Background: About a year ago now, I began to get into couponing seriously. Using various websites, I try to match the sale ads of local grocery stores with available coupons in order to save the maximum amount of money on groceries that I regularly buy. It’s sort of like a fun math game to me that has ended up saving our family hundreds of dollars. Along with saving coupons from Sunday’s newspapers, I also frequently print out coupons. My printer has probably seen more action in the last year than the three years before that combined.
Last night before putting C and L to bed, I decided to quickly change the black ink printer cartridge because I had run out of black ink. I carefully removed the old cartridge and then inserted the new one. For some reason, the new one did not seem to fit right. My immediate assumption was that I was doing something wrong. So I shook and jimmied it until it finally popped in. I shut the little printer door happily and waited for the aligning “stuff” to start. And then the error message: “please check the right cartridge.” The right cartridge was not the one I had replaced, so I re-opened the door and popped the right cartridge out. I stared at the words “black ink” uncomprehendingly for a moment, and then it hit me that I had inadvertently replaced the color ink cartridge with the new black one. No problem. I just had to put the color ink cartridge back and move the new cartridge over to the right side. Not so much. After trying unsuccessfully for several minutes to remove the misplaced new cartridge, I called my husband over. When he could not wrest the cartridge from its unfortunate niche, he suggested that I google how to get it out. My search led me to the following advice from someone who had done something similar: buy a new printer. Oops! So the money I have saved from using coupons has now been used to purchase a new printer…uggh! Moral of the story: It all evens out at the end of the day AND don’t try to tinker with technological equipment at night when you’re brain-dead from mothering three children under the age of five.