Lessons in Frustration

Do you ever have days . . . weeks. . . . or years (heaven forbid!) where everything seems to go wrong? Where you give your best effort but in the end it doesn't matter anyway? Where you think you know what you are doing, but you really don't. You just can't connect A and B together to make it work?

I had a day like that. Thank goodness it was only a day. Actually it was more like a week.

Lesson #1

My 8 year old microwave decided it didn't want to heat food anymore. It would do everything else--light up, spin around, beep--but not cook. I called the repairman, and after a long conversation he patiently explained to me that it was more expensive to fix my machine than to buy a new one.

Not what I wanted to hear.

No problem, I said to myself, I'll just go buy a new one, put it up myself, and that will be that! I'm pretty handy, I CAN do this.

So off I went, checking prices and settling on a new little number that had less power and features than my old one, but by gum it was cheaper than fixin' it!

I brought it home and it sat in the middle of the kitchen floor for a week. DH and I couldn't remember how to take the old one down, and we could never seem to find a time where we were both home at the same time to figure it out together. Figuring out things together seems to take a lot longer than it used to.

But I digress. Long story short, several more days and expletives later, I had attached it to the wall and it actually worked!! Sing Hallelujah! Did I mention that the new bracket to hold the dad gum thing up didn't match the old bracket? Did I mention that I now have 10 more holes in the wall? Didn't think so. Anyway, here she is:

Here's Lesson #2

Remember this?

If you look closely at the wall, you will see several holes (now I know you noticed this yesterday, didn't you? You were just to polite to mention it.)

In case you missed it, here's a closeup:

Awful, isn't it? Looks like a woodpecker got into the house. Actually it was me in action. I really did know better--really! I knew those dinky little screws and plastic anchors that came with this device weren't going to work! I have attached thingeys to the wall before. I KNOW BETTER.

But I had faith. I had faith that the people who put this thing together would know what would work best. They had tried and tested it, right? Right???

Well, wrong, obviously. As I learned after several hours and expletives later, trips to the garage to find the anchors I knew would work, and lovely large holes in my wall. At least there aren't 10 of them. There's 11.