I texted my backyard neighbor who is planting a garden and asked if he needed tomato cages. Someone gave them to me last year and I don’t grow tomatoes, so I had a feeling I was to keep them for someone else. He said that eventually he would need 4, and I responded with, “I got you covered.”

In January, I noticed a slow water leak in the backyard, so I started calling people to help figure out the cause to have it repaired. After we pinpointed the leak, my landlord called a plumber and he was great. The plumber had to turn off the main water valve to repair the leak, but had it fixed within an hour. When he turned the water back on, air had built up in the pipes, so the next time I flushed the toilet it disrupted my fill valve. I knew how to replace it, but didn’t bother immediately.

When you live alone, it’s easy to let things slide. If my daughter still lived here, I would have never put her through the hassle of manually stopping the toilet from running after each flush. It was inconvenient, but doable and sometimes it’s better if things break completely rather than halfway. This was still manageable!

I’m a little embarrassed to acknowledge it’s mid March and I just now replaced the water fill valve! The toilet is working properly, but I couldn’t help but think, if someone else were here it would have never drug on for this long. I offered tomato cages to my neighbor before completing a pretty important task for myself.

It never ceases to amaze me how life will teach us about ourselves, especially the level of care we embrace compared to how freely we care for others. Today’s life lesson was presented by…the broken toilet.