Adventures in Plumbing

A few days ago, the mechanism that flushes the toilet in our main bathroom broke. Unlike many plumbing issues, this isn't an urgent one. It's not a big deal to remove the lid on the back and flush it manually. I'm actually well practiced at manual flushing - senior year the toilet in our apartment decided to have frequent flushing issues.

Our landlord is generally pretty good about getting stuff around the house fixed promptly, but it's always a pain seeing as repairmen tend to only work when I'm at work. So just scheduling somebody to come out to the house is a hassle. Since this is well within the realm of what I can fix myself I took a trip to Home Depot yesterday.

To set the scene for my excursion, I was wearing a strapless sundress over a bathing suit. This may or may not have been deliberate, but not because I needed help at the hardware store. Thanks to my father, I am quite at home in a hardware store, and reasonably skilled with basic tools. I had removed the pieces to be replaced from the toilet, put them in a baggie, and taken them with me, so I knew what I needed. While this was the same sundress I'd had on all day, and I was headed to the pool after the hardware store, I'll admit that I wore what I did partly because I was looking forward to an entertaining reaction of some sort and I may or may not have been daring the sales people to even try to not take me seriously. There's no reason for people to assume a young woman in a sundress isn't handy. Call me cruel if you want, but I'll admit I enjoy messing with men's heads on occasion. Just a little bit.

As I'm walking into Home Depot, the greeter-guy says hello, and I respond likewise. I'm still walking, and he's staring (props to him, not at all in a creepy way, and I'm really not particularly attractive, it's just not everyday an unaccompanied female enters Home Depot in a sundress) and looking really confused. I'm guessing confused because I'm not stopping to ask for help. So then he asks how I'm doing, and I respond that I'm good, and ask how he is. Now he's clearly quite confused. He stutters a bit and then asks if I need help. I asked what aisle toilet repair parts were in, he says aisle 7. I headed straight there without asking anything further, leaving him standing there still staring and scratching his head.

When I got home I installed the new lever, which wasn't a big deal, although took a bit of jimmy-rigging. The hook that is normally on the the end of the chain that connects to the end of the lever was missing. The previous lever has a spot where the chain pinched into it. I looked at getting the exact same kind of lever, but they all came shaped to fit a front-toilet flusher, and bending them to fit when connected from the side would make them too short. But the ones that came meaning to be attached to the side of the toilet just had a couple of holes in the lever, meant for a hook.

Before I could decide how to jimmy-rig my way around this problem, E & J came over for dinner (we made a significantly modified version of these stuffed bell peppers - adding ground pork, using fresh basil, and subbing plain goat cheese for the feta - all CSA motivated changes) and a movie (Dead Man Walking). Anyways, J took a look at the toilet, and pointed out that we could just make a hook, either from wire (which we had around if I looked for it) or with a paper clip. Since most of my paper clips are colored, I decided I liked that idea. (Thanks, J!)

I thought the pink paperclip was most appropriate.

I think Dad would be proud. Don't you? :)