This past week I, Jess, worked on my plumbing skills. Of course I am merely limiting those skills to dismantling and unclogging toilets.

First thing last Wednesday morning I carried Anna down stairs and heard the upstairs toilet flush. Jack was standing in front of the toilet. I asked if he flushed anything down the toilet. NOW this is a reasonable question since about a week before he and a friend (Lily) tried to flush loofahs down the toilet and they didn't succeed, more on this later. Jack said he hadn't flushed anything but that “Blue car play hide and seek”. One flush of nothing but water confirmed that blue car was indeed playing hide and seek.

Without hesitation the kids and I went to run errands but now at Lowes instead of just getting Damion's birthday present we also got a wax ring. We get home and I get to work. Shut off the water, remove all the water, take off the tank and put the bowl into the tub, seriously I didn't want any more water on the bathroom floor. I used the snake/auger through the bowl and from the underside and eventually blue car pops out! Jack was so excited he wanted to play with it right away, to which I said NO! Blue car got a proper cleaning and has not been out of site since then. Now this is when the trouble starts. I put the toilet back together and water was leaking out! I disconnected and connected again and it still was leaking so I did the only reasonable thing and shut the water off and waited for Damion. So much for doing this under the radar. He came home and discovered that one of the internal parts came unseated and that was the problem. At least it was a cheap fix.

Okay, remember me mentioning Jack and Lily trying to flush loofahs? For those asking, who's Lily? She is the daughter of our friend Keri who was helping her mother out in the St. Louis area for almost two weeks. During that time, Keri's children (Connor, who turned 3 during his stay, and Lily, 1.5 yrs old) stayed with us. ANYWAYS, one night I realize that two of the four kids are missing and then I hear the toilet flush and giggling. I rush to the bathroom to see two loofahs spinning in the toilet water. Since that time the toilet didn't work right at all but we didn't really do much to figure out the problem, until today.

See, Jack is working on potty training and it is not always convenient to take him upstairs and today was the day I said enough was enough. So in my jammies I started to take apart another toilet. No wax ring had been purchased yet because Damion said when he did it he was just going to reuse the one there. So I shut off the water, remove all the water, clean the toilet bowl, take off the tank and put the bowl in the shower. Remember it was an unknown clog source and I didn't want worse case scenario on the floor....ewwww. I put the auger in through the bowl and when it meets the block, the auger broke! Off to Menards we go.

This quick trip ended up taking 45 minutes. We found the auger and wax ring quickly but thanks to rainy weather for that 100 days the kids are stir crazy and our Menards has a play area. The kids were great shopping and got to play for almost 30 minutes before I decided we should probably go home. Since it was lunchtime Damion came home to help and it was actually more of a supervise than help. I fought the auger through the top and out the bottom a couple of times got a lot of toilet paper out. Put the auger through the bottom and out the top and surprise! A two inch in diameter plastic enclosed craft measuring tape the kids got as play tape measures! Ya. That was a surprise to us. Time to reassemble. I showed Damion the screw that broke and upon closer inspection we determined that we wouldn't need to replace the entire flange, just a the screw! After lunch the kids and I went to Ace Hardware (closer to our house) and got what we needed. Back home the toilet was successfully put back together and the water turned on and then quickly turned off. This problem I was able to resolve myself!!!

And now? Now we have two working toilets and I can proudly say, “I fixed them!”

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