a minor victory
Sep. 29th, 2023 10:24 amI just vacuumed my entire apartment. This is amazing.
I got a Dyson stick vacuum when I moved into the first condo, Xmas 2016. It's fantastic for small spaces (like apartments), especially when it's mostly running on hardwood floors. Going through once a week or so means my feet are much happier with not stepping on random crunchy bits. Or, now, getting cat-hair clumps in my toes. Yes, I could sweep, but sweeping is a task that's aggravated me literally forever. It's obnoxious enough that I just Don't Do It when that's the option.
A couple of years ago the battery stopped holding much of a charge. At first that just meant not running it on the 'turbo' setting, which meant the rug and the carpeted bedrooms in my last place didn't get as clean as I'd like. Over the last six months, though, the charge has dropped off precipitously. At this point it runs for less than a minute before dying. This is still, barely, usable in here. Turns out it takes about three minutes to vacuum this whole apartment, so I got in the habit of running it once every day or two.
It is, however, Annoying. So over the summer I finally got around to ordering a replacement battery. It came in back in August and I tried to replace it.
One of the battery screws had stripped the plastic housing enough that it wouldn't come out, and it was recessed enough that I couldn't get in to get it out.
So I called Dyson's support line and they offered to sell me a new vacuum at twenty percent off. This is more money than I really wanted to spend at a time when I'm not actually bringing in any income. They allowed as how they could maybe sell me a replacement housing for the vacuum I had, maybe, if their warehouse stock indicator wasn't lying to them.
Spoiler: it was. I waited three weeks and it never shipped, which they'd warned me might happen.
Today was the last day to return the battery. I had two options: give up and return the battery and spend too much money on a replacement vacuum, or deal with vacuuming for a minute every day until the battery completely died. Instead I took a third option: break the plastic cover off the handle so I could get the screw out, replace the battery, and hope there was enough handle left for it to still be functional.
In the event, I was able to pry the cover up enough to pop the loosened screw out, without breaking anything. The new battery went in with no problems at all. It even came charged enough to vacuum the entire apartment. The handle is now a bit warped but I don't notice when I'm using it.
Turns out, in order to fix things sometimes, I have to be willing to break them.
This feels like a broadly applicable principle.
Mostly unrelatedly, my parents came up last weekend. They were on a riverboat cruise in Oregon, so they took the train up from Portland for the weekend. It was ... fine? We all more or les behaved ourselves. They saw the new condo and the new cat, and we went up in the Vancouver Lookout and down to Granville Market.
I'm missing something in that relationship and I don't know what it is, and that frustrates me. I guess this is part of what counseling/therapy is for.
I got a Dyson stick vacuum when I moved into the first condo, Xmas 2016. It's fantastic for small spaces (like apartments), especially when it's mostly running on hardwood floors. Going through once a week or so means my feet are much happier with not stepping on random crunchy bits. Or, now, getting cat-hair clumps in my toes. Yes, I could sweep, but sweeping is a task that's aggravated me literally forever. It's obnoxious enough that I just Don't Do It when that's the option.
A couple of years ago the battery stopped holding much of a charge. At first that just meant not running it on the 'turbo' setting, which meant the rug and the carpeted bedrooms in my last place didn't get as clean as I'd like. Over the last six months, though, the charge has dropped off precipitously. At this point it runs for less than a minute before dying. This is still, barely, usable in here. Turns out it takes about three minutes to vacuum this whole apartment, so I got in the habit of running it once every day or two.
It is, however, Annoying. So over the summer I finally got around to ordering a replacement battery. It came in back in August and I tried to replace it.
One of the battery screws had stripped the plastic housing enough that it wouldn't come out, and it was recessed enough that I couldn't get in to get it out.
So I called Dyson's support line and they offered to sell me a new vacuum at twenty percent off. This is more money than I really wanted to spend at a time when I'm not actually bringing in any income. They allowed as how they could maybe sell me a replacement housing for the vacuum I had, maybe, if their warehouse stock indicator wasn't lying to them.
Spoiler: it was. I waited three weeks and it never shipped, which they'd warned me might happen.
Today was the last day to return the battery. I had two options: give up and return the battery and spend too much money on a replacement vacuum, or deal with vacuuming for a minute every day until the battery completely died. Instead I took a third option: break the plastic cover off the handle so I could get the screw out, replace the battery, and hope there was enough handle left for it to still be functional.
In the event, I was able to pry the cover up enough to pop the loosened screw out, without breaking anything. The new battery went in with no problems at all. It even came charged enough to vacuum the entire apartment. The handle is now a bit warped but I don't notice when I'm using it.
Turns out, in order to fix things sometimes, I have to be willing to break them.
This feels like a broadly applicable principle.
Mostly unrelatedly, my parents came up last weekend. They were on a riverboat cruise in Oregon, so they took the train up from Portland for the weekend. It was ... fine? We all more or les behaved ourselves. They saw the new condo and the new cat, and we went up in the Vancouver Lookout and down to Granville Market.
I'm missing something in that relationship and I don't know what it is, and that frustrates me. I guess this is part of what counseling/therapy is for.