Toilet Wax and Pizza

Shay, I'll thank you for inspiring the real guts of this post because of your last post called "You Get What You Pay For". Boy, did I ever just have an experience with that yesterday.

When we moved into this POS house, we wanted to get a new toilet, but wouldn't you know, my packrat father-in-law had one new and in the box in his shop. He brought it to us and we put it in. That thing has been the bane of my existence since day one. It would plug with no reason, it stained from our hard water really easily, it eventually had a broken tank lid, and finally it started running constantly. (If you ever have a huge hike in your water bill and you haven't been filling your pool - your commode is probably to blame!)

Last time I was in Wal-Mart, Slade called and wanted me to go back to the bathroom section for some odd thing he wanted. While I was there, I spotted an entire kit of toilet tank guts for like $5. I thought, "Perfect! This will fix me up until we gut that damn bathroom." So, in typical fashion, that kit laid on my kitchen counter along with two of the ugliest pair of pliers you'll ever see for almost 2 weeks. Then I moved them into the bathroom and Slade said "Is that a hint?" Um, yeah.

Day before yesterday, he fixed it. When he emerged from the bathroom, he looked rather pissy. I asked him if maybe it didn't go well. He said "Well, it's fixed." That's never a good sign. It usually means he has mysterious parts left over or he jerry-rigged something. Yep, it was the latter of the two. He said the float device came up too high to put the lid on and the, get this, ballcock (I learned that yesterday) was too tall for the tank. So he rigged it. He turned my toilet, that had ONE good quality (power flush) into one of those annoying toilets you find in an ancient church basement - you know, where you have to stand and hold the flush lever for 5 minutes while you wait for the water to slowly flush down. THAT is one of my biggest peeves and now my husband turned my toilet into one.

So I silently swore to myself that I would not live with that toilet for one more day if it was the last thing I did. Apparently, the toilet made the decision for me. BECAUSE - - while I was out picking up kids from preschool and running errands, that damn toilet ran water over the top of the tank for the entire hour I was gone. Now, why does water damage turn a person into a complete psycho? When I saw the mess, I think I would have killed the next person through my front door. It didn't seep out into the hallway, but instead went down through the floor and into the unfinished "bathroom" below it. I still haven't had the heart to go deal with that because it's full of storage stuff for now and I just don't want to ruin my day like that.

But back to the mess yesterday, I immediately started hollaring to the kids to get their shoes and coats back on - we were going to the hardware store. I didn't care if the only toilet he had cost me $300, it was MINE. Lo and behold, he had ONE on hand and it was only $86. I came home and had full intentions of replacing it myself, but I couldn't get one of the wing nuts off no matter what I did. Unfortunately, I had that mess going strong when Slade got home from work, but my mood had cooled, so at least my mood didn't ruin his mood right off the bat.

We set out to replace the toilet and all was going fine - as we joked about having been that intimate with a toilet before at times in our lives. Toilets absolutely GROSS ME OUT, but there is nothing worse than that horrible wax ring it sits on. Everyone and their dog tries to reassure me that poop doesn't touch that, but I still don't buy it. Even if it doesn't, it looks like poop and probably smells like poop. I told Slade they need to make those things hot pink or something so that a person wouldn't have to be gagging at the thought while scraping it off the floor. ICK. We put the old ring in my best old floor-scrubbin' ice cream bucket and I bid the entire thing, bucket and all, farewell last night because I wasn't about to clean the poop ring out of the bucket. Slade talked big, but when it came down to it, he wasn't about to do it either.

By the time we had the new toilet on and looking good, it was nearly 7pm and I hadn't even thought of supper. So we ordered pizza. When my kids ask me what's for supper, I will often say "Poop" just to get rid of them. The pizza arrived last night, and the kids asked what was for supper, again I said "poop". Given the evening's string of events, I think my kids truly believed me that time.