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Hello everyone:

Have you ever sat down on the toilet, only to keep sliding?

It’s not you or your weight. It’s the blasted bolt that holds the toilet seat on. They can fall off without notice and, suddenly, your toilet seat won’t stay in place.

You can try sitting down holding onto something so that you don’t end up in the toilet bowl, or you can fix it. Having done both, I suggest the latter rather than the former.

Here’s what you do: Go to the hardware store and ask for a bolt that holds the toilet seat to the toilet itself. Come home and, squatting before the toilet bowl, replace the bolt that goes through the back right or left side of the toilet seat (you’ll see a hole) and screw the seat to the underside of the toilet. You can do this yourself in less than a minute and it requires no tools. Fasten it snugly and you are good to go. Literally.

What about toilets that keep running and running? Turning themselves off and on at all hours of the day and night? Well, I will confess to not finding out about them yet. Do offer your suggestions! I will publish the best ones.

For now, I close the door to the bathroom at night, so that the blasted thing won’t wake me up in the middle of the night. It’s worked so far (hey, if I knew everything, I’d be perfect and that woudl be boring. And annoying.)

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

I told a friend I was going out for lunch with a friend yesterday and her eyes got wide as she said, “With a fella?” I was horrified. “Nope,” I told her, “a long-time female friend.”

I got to thinking about it. This gal has been suddenly single for a while. Perhaps she is thinking that it might be time for her to find a new man for her life and move on. Good for her! Bad for me.

Then I thought about things a bit more. Sometimes women feel like they are “put out to pasture” or simply too old for the dating scene.

Maybe you are “over the hill and partway down the other side” but, if you think that you’d like to jump back into things, go for it. There is a certain caveat: even old men like younger women. If you are, say, mid to late sixties yourself, you may find that the only men who are interested in you are in their eighties or nineties. I’m not trying to discourage you, but you should look at this with your eyes open.

For the gentlemen: Keep in mind that the best bananas to use in banana bread are the ones with freckles (aka: age spots). Don’t discount the value of a woman just because she may have a few miles on her. The cute young thing that you might think makes you look younger just makes you look like her father. Or grandfather.

What do you think? Go for it or forget it?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

I saw a cute saying this afternoon. It said, “If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.”

Perhaps you have lost the future you always thought would be yours. Maybe you now live in a place you never expected or you are facing situations that you’ve never had to contemplate, like toilets that won’t stop running or carpenter bees that threaten the stability of your front porch or doors you can’t open or doors that won’t close or or or.

Friends, this, too shall pass. You will get back up on your feet, emotionally and personally. Hang in there. You can’t imagine what’s in store in the future, but hold on.

I saw a picture taken of me in early January. The signs of stress were all over my face. I looked tired, beaten down, exhausted. I kinda looked like someone getting ready to “view the body,” as I often say.

Then I saw a photo that was taken today. It was amazing. What a transformation! I looked relaxed, had a broad smile, and (if I may say so) looked ten years younger. What a difference four months had made.

It reminded me of a lovely widow I have known for years. Before her grouchy hubby died suddenly, you rarely saw her smile. After he passed, she lost 20 years off of her face. She has never remarried, though she did date for a while.

What are you holding onto that you are afraid will change? Let is go, if at all possible. Change is not always bad. Sometimes it can be very good.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

I told this story on the radio and television show this past weekend and thought you might enjoy it.

You know those weird sounds that you have been hearing, the ones that sound like scratching? Do you sometimes find strange brown turds on your countertops?  Have you ever found Christmas ornament boxes full of destroyed, formerly stringed ornaments? Have you ever reached into a cardboard box that you had in the shed and saw something move out of the corner of your eye?

My dear, you have mice (or, at the very least, mouse). Keep in mind that these critters are very fertile and letting one live with you can lead to your having a whole colony of mice. You need to get rid of them ASAP.

There are various ways of doing this; we have effectively used baited traps in our garage and basement. The upside is that the traps can be baited with peanut butter; the bad news is that you have to get rid of the mouse after you catch it and it may still be alive, just stuck.

