs
It doesn't matter that it doesn't matter--you're still allowed to feel good about your
In the face of adversity, you have to celebrate the little victories. Progress of a sort. At least that’s what I’m theorizing at the moment.
Here are a few things that recently went right.
Opportunistic Shopping
I had to make a supermarket run. Two or three things were needed, and I’d checked the weekly sales circular, so there were a couple of “stock-up” items.
As I rounded the turn at yogurt and cottage cheese and made my way down the home stretch, I took a pause in the bakery products; not the store bakery—just the name brand loave and buns and such. The Arnold brand section was festooned with tags advertising two loaves for five dollars. My freezer has an empty spot just waiting for two loaves of Arnold Farmhouse white bread.
But first, I had to find the online coupon advertised on the shelf tags. And so I spent two or three (maybe more) minutes getting logged onto the store wife and calling up the store app and searching for the coupon.
Ahah! Found it. Loaded it. Found two loaves of Farmhouse bread. Off I went.
After checking out, going to my car, and unloading my groceries, I looked over my receipt. I usually check to see if it looks right, and if the sale items I selected were noted and discounted.
I didn’t see a discount for my white bread.
I returned to the supermarket service desk, waited a bit, and then discussed it with the staff person.
“I’m not great at deciphering receipts,” I said. “Maybe you can help me out.”
She took my receipt and immediately recognized the problem. “The sale is for whole wheat bread,” she explained. “But, you can return it if you want.”
I pondered the situation. I would end up paying full price for two loaves of bread. Being an opportunistic shopper, that just didn’t sit right. I was always looking for a special or a day-old, this loaf must-move price cut.
So I fished out the two loaves of bread and said to myself, “Ahah.”
I returned to the customer service desk with my two loaves of white bread, each emblazoned with a red sticker that said, “2/$500 with Digital Coupon.
“You can see why I thought it was on sale,” I said, showing her the loaves.
“I would too,” she said, while she was processing a refund for me. “Must have been mislabeled,” she added speaking to someone else behind the counter.
A silly incident, but it made me feel good. Sometimes opportunistic shopping persistence pay off.
My New Old Microwave
We have a microwave oven that has been chugging along for more than thirty years. It’s probably 35 or 40. It might even be the first microwave oven ever manufactured. It’s old. And it still works.
But the light went out.
The machine is whirring and doing it’s thing, but it’s all dark. I can’t see what’s going on in there as I always have in the past.
Now, we are going to get a new, fancy, over the stove microwave in the new kitchen. This little old microwave—it’s time to put it out to pasture (well, put it out on the curb as trash), right.
No. It’s a perfectly good machine that has served us for decades. And, somewhere in the dim recesses, don’t I remember replacing a lightbulb in the past? Something? I have opened the machine up before, haven’t I?
I was sure I had. And maybe I replaced the light in the past, but I didn’t remember the details. So I got a few tools and opened it up (yes, I unplugged it beforehand). I figured out where the bulb was, pulled it out of a recess, and tried to unscrew it.
Bad idea. The bulb shattered. A tiny cut. A bit of blood, and some vacuuming.
I disconnected the socket from the wiring and took it down to the workbench, and tried to extract the bulb. Lots of fussing and no luck.
Finally, I had that eureka (doh?) moment when I realized that the light and socket were one piece.
I found a designation “T170” on the socket and looked on Amazon. Yes, a replacement part is available. Order placed.
Late Sunday, after dinner, an Amazon delivery arrives with the replacement part. Ten minutes later, after smoothly reassembling the microwave (I’d already had 15 or 20 minutes of reassembly practice two days before) we were ready for a test.
Let there be light.
The little microwave that could is ready for another 30 years of service. And wherever it goes next, I have a spare lightbulb (they come in two-packs) to go with it.
Clueless Queen Bee
I play the Times Spelling Bee puzzle every day. I keep at it until I get to genius because . . . I guess it makes me feel like a genius.
Today, I made it to Queen Bee (finding all the words) without needing any clues. (Confession: I always used the Spelling Bee Buddy to see how many words are left and to get the first two letter hints (not clues!)).
Huzzah!
And by the way, there is a new word search puzzle in beta testing called Strands. You can find it here.
Anon.
Ridge