To develop my intuition, I’m working on listening to it more- not just for big decisions. It’s there for little things too. I get nudges, hunches, and feelings that I ignore. Many of them can make my life just a little easier, but I’m so analytical and busy I push through them most of the time.
Today I’m finally going to fix that toilet in the girls’ bathroom that’s been running for a couple of months. Not all the time, just occasionally, we will hear it run for just a few seconds, maybe a minute. Then it’s OK for hours. I’ve looked at it a couple of times. i thought the water level was adjusted too high the first time, so I took it down a bit. The second time the water level appeared to be okay. So, I conclude the problem must be the flapper. The flapper is the piece that lifts when you pull the handle and lets the water out, then falls into place so the tank can fill and holds the water in. If the seal isn’t watertight, the tank will slowly drain and have to refill. I’m pretty confident with my diagnosis, so I’m headed out to Lowe’s to pick up a new flapper.
I walk out the front door and pull it shut behind me when something says I better go back and look at the toilet again. I had been concentrating on the part of the assembly that fills the tank and hadn’t even looked at the part where the flapper is. Maybe the flapper is slightly different. Also, the toilet is only about three years old. The flapper shouldn’t need replacing yet. I better go look to make sure I’m buying the right part. I head back inside, up the stairs, into the bathroom, and remove the lid from the tank. Yep. Good thing I came back. This is entirely different. This looks nothing like the ones I’ve replaced before. I pull the handle to lift the flapper which is a lot more substantial than the ones I’m used to, making me think it’s probably not worn.
I feel around it for any gashes or cracks. Nothing. Completely smooth. Then, I see a thin grayish-white line on a black part of the toilet. I think it’s probably some sort of sediment. I go to wipe it off with my finger, and I realize it’s rubber, like a rubber band. It looks like a piece of a rubber band you’d find in an office, but I’ve never seen a gray one. I pull it and realize it’s just a piece, but where it’s wedged, it prevents the flapper from sealing correctly. My first thought is it’s a rubber gasket that wore out and snapped, but if it is, I don’t know why they would such a thin one or one that would wear like this from sitting in water.
It’s a weekend, so the toilet company’s helpline isn’t open. I set it aside and hope maybe that has fixed the problem. My point with this way too long story is something told me the moment I stepped out onto the porch to go back inside and take one more look. Not a big deal. Worst case, I would have made a trip to the hardware store and bought the wrong part, but pretty cool that maybe I fixed the problem with that trip just because I listened to the nudge.
Next topic. Last night I had a dream that had Shayna in it. Sometimes a dream about a loved one is just a dream, not a visit. I’m convinced this was that. My friend Michelle posted a picture of Shayna a couple of days ago from when Shayna was, I would guess, around second grade. That’s the age she was in my dream. In my dream, she was sitting at a school desk, and when I walked up, she was counting on her fingers like she used to do in kindergarten. She was hard at work on a math problem. I bent down to give her a hug. She let me hug her, but I could tell she was annoyed with me. I asked her how she felt. In the dream, I knew she had come back from the dead, and I was worried about how well the magic had worked and how long it would last. She told me that her stomach ached, which worried me. (Kayla had a stomach ache yesterday-I’m pretty sure that’s where that element of the dream came from). But, Shayna was annoyed with me because her guides were telling her I didn’t care about her, and I guess I didn’t want her back. I was trying to convince her that I did care about her when I woke up. It was just a dream, but it was nice seeing her beautiful little face again and hugging her. I can’t wait to hug her again for real.
