Independent Woman

Rex has been gone for almost five months.  GROSS.  I hate it.  Only 32 more days until he's home for good, but who's counting?  I never really realized how dependent I was on him until he was gone.  It's handy to have a guy in my life - he lifts the heavy stuff, zips up my dress if I can't reach the zipper, fixes the car when it won't start, etc.  Confession: he even braids my hair when I want it braided.  I don't know how to braid my own hair, which is actually ridiculous. I just never learned.

Slowly but surely, I'm learning how to do all of "Rex's stuff" on my own.  It's weird and oddly satisfying to live on my own.  It's like, "Hey, I can do this. Not that I want to...but it's cool that I can."  Does that make any sense? 

Anyway, today I had an awesome "go me," independent woman experience (please cue "Independent Woman" by Destiny's Child in your head as you read this).  My toilet broke, and I panicked.  It wasn't clogged - don't think anything nasty, you nasty - but when I got home from school the water was just running and running, and it wouldn't stop.  The bowl wasn't overflowed or anything, but it just kept refilling itself for no apparent reason.

Now, we only have one toilet in the house, and I had been teaching all day so I really wanted to use it.  Unfortunately, I couldn't.  It was running, and the flusher wouldn't do anything to stop it.  I immediately picked up my phone to call Rex, but then I remembered that he was hunting and probably wouldn't want to scare all the deer away while he discussed plumbing problems with me.  Instead, I called my dad.  He didn't answer.

I stared at the toilet, perplexed.  I thought about peeing in the shower, but that's disgusting.  I thought about getting in my car and driving somewhere else to use their bathroom, but then I thought to myself, "This is ridiculous.  You're a college-educated twenty-four year old.  You're not going to be defeated by a toilet."

I spent the next twenty minutes on the internet researching how toilets work.  It was actually kind of interesting - have you ever studied the evolution of a modern toilet?  Well, I have.  I studied diagrams and looked up trouble shooting pages about everything that can go wrong with your toilet (which is apparently a lot of different things). After all of that research I really, really had to go, so I marched back into the bathroom with my newfound knowledge, ready to take on my porcelain foe.

I opened the tank part of the toilet, and I noticed that the flapper was up.  WELL, that's supposed to be down when the toilet's not running, so I put it down.  Unfortunately, it picked back up.  Stubborn little thing.  I tinkered around with some parts and took some stuff apart, and finally I lengthened the chain from the flusher doohickey to the flapper thing (my terminology...not sure what they're actually called).  Once I lengthened the chain, the toilet water stopped running, and the toilet magically worked!  Whooo hoooo!  I'm one exposed butt crack away from being a plumber!

Anyway, it was a personal triumph.  I beat my toilet.  Now if only I could braid my own hair...