I Fixed the Toilet. I am a Toilet Champion.

I was deep in the midst of cleaning the other day when I got a nasty surprise. I was doing my usual method of cleaning a shitty mobile home from the eighties which involves taking everything that had accumulated in the living room throwing away the trash and then putting whatever is left into the no mans land that is the tacked on toilet bathroom area in the bedroom that is missing the dividing wall because rednecks.

It's a system I have.

I didn't say it was a good system.

So I was back there doing shit when I happened to glance over at the toilet and realize that the entire area and plywood under it is soaking wet. Of course after just replacing the ENTIRE FUCKING FLOOR because of a leaky water heater I went into defcon panic mode three and proceeded to loose my shit all the way back into the kitchen where I grabbed Scott and made him look at it because that is just the cross husbands have to bear.

So he gets flashlights and pokes around and announces that the bolts that hold the tank onto the bowl part are leaking. So then he tells me he is going to go up to the shed and see if he has any rubber washers that would fit those and then he walks up to the black holes of insanity that our are poorly organized sheds. Then I get the bright idea that because of the older mobile home we abandoned to the wolves are using as storage we have a spare toilet.

A spare toilet with bolts on it that is.

So I tell Scott of my plan and he points out that toilet is even older then this toilet but I can take a wrench over there and see because it is not like he is making any progress here. So then I grab a head lamp and some tools and some cat eye medication because I have taken to dosing Emoticon's eyes whenever I see her and then I go over there.

Of course the cats are there and feed them and put drops in Emoticon's eyeball and then she tells me she hates me and then I go inside and see about getting that motherfucking toilet apart. I figured that this bit was going to be, like super shitty because the bolts were like 40% rust and were probably bent on becoming one with the porcelain like metallic budists. Luckily for my plan but not for my sanity the bolts weren't even motherfucking tight.

Ha ha lol. Whatever.

So I pull those fuckers off and see that the rubber seal on them is still intact and then I am all like, score. So I take them back up to the shed and clean them up and tell Scott I think this is going to work and then I pry him away from checking endless drawers and boxes and totes for rubber washers and we go back inside and try to get the old bolts off.

The operative word being “try.”

Because it turns out that the top of the bolts, the part that sits in the tank, was completely gone. Like the water had rusted it away to nothing. So then we had to pry the rubber washer bits off, or more like what was left of them. Of course it was rusted away just enough to stop me from being able to unscrew the nut but not enough to allow us to pull the washer up easily.

Which is how we ended up breaking another part of the toilet.

So in the end we managed to pull away the rubber washers and scrap the remainder of the tops off and shove the bolts down through the holes with a screw driver. So then I install the new pieces, muttering vague swear words and pleas to the god of toilets that this fucking works and then I tighten them down trying not to think about all the weird toilet tank poop water that's probably on my hands by now and then it fucking works.

Of course being paranoid I kept checking on it and wouldn't let Scott put any of the tools away till like twenty minutes later because I kept expecting to fail magnificently somehow but so far it appears to be good. Then I had to clean my hands like fifty million times while singing “I fixed the toilet” to the tune of “I shot the sheriff” while Scott offered me pie to stop me from singing.

Which was very effective, I might add.

So in conclusion, I am the Toilet Champion.

Champion of Toilets if you prefer.

I should put that on my business card.

Finishing the Bridge or Gravel Time.

So today we finished the bridge. This involved putting a backhoe bucket load of gravel on each side to make a ramp. But not the cool kind of ramp that you can use to jump a van over a row of flaming school buses. No, the kind of ramp that allows one to drive up onto the bridge because we didn't inset that bitch into the earth.

Of course it would be like, 91 degrees today, meaning that we had to finish all of this before noon or else our faces would melt off from the heat like that one dude from Raiders of the Lost Arc. So after I did some other work around here, like feeding all the pets and working on the logs and doing laundry and hanging it out on the line and getting the tools we would need we were ready to began!

First off, with a backhoe, you would think you can do that cool thing where you ram the front bucket into the gravel pile and it will fill itself up and then you can high five. Except that it doesn't really work unless the pile is, like, full. When you are getting low on gravel all that will happen is you bunch the ground cover up and get a light coating of gravel in the bucket. Which of course meant that we had to shovel all the gravel into the bucket by hand.

Did I mention it was like, shit balls humid?

It was shit balls humid.

Anyway we get the first load in the bucket and then we head on down to the back acres to dump it. On this side of the bridge. Also known as the easy part. So we dump it and rake it out and give the frogs minor cardiac events because they think the backhoe is the god of destruction now. Or possibly they think the backhoe is the bringer of the deeper pool. It's hard to tell with frogs, really.

So after raking it smooth we head on back up to do load number two. Load number two effectively killed my enthusiasm. Mainly because the day heats up as it goes along. Now of course we faced the tricky part. The tricky part was that, in order to dump the gravel on the far side, Scott has to drive the backhoe partway onto the bridge. What's so bad about that? You might ask. You designed the bridge to driven over. That is why you built the damn thing in the first place, right?

The answer is that yes, we built this to drive over, but that doesn't mean it's going to work.

So we loaded up and then Scott and my worked out a signal for the bridge is going to collapse and the backhoe- also known as the most expensive thing I have ever bought- will end up in the ditch. I settled on the double back up motion, but Scott was all in favor of my screaming as loud as I could.

Once got down to the back I positioned myself on the far side of the creek and watched. Scott carefully eased the front tires onto the bridge. A few of the top boards creaked and groaned, but then they stopped and everything was still. It held.

And somewhere in my mind I heard that opening song from 2001 a Space Odyssey start up.

As the bridge held and Scott dumped our load of gravel on the far side the crescendo hit and I felt pretty damn good about our bridge making skills. Then we took the backhoe up to the house, grabbed some wood sealer/preserver and treated the top boards like the motherfucking champions that we were.

So all in all, I'd say this went pretty well.

I know. I'm surprised too.