It’s a little niggling issue with my car. The center console lid won’t latch and bounces up and down willy-nilly unless I keep my arm on it.  Every time I get in the car I remember I should fix it, only to have the thought disappear when I step OUT of the car. Today I finally had enough and decided to operate on the auto. Hoping to avoid the “helpless female/damsel in distress” visit to the auto parts store, I searched the internet for the part. No luck.  So I grabbed my keys, sucked in my pride and set out. The woman at the counter tried in vain to find the part in the computer for me. Finally the greasy man worker intervened and said no such part existed. “You will need to go to a junk yard or just buy a whole new console” he said. He might as well have said, “pilot a plane to Europe” for all the familiarity I have with junk yards.  Then the young lady offered a more uncomplicated solution. “My parents just rolled up a piece of paper and shoved it into the latch to make it tighter.” This didn’t sound like a very solid fix so I purchased some velcro tape since duct tape is just a little to redneck for me and superglue, while effective might have been too severe of an answer.

However, in the parking lot I inspected the latch one more time and thought I would give girl worker’s advice a try. I ripped the cardboard off the top of the velcro package, rolled a doobie and shoved in into the latch, making it all a little more “snug”. VOILA! It worked. Then it occurred to me. I now have $3 worth of velcro in a destroyed package that I can’t return.  Yes. I paid $3 for a 4×4 inch square of cardboard.

There are many issues and challenges that woodpecker my brain. Perhaps if I would just put my mind towards intentionally solving them one at a time I would find a simple solution, but instead I just worry. I worry and fret which only erodes the energy I need to actually problem solve. Maybe I could stop doing that.

A simple solution, a scrap of cardboard, could have conserved even a little bit of my sanity this year.