It's William Had a Headache Day (Observed)! So observe it!

I want to say three disparate things in this post.

1. Wm. Had a Headache Day

Two hundred four years ago tomorrow, Dorothy Wordsworth recorded of her brother in her Grasmere Journals that "Wm had slept very ill -- he was tired and had a bad headache." To celebrate this only moment in history when a rational human being might sympathize with long-winded and self-absorbed Wm, the fabulous MP and I started our own holiday. In commemoration of his headache, we go out the night of Jan 30 and toast Wm's ridiculous poetry with several or more drinks, so that on Jan 31, we can say with Wm that we too had slept very ill, are tired and have a bad headache.

So celebrate this holiday! Take your friends out tonight, drink, and read poetry (even other people's poetry. This is a holiday in mockery of Wm, after all). This is our only opportunity to spend time in the mind of one of history's most famous blowhards. Sure, it's a Monday, but any excuse for a cold beer, right?

2. Steak 'N' Shake

...is evil. Although I routinely get horribly sick every single time I eat there, I go back for more thin and crispy fries and Mushroom 'n' Swiss steakburgers. Which I did last night to obscure the bad effects of Underworld: Evolution (which, though inarguably terrible, I privately enjoyed). And I'm paying for it in digestive bowel agony today. I think MP is right; they coat all their food with Ex-Lax. But I know that, in a month or two, I'll go back.

3. Plumbing Prowess

While I'm on a related subject, I proudly state that last week I fixed my toilet. I didn't do anything that required ancient poopstained jeans -- nothing so complicated -- but still, it was a sizeable problem. When I pushed the handle to flush last Tuesday evening on the phone with my sister, I felt it give in an unnatural way, and five minutes later when I came back to check I found my toilet still running.

Damn, I thought, the chain has come loose from the hatch. Well, no biggie. So I lifted the lid off the tank to rehook it and found, to my consternation, that the chain fastens to the hatch with a little loop...and chain, hatch, and loop are made entirely of rubber. No convenient hooks; no sturdy metal; no. And the loop that holds the chain to the hatch had entirely snapped like a broken rubber band.

What to do? I put my sister on speakerphone and stared at the conundrum and swore and fumed about how long it was going to take to get repaired. Laura's helpful input was not to shit at home for a few weeks.

Now, I come from a long tradition of determined, independent women who don't take "no" or "wait" for an answer. If something needs fixing and there's no one else to do it, we fix it, right then and there. So not fixing the toilet was not an option. And neither was pouring a bucket of water down the toilet each time I used it.

So I racked my brains. What can I use? Tape? No, the whole thing is underwater. String? My fingers aren't small enough to tie it. If only I had some wire. But I don't have any wire. Wire...wire...wire!

That afternoon I had pulled a Christmas ornament hook out of the carpet (the months following Christmas are full of digging up needles and ornament hooks and strands of tinsel, aren't they? Christmas never dies) and laid it on the coffee table to store or pitch later. I said to Laura, "I'll be right back" and went to fetch the hook. I straightened it out, plunged my hands into the hellishly icy toilet tank water, and with the wire bound together the end of the rubber chain and the broken rubber loop. And then I flushed. And it worked.

I'm still, as you can see, congratulating myself -- though not doubting my career calling. I love finding resourceful solutions to practical and immediate problems.

Look, she can hang her own pictures too!