This first week of the year went well. As in nothing too exciting happened, but it also wasn’t boring.
We booked our first trip for 2023: at the end of March, we will go to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina for five days. I am already so excited. This will be our first vacation without any extended family members since 2019. And Josephine’s first real beach vacation. We picked a hotel with an indoor water park because she loves playing with water. I kind of wish we could already go.
One of my goals for this year is to become more handy. Our apartment really needs a few repairs. So I used this first week to learn how to use a caulk gun and then put silicone in a few gaps. My first major project though was to fix the plug in our bathtub. It had a switch, but that never worked. Since we moved in, we had to use our finger nails to lift the plug after taking a bath. I hated it. So I finally unscrewed the pieces and went to our local hardware store to replace them. They sent me to a plumber supply store where I got everything. I then replaced the parts and the switch now works. I am pretty proud of myself. But, to be honest, the repair looks more difficult than it is. Considering though that the single parts cost almost $90, I am even happier that I attempted that repair myself. That saved us a lot of labor cost. It also made me realize that we can do quite a few repairs ourselves – because they are not all as hard as they seem.
|Watched| Küchenschlacht, the House speaker votes
|Read| Der Herzmuschelmörder, Der Strandhexenmord, Das Todesboot
|Listened to| a bit of pop music; Josephine got a dump truck for Christmas and that truck sings “I’m a powerful dump truck …” – I listened to that a lot
|Done| we had a quiet Monday with Rich being at home; I learned how to use a caulk gun; I went swimming; I repaired our bathtub switch plug; we sorted Josephine’s clothes and put the too small ones away *sob*; we booked our first 2023 vacation
|Eaten| pizza, pasta with pesto, menemen, sandwiches, chili
|Drunk| water, coffee, hot chocolate, cider
|Thought| the Republicans are the worst
|Been happy| I felt very accomplished after fixing our bathtub plug
|Laughed| about how much Josephine is trying to help us (but doesn’t really)
|Desired| vacation
|Bought| a printer, the parts for the plug, and we booked five days of vacation at the end of February
|Clicked| I followed the House speaker vote very closely
