What home repairs are you working on?

I’m sorry about your loss.

My cat was nearly 16 years old, and a cancer survivor, so I was aware that the end might come at some point, but in the end it was a short but serious illness and some mistakes on my part that lead to his end. I know that it is normal to feel a misplaced sense of guilt when someone close dies, but I thought that he would hold until a trip to the vet the next morning because he had been through worse in the past. I overlooked a couple of warning signs at the end, and then he died. At least I was there to comfort him, just minutes before he died. I would have rushed him to emergency care if I had been in a clear state of mind, but I was sick with the flu and distracted by multiple other problems that have plagued me in the last 7 weeks. He might have died on the way to emergency care anyway, I just don't know.

I’m a cat dad and most of my cats have been special needs. It’s really rough emotionally and mentally when someone you love is very sick, and possibly dying. It’s the worst time to have make clear decisions and having to make really tough judgment calls about another person’s health, especially when they can’t communicate to you what’s happening and what they want or need. You do the best you can, and try not to be too hard on yourself in hindsight for any mistakes you made. You act out of love and that’s all that matters.

Shellhead wrote: I'm not doing the cutoff valve, so I will schedule that in advance and then attempt the toilet repair the day before the appointment. If anything goes wrong during the repair, I will have a plumber there to deal with it the next day. Until then, I am opening up that cutoff valve so my friends can use the toilet during the next Call of Cthulhu session and also on Firefly day. This is the toilet adjacent to my gaming room.

I finally did this repair on Monday. I got home two hours before the plumber was possibly going to show up (the start of a two-hour window for when the plumber would show up) and successfully disconnected and removed the valves and the tank. However, I realized that neither of the valve kits came with a replacement cup gasket or tank bolts, and the rubber on the existing ones was fairly degraded. So I left everything on pause, hoping the plumber would show up in a few minutes. He actually showed up 2.5 hours later. He generously gave me some spare parts without charge, and I started working on putting the valves and tank back together while he replaced the shutoff valve. Then he coached me through remounting the tank and made sure that it was level. We tested it repeatedly and everything was great.

I thought that doing this repair would make me feel a lot better, like I was finally getting past all of my recent misery by getting proactive. But it felt hollow, and I haven't used that toilet even once since the repair. Too much has happened in my life lately, and I still feel like I am walking on eggshells. The toilet will definitely get used in the near future, as it is conveniently near my gaming room.