Some days you just have to get out of the house. So, I headed to the library. I planted myself in the computer lab among the rows and rows of computers.

My computer of choice had an old roller ball mouse, and it was hurtin'.

Maybe IT wasn't hurtin', but it did make ME hurt to use it. It jumped crazily around the screen, I had to roll it several times to get it to go where I wanted it to "¦ I had to do those crazy computer dance moves "¦ raise it up, shake it around "¦ as if that was going to help the thing perform better.

Then I remembered: it's one of those old roller ball mouses. Oh, Sorry - Mice.

When they get dirty around the roller ball - they stop working.

I'm sure the nice librarians had many more important things to do with books and reference materials and the Dewey Decimal System than to stop by the lab every once in a while to clean out dirty mice.

I turned the thing over, and took the roller ball out. Like I suspected, the mechanisms were covered with goobers (the technical term).

When you get goober build up, mice stop working. It happened over time. Lots of use, lack of cleaning.

The mouse still worked, but it began missing things. It needed extra coaxing to do what it needed to do. It took more work to do simple tasks, but hey - it wasn't dead.

Yet.

Amazingly, after five minutes of working on removing goobers with my fingernail "¦ I decided NOT to go ask the librarians if they had any rubbing alcohol (they looked busy staring intently over their horn rimmed glasses) "¦ It was fully de-goobered.

And hey, it worked!

It responded when I moved it, it highlighted and selected amazingly.

All because I took five minutes to work on it.

I paid attention to where it wasn't working

I noticed the problem areas

I took the initiative and cleaned up the mess

I worked at it

"¦ and you know what "¦it wasn't that tough.

It didn't take that long

It worked like new after the short amount of time that I put into it

Hmm.

How's your mouse and rollerball working today?

Editor's note: This article was originally published on Stupendous Marriage. It has been republished here with permission.