When a mouse threatened the sanity of my time working in our garage a few years back, we put out a snare, only to find that the mouse survived the entrapment. When the little critter showed up for the peanut butter feast, my hubby was out of town, so I managed to get the mouse and trap into the middle of the garage, covered it with a layer of cardboard (to protect my tires), and drove back and forth over the covered mouse until there were no more signs of life underneath.

I then swept the entire contraption outside and moved the car back into the now-mouse-free space. The deceased rodent thoughtfully remained under the cardboard until my husband returned home, though it might have looked a bit odd to the neighbors.

I don’t mean to hurt the feelings of mouse-lovers everywhere but this did rid my house of the problem at hand. And, no, his name wasn’t Mickey.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

Smoke Detectors that have Detected Smoke: Dinner is Served

Sometimes smoke detectors signal their displeasure by going off. This can mean several things: your house is on fire, your candles are burning down, or your home’s heating system is burning off dust because you just switched it from air conditioning to heat.

It could also mean that dinner is ready.  At my house, it is usually the latter. If you have not recently changed over from air conditioning to heat and you aren’t cooking or burning candles, GET OUT OF THE HOUSE AND CALL 911.

[Note: It is good to have your HVAC system checked regularly; this can prevent the heart-stopping sound that occurs when your detector goes off unexpectedly.]

Candle safety is also vitally important. Many folks are changing to the fake-flame candles, but others still prefer to have an open flame. (I find that a candle can cover up the smell of burning meals; my ex-hubby used to say that he could tell in advance what dinner would be like by the size of the candle burning when he got home from work. If the big one was going, he would offer to take me out to eat.)

If you use old-fashioned candles, keep the wicks trimmed to ¼ inch, do not keep them burning more hours than their width in diameter, and never, ever leave them burning unattended.

When a smoke detector goes off due to burning food (but without a fire), there are several ways to stop the alarm. One is to wave paper near the detector, until the noise stops.

Please note that you may also need to open the windows and doors and turn on a fan. You can also take the detector down and throw it in the yard (this is my sister-in-law’s preferred approach).

Please resist the temptation to hit the detector with a hammer. While this may work short-term, the end result will be the sudden need to replace the now-destroyed detector. It will, however, solve your immediate problem.  Unless, of course, your detector is wired into the house, as I mentioned earlier.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

Just recently, I happened to walk past a gal who was heading towards the cutest little yellow Volkswagen bug. As she approached the car, she pushed the wrong button on her key- apparently she was trying to unlock the door but she hit the car alarm button instead. She finally managed to get the alarm stopped and proceeded to get into her car.

I could  immediately tell that she was not used to the car, a manual rather than automatic transmission, as she stripped the gears (which made a horrid racket, especially at 6 am) while trying to get the car in gear.

As she put her foot on the brake, I noticed that her back left brake light was out. When she drove past me, I waved her down to tell her. She responded that she had just gotten her car the night before and was still learning what everything was for.

She immediately sped off before I could tell her that there was not a special button for the left rear brake; her brake light was not working and she needed to get it fixed before she got stopped by a police officer or had an accident.

Ladies, there are buttons for many things in your car, but a single brake light is not one of them.

If someone tells you that a brake light is out, there is no magic button to push to make it come back on. The light will need to be replaced or looked at by someone who knows something about cars.

While we are on the topic of driving manual transmission cars, she needed someone to teach her how to operate the vehicle before she was under the pressure of “I’m late to work.”

Additionally, the best time to learn how to drive a car with manual transmission is not on the way to work when you are ahead of a school bus full of kids and stopped at a traffic light that turns green. Stalling your car numerous times in front of a bus driver who wants to drop off some noisy children will not endear you to that individual. Once again, this is the voice of experience. Don’t ask.

What amazing tale of woe do you have, related to car issues? I would love to hear your story.

Best,

Dr. Sheri