A Toilet of a Day

Somehow my life has turned into one comic tragedy (albeit small ones) after another. Get comfortable.

This morning Tanner went to get his Ipod out of our Saturn and somehow noticed that the car had no battery. He came back in and told me, and asked me if anything weird was going on with the car yesterday when I drove it. I said no, but I did remember the car beeping at me when I got out of the car after returning home at 2pm from Visiting Teaching. I thought that the key hadn't been turned all the way back the right spot in the ignition, so I reinserted it and turn it, and shut the door and everything seemed fine. Apparently it was not. Apparently, I had my lights on when I was driving around during the middle of the day and forgot to turn them off when I got home. Of course, I didn't think that I needed to turn my lights off because who drives around with their lights on in the middle of the day? Apparently, I do.

I called my sister and told her that I thought it was going to be a doozy of a day or as you will soon find out...A toilet of a day.

So, I was cleaning up around the house (shocker, I know) and Clark was helping me by putting things away and loading things into the washer and dryer for me. Everything was going well until I came across a large round beach shell (think a tennis ball cut in half size) in the living room. I have a glass bowl that I keep on top of the toilet that has a bunch of shells from beaches we have been to. Clark plays with them a lot, but has never (as far as we know) ever attempted to flush them down the toilet. I asked Clark if he would "Go and put the shell back on top of the toilet." Now, I am not sure whether he didn't understand me or he understood me perfectly but decided to be a two year old, but the next thing I heard was the toilet flushing. I jumped up and raced to the bathroom where Clark was looking curiously into the toilet bowl. I looked in the toilet and then looked at him frantically and said "Did you flush the shell down the toilet?" I got the immediate reply with great confidence "Uh-huh YEAH!"

I spent the next 5 minutes trying to decide what to do next, and then spent the next 5 minutes psyching myself up to stick my hand down into the toilet to see if the shell was immediately accessible. It wasn't. Why do I never have kitchen gloves when I need them? Eww is right.

I couldn't get a hold of Tanner at work, so my next call was to my Daddio. I have to tell you he sounded a little bemused on the phone after hearing my plight. But he did what any good father would do and gave me detailed instructions on how to disassemble the toilet...when Tanner gets home of course. I was pretty impressed with his knowledge of all things toilets, and I then called Tricia back and told her my day was going exactly as I predicted. She suggested trying to plunger it out before we disassemble the toilet. Good idea right? IF YOU HAVE A PLUNGER IN THE HOUSE...which I suddenly realized I do not. We threw ours out when we moved from Florida, and since we have not had a need for one since we moved here, it wasn't exactly high priority on the shopping list. Great, I'll just load the kids up and go get one...EXCEPT MY CAR IS DEAD. So here I am stranded with no car and no usable toilet.

I called my friend who lives down the street and left a message on her answering machine describing my 'issues'. I told her at the beginning of the message she is going to regret being my friend because I can't seem to go for a week without having issues. She called me back 30 minutes later laughing. I am glad we can all find this very humorous. It keeps the stress at a manageable level for me. She came over to let me borrow her plunger, and it was the strangest looking plunger I have ever seen. I am used to the wood handle ones with the black or pooh colored rubber on the end, but this one was a bright green and purple plastic one. She was showing me how to use it when a black rubber seal fell off of it. She thought it was a worm and freaked out, so we had a good laugh and I took the thing, hoping and praying it would work although I wasn't convinced it would. It didn't really work very well as far as plungers go, and the chances were slim to begin with that I was going to be able to dislodge the shell via plunger. So I gave up and waited for Tanner to come home to save me.

You can imagine how excited Tanner was to come home from work to find out that we had PROJECTS planned for the evening. First on the list, get the Saturn started. We hooked everything up and let the Monte run for a while before starting the Saturn up, but when we tried the first few times, it wouldn't start. I was convinced Tanner was doing something wrong, but he just repositioned the cables on the battery and we waited a little longer, and voila! The Saturn is back up and running! I guess he DOES know what he's doing! I am always impressed with how methodical Tanner is when doing a project!

Next on the list was to take the toilet apart. Our friends had let us borrow their snake (a metal thingy that will slide through turns to clear clogs is the official name). Tanner hit something very hard with it pretty quickly and we knew it was the shell and it was still in the toilet pipe. We followed the instructions just as my dad had relayed them to me on the phone although I think Tanner also knew what to do since apparently it is ingrained in every guy (okay SOME guys) how to be 'handy'. When we got the toilet apart and upside down in the shower, we couldn't see the shell. We got worried about how we were going to get the shell out because it was in the worst possible spot. Enter handy dandy snake again from the other end of the toilet and suddenly we heard the shell clanging through the toilet and out through the bowl. It was awesome. I would have kissed Tanner right there and then if he wasn't covered in toilet funk. We called Clark in to show him the shell and explain that it was a no-no again. He came in and freaked out when he saw "THE HOLE!" in the ground where the toilet used to be. It was priceless.

Somehow we decided I would go to the store to get wax and caulk to replace the toilet. Tanner told me just to ask someone and it shouldn't be difficult to get the right supplies. When I arrived at Home Depot, I of course tried to find everything myself and failed miserably. I must have had a look of confusion because someone asked me if I needed help. This is how the conversation went:

Handy Man: "Ma'am, do you need help?"

Me: "Yes. I need to caulk around the base of my toilet, and there is this little squeeze tube that looks like it would work just as well, but my husband said to get a caulking gun. Do I need the gun or can I just use this little squeeze tube instead. "

Handy Man (looking at the little squeeze tube with disdain as any REAL handy man would): "Get the gun, Ma'am."

Okie dokie. I was in line to check out when ANOTHER man (a patron in the store no less) asked me why I was buying two plungers. I told him one for me and one for my friend who let me borrow her broken one. He looked at the wax I was holding (that I picked out myself thank you very much), and said:

"Ma'am, you are going to want a different type of wax than that. Are you installing your toilet on tile?"

Me: "Yes."

2nd Handy Man: "Come with me, I will show you what to get."

He GOT out of line and walked back with me to the Bathroom section of the Depot and when we got there a worker asked us if we needed help. The men quickly consulted together and resolutely handed me a different more souped up version of the wax ring I had originally picked out. Are we noticing a pattern here? But I can't complain because when I returned home, everything reinstalled perfectly, and we now have a working toilet once again...and as a bonus, Tanner got to practice his caulking skills (they are a little rusty he said). Thank you to my hubby who not only performed all the tasks at hand with perfect precision, but with a happy disposition as well (which is just as important to any woman helping a man). And thank you to my Handy Men in the Home Depot. I was clearly lost without them. So it turns out our toilet of a day was finally flushed away! Are you in awe of my poetry skills or what?

P.S. I'll try to make my post longer next time. :-)

(that is not poop around the base of the toilet...it's that gunky old wax stuff...we think.)