Scrolling through my social media feeds on Sunday night, I see a bunch of happy posts showing families apple picking in the midst of autumnal rainbow trees or else even better, people commenting, “I’m on my third cup of coffee and not moving from this couch.”

I long for a day like this; when I have nothing to do. The clock in my mind ticks loudly and there is always more to be done. I’ve often half-jokingly longed for a “boring” or more “ordinary” life, but instead mine is chock full of stories.

It’s not enough that we had to move the entire contents of our apartment out because our new floors are coming, but we also tiled our bathroom floor. (OK actually my dad did it and we helped and got yelled at a little bit because “you’re too “artistic and picky” and “you’re not going to notice it two days after it’s installed.”)

Our fun didn’t end there. We also ordered a Toilet, a sink, and two faucets online. You haven’t really shopped until you’ve shopped for toilets, right? Quite honestly I was happily content until the age of 42 without knowing there are both one AND two-piece toilet options. Furthermore, they have ones with multiple flush options for a pee or a poop. “We have to save the water for our kids,” my husband tells me and convinces me we need the one piece called The Magic Flush. I drew the line at any possibility of getting The Adonis, which tried to sell me it would be much easier to clean.

Incidentally, faucets have come a long way from the well and have many fancy options. Two-knob faucet operation is very archaic; the one-handle model is much more convenient. If that’s too much effort, there is the touch-activated variation. Finally, there is the motion sensor, which my husband convinced me, with an extended arm demonstration, how it would be dangerous and the faucet would randomly go off to potentially WET OUR SHIRTS and we wouldn’t want that! How long until voice recognition faucets?

After hours of toilet, faucet, and sink research, we placed our order on Home Depot and received a confirmation email. A few minutes later we received another email saying our payment was rejected. We called and resolved it with a new card and got a new confirmation number. A few minutes, another email canceling the new order. We called again, another card, another email. Finally, we ordered one sink on Amazon and decided to call the Bank.

You know what’s fun about a bank? When you [FINALLY] have cash in there and try to use your debit card, and the bank says, “Sounds like fraud.”

So we say, “Thank you for the fraud protection, bank. Here’s our story: we got flooded and now we’re renovating our home so we’re going to be buying unusual things like toasters and tiles and toilets. We’re going to be spending thousands so we want to alert you.”

Bank says, “thank you, sir, it will be notated.”

We try to buy kitchen cabinets and we decide to proactively notify the bank of a big purchase. They say, “thank you, sir, it will be notated,” and the card doesn’t go through. We call again and they allow it and promise they’ll make the note in the file.

It happened two other times before the Home Depot incident today. We ended our non-relaxing Sunday in a hotel bed fighting with our bank asking for them to notate that we are allowed to use our money.

I’m confident, though, when I try to re-buy my toilet for the third time today, it will work perfectly because the bank promised; they assured me they always make a note in my account.

Tagged: 365, 365 Day Project, 365 day writing project, 365 writing project, bathroom renovation, DIY, faucet, home renovation, kitchen renovation, renovation, sink, toilet