Flushed with Frustration Over Home Maintenance

There comes a time in most marriages when a woman will acknowledge, "Hmm, this guy is pretty handy to have around." But then there is the other percentage of marriages where the wife is forced to admit to herself, "This guy sucks at household maintenance."

My marriage happens to fall into the latter category. And it's not just me who has noticed it - even my neighbor, who actually blows the grass off of his lawnmower with his leaf-blower after he uses it, shouted to me one day while I shoveled the driveway, "Get a husband!" It was his way of gloating over his own highly developed household maintenance prowess, and humiliating me at the same time.

Jerk.

But, I digress.

So, when I broke the toilet handle (the handle, not the seat this time) last week, I immediately slipped into a deep depression, knowing that I would have to reach into the icy waters of the toilet tank and lift up some corroded green thing every time I wanted to flush the toilet, quite possibly for the rest of my life. It was almost too much to bear.

Luckily I was able to determine by removing the lid from the tank that the part that was broken seemed only to be a small arm attached to the handle which attaches to the green corroded thing.

Oh, why did my sister have to divorce her plumber husband? Was she crazy?! Didn't she know how much I needed him?

With no family plumber to call, I went to the store and bought something in the plumbing aisle that looked similar to what I needed. Even though my instincts told me not to, I handed the $2.77 part to my husband when he got home and said, "The toilet broke."

The next day I went to work and when I came home the lid was back on the toilet tank.

"You fixed it?" I squealed with delight, almost tearing up.

"Yeah," my husband hedged, "but the lever was a little short."

For two days I flushed with abandon. Then on Monday while my husband was at work, I felt the handle give way and not come back up. Once again I removed the lid from the tank, fiddled with the new lever, then put the lid back on. Suddenly I noticed water running down the side of the tank. I quickly removed the lid, and then noticed water squirting directly into my eye and then over my right shoulder onto the bathroom carpet. Somehow a thin black hose had become dislodged from the middle of the bulb thing and was flailing wildly like a live fire engine hose. I grabbed the hose and stuffed it back down the hole.

Reluctantly, I stared into the murky waters of my toilet tank and studied the mysterious innards: the black thing's connected to the corroded thing, the corroded thing's connected to the grey thing, the gray thing's connected to the silver thing, and the grey thing keeps coming disconnected from the corroded thing.

Hmm. Nothing a little picture hanging wire wouldn't take care of, I deduced.

Of course, I had used up all the picture wire a few weeks ago trying to attach a blue camping tarp to the top of the gazebo we put on our deck last summer after having to hack off the original tarp with a butcher knife this winter because SOMEBODY neglected to remove the tarp from the gazebo before it snowed, causing the frame to bend under the weight and almost collapsing on the dog.

In all honesty, the picture wire didn't hold for very long. Duh.

In all honesty, I suck at this stuff, too.