God loves me. He loves me not. He loves me…

Man, what a day! I guess I should say what a morning. But it was a morning, that’s for sure.

Husband and I usually work from home. I go in “as needed” and he’s been pretty much telework since Covid. It’s nice. We have separate offices so it’s really nice. We both hate our jobs — but working from home with good PTO is pretty hard to beat. Anyway, the point is, we’re almost always home. And BOTH of us being gone — hardly happens.

So this morning, husband had a presentation to give at work. Cool. So he’s in the shower and my alarm goes off and I’m ignoring it. I hear my work phone bringing with Teams messages. WTF? So I look at it’s a coworker asking if I can cover some testing today. Well, I really like working from home “as needed” and I didn’t have a legitimate reason to say no so… OK. When does it start? 9:00AM. It’s 8:53. I’m still in bed. (Core hours don’t start ’til 9 and I am not a morning person so don’t judge me). So I tell her I gotta shower and pack a lunch, let’s say 10:30. Ok. So husband gets out of shower and I hop in. He goes to work. Well… tries.

While I’m in the shower I hear the door open and close… and open and close… and open and close… again and again and again. And I want to tell him, dude go — I’ll fix it! But I’m in the shower. So he finally comes up and says the doors broken. Yeah, I heard — go go go. I’ll take care of it. So I hope out of the shower, get ready for work, and then head to the garage. I need to evaluate the problem. If I can fix it — great. It’s probably the laser being out of alignment. If it’s a spring causing resistance making it think its hitting something… well… then I can’t go in because I’ll have to call someone out. So I’m not even gonna pack my lunch yet.

It’s the laser. I see husband has removed all leaves and done everything he could. So I grab my garage door opener and go over to the laser and start tweaking it with my hand and bingo — it works. Problem: when I let go, it’s severely off. So far off that tweaking it won’t work. The problem is that the lowest bracket on this track isn’t attached to the wall. So now the track is twisted too far and the laser can’t line up. It hasn’t been a problem until now, but now we have a problem. It’s cool, I’ll just attach the bracket and adjust the laser. Good to go.

I do not have an self tapping masonry screws. Damn. Oh wait! The wall right next to this has a spigot (yes, inside the garage). I had attached a hose reel there but the hose was heavy and the reel was cheap so it broke. I ended up just ripping it off the wall so I didn’t have to look at it. So those screws were still there! AND my drill is charged! Jesus loves me so much! So I back out one of the screws and start to screw the bracket in.

Welp. The screw head is too small. Goes right through the bracket. Also, the screw isn’t actually grabbing on, it’s just kind drilling out. So even if it was big enough, the screw wouldn’t hold the track straight. Fuck. God hates me. So I send this picture to my coworker as my “doctors note” and ask for another 30 minutes.

It’s cool. I have a masonry anchor kit. I’ll use that. So I drill in for a medium anchor. Screw it in and… the screw head is too small. Goes right through. God hates me. But I have bigger anchors! God loves me. So I get the bigger drill bit out and it takes forever to get through this damn foundation concrete block. And… my drill dies. God, why do you hate me? BUT I HAVE TWO DRILLS! God loves me!

My drill bit is dull. I’m out of shape and my back hurts because there’s not a good angle here and I’m putting all my weight into trying to push the drill in. Finally get it deep enough… Anchor won’t go in all the way. Who cares if it works. Oh look, screw head still too small and goes right through the bracket. God hates me.

Do I have any washers? No. But I can make one. I can get some scrap wood and drill a hole in it and use a longer screw. Like and Amish washer. Yeah. So I start digging around the garage and find a bunch of plastic shims. I don’t know why they have holes, but this would work. They’re a bit small, but if I leave the sheet of 6 together, well that’ll do! I’m so smart. S_M_R_T. God loves me.

So I stick my sheet of shims on the screw and… the screw head is too small for the shim hole and goes right through the bracket and my shims. God hates me.

WHY? Why have you forsaken me? At this point, I’m touching spider webs. I’m on my knees in my good work clothes. (Yes, I’m wearing jeans, but they’re a nice dark wash and I have a nice shirt on — don’t judge me). My back hurts. I’m next to a rat trap. Fuck this goddamn door.

Bigger screw head… I need a bigger screw head… the original concrete self tap screw! It wasn’t grabbing, but now I have the anchor in there! So… It was hard going because the hole wasn’t wide enough. Damn my old out of shape back. I’ve also gotten up and down to fetch various shit all over the garage a ton by now. But… IT WORKS!

Jesus loves me! Though this did take 45 minutes of my day. But look at that crafty ghetto fix! I’m good!

Of course now I was late for the testing I was already going to be super late for. But I fixed it! And once I got to work, testing was super chill. Just witnessing testing which was all scripted so basically chatting all day with notes. But it was a full work day. Then I had to go to the store on my way home. Blarg.

I hope they don’t need me tomorrow. There’s no one on the schedule, but I can’t ask without being asked. If I say “Do you have coverage tomorrow?” I’ll get “can you do it?” If I say “Do you need me tomorrow?” I’ll get “are you available?” So I’m just going to be not doing it or caught off guard again. But at least the door works now.

Just so stupid that this happened on a day when both of us have to be at work — which hasn’t happened in months. Oh and I had been shipped a plant that sat i the 30 degree weather all day because I didn’t get home til 6PM.

WTF?

Oh and husband informed me that the second smaller garage door was open like 2 feet when he got home. Oops. I had retrieved the opener from the car and had it hooked to my belt while I was working on it to test it. Must have hit the wrong button once. My bad. This morning was a lot, OK?