The Bathroom Saga

It's been over a month since our toilets went out. I won't tell you where we've been eliminating waste, because you'll only be grossed out and it's not very exciting anyway. What I will tell you is that we have tried to solve the problem.

The issue with solving the problem, of course, is that we don't know exactly what the problem is. Neither Johnny nor I are plumbers. Despite my high school shop teacher's best efforts, I don't know a damn thing about pipes or plumbing. (Sorry, Mr. Peery.) Johnny and I, however, do know how to use the internet. In some reading or another, Johnny came to the conclusion that we should just replace the hall bathroom's toilet. He ordered a super-efficient Kohler from Amazon. It arrived, and we stared at the boxes for a week, daunted by the task ahead.

Last Saturday we finally opened the boxes, ready to get to work. After all, we'd watched Home Depot's helpful video on replacing a toilet. That guy got it accomplished in 3 minutes! Surely it wouldn't take us more than an hour!

We opened the giant Kohler box and were greeted by a small piece of porcelain. Uh-oh. Maybe it's from an unimportant part of the toilet,I thought. As we opened the rest of the box, this is what we saw:

That isn't good.

Our new toilet was rendered unusable! Johnny fired off an email to the seller, and we ventured to Home Depot in Owasso, OK to pick up another toilet. Home Depot was a soothing experience, full of wide aisles and helpful employees and best of all, an identical Kohler toilet-to-go kit that was about $100 cheaper than what we'd gotten online.

Back at home, Johnny got to work sponging water out of our old toilet. I kept Buttons occupied; she was determined to help Johnny by drinking as much toilet water as possible.

Everyone was hard at work.

Johnny managed to remove the tank, and the future looked bright. 

It's a cakewalk after this!

Wrong again! As Johnny attempted to remove the bolts from the toilet's base, the rusty old things disintegrated. It was impossible to keep a wrench on them. So off to Ace Hardware we went. We purchased a small hacksaw. Johnny sawed through one bolt and we called it a night.

Yesterday evening, we got back to work on the toilet. Johnny sawed through the other bolt. Surely the hard part must be done. Both bolts were sawed through, and according to Home Depot Video Man, we just had to pop the old toilet off, replace the wax ring, and put on the new toilet. Right? Right? 

Wrong. You see, when the former owners of this house remodeled this bathroom, they grouted the toilet to the floor. No, really. Upon Johnny's mother's suggested, we tried hot water to help soften the grout. This wasn't really moving things along at the pace we'd like, so we again put down our damp sponge and fell back, defeated by our house's previous idiot owners. 

The current plan is to talk with people at Home Depot about the fastest way to dissolve the grout. Is there a chemical available? Should we just start chiseling?

On the bright (?) side, this will probably mean we will go ahead and give the bathroom a makeover, complete with new tile, paint, and a lighting. There are worse ways to spend a summer, I suppose.

Continue Reading...

How I Know I'm Old

It's become increasingly obvious to me that I'm aging. It has less to do with my body making unauthorized changes (since when do you need arch support, left foot?) and more to do with changes in my overall outlook and attitude. I suppose this happens to everyone as they grow older, whether they're 25 or 55. What's really bizarre to me is not how different I am than I was at 15 (I've stopped wearing black nail polish, for one), but how different I am from when I was 20. In what ways, you ask?

• Bedtime. Somehow, in college, I managed to subsist on 4-5 hours of sleep a night, save for days I didn't have early classes or work. Going to bed at 3 AM and getting to a 9 AM organic chemistry class was nothing. Somehow, I now require approximately 10 hours of sleep to feel functional at work. I'm beginning to understand why my mother goes to bed at 8 PM.
• Drinking. This often went hand-in-hand with bedtime; there were countless nights I stayed up far too late playing beer pong or downing shots or swilling a near-lethal mixture of Mountain Dew, Kool-Aid, and vodka. And afternoons spent drinking Jack and Coke while playing Rock Band. Once, on my best friend Amy's birthday, drinking hunch punch for breakfast. I spent an entire summer consuming unreasonable quantities of liquor with Amy, sleeping for an hour or two, going to the barn to ride, taking a siesta, and heading to work. These days, I'm lucky if I can drink three Blue Moons before falling asleep on the sofa. My last night of "heavy" drinking with my coworker Kyla consisted of half a bottle of wine, two beers, and playing shuffleboard. I have no idea when this change from hard-drinking partier to total lightweight occurred, but it's kind of annoying. And sad.
• Grad school. Up until two-ish years ago, I was convinced I needed to go to graduate school. For what, I didn't know. I still don't. When faced with the prospect of leaving UTM, I wasn't excited. I was scared. Martin, Tennessee was where my friends lived, where I had a job, where I had fun and felt safe. I didn't want to leave. Grad school seemed like the perfect answer- I could continue on with aforementioned habits, free of social responsibility, and full of money from the federal government. When I made the hasty and fanciful decision to move to Wichita, Kansas, the idea was still lodged in the back of my mind. Over the last couple of years, it's become more and more distant, though. I think I've finally accepted that it's okay to be an adult, far away from friends and family, paying bills and going to bed at 7 PM. I've made my peace, and now all I think about when graduate school comes up is how much money it would cost me.
• Boys. The less said about this, the better, but it bears mention. I went through a slew of questionable dates over the course of a couple of years. For the most part, they were interesting, nice, witty, and total freaks. I was fainted on, cried to, introduced to parents after a single date, told about divorces...the list is endless. I suppose this is what you get for going on dates with boys from OkCupid. It was fun, but I must say I am far happier these days all settled and co-habitating with the other author of this blog. Stephanie circa 2008 would be driven crazy, but Stephanie 2011 is extraordinarily happy. 
• The music, maaan. My musical tastes have done something of a 180 over the last few years. Of course, I still adore Metallica, but you'll rarely find me listening to The Pink Spiders, Franz Ferdinand, The Acro-Brats, or Fratellis. I still enjoy these bands, but bands in my regular rotation tend to be less bratty pop-punk and more blues or folk. 
• Friends. I imagine I'll have the same friends until people die: Moto, Amy, Mikey, Greer. They are superb friends. Although I feel like I'm friendlier and more open than I was a few years ago, it's become increasingly difficult to find new friends. Without classes or sorority functions or a job full of 20-something college dropouts, I've had trouble finding people to fill the gaps left by my BFFs' absence. I made a handful of friends in Wichita, but feel I've only really made three or four buddies in Tulsa. They're all fantastic, and I'm grateful for them. But I do wish I had the huge circle of people surrounding me that I had in college. I dislike being alone! Good thing I have Johnny to hang out with all the time.

Physically, I've apparently turned into an 80-year old woman sometime in the last two years. My left heel is constantly bothering me, as is my left hip. (I'm certain these are related.) My hearing seems to be getting worse. Somehow I seem to have put on 50 pounds and it's not budging, no matter how much I exercise. Exercise isn't as fun as it used to be. And, perhaps most telling of all, I'm just a tiny bit nervous when I'm riding a difficult horse. 

But never fear! I'm not totally old and decrepit yet! How do I know? Because I still ride the crazy horses, still get on after a fall, and still live for the adrenaline surge that comes only from clearing cross-country jumps. :) 

Continue Reading...