Is this too white trash for you?

This, ladies and gentlemen, represents what I hate the most about being single and living alone: when something breaks, I have to fix it. I’m the only one who can deal with it, whether I fix it myself or seek out someone to fix it for me (even if it means calling my dad, who lives over 500km away, and whining, “Daaaaad, can’t you come up this weekend and fiiiiiix it for meeeeeee?”) [1] The backstory to this picture goes something like this:

A few weekends ago, Denise and Denephew came up (along with her friend Lisa and her daughter), and noticed the toilet was leaking. None of us could figure out exactly what was wrong, so we put a container under the most likely spot. Later in the weekend, my brother-in-law established that the water was leaking from around one of the bolts which holds the tank to the seat. The solution was simple: drain the tank, and seal the bolt with some kind of waterproof silicone caulking. In the meantime, with the use of containers (and a few rags), the leak was manageable.

Later that week, the leaking appeared to stop. There was no more water in the container, so I assumed whatever was wrong had fixed itself [2]. Friday morning, the day my cousin was to arrive, I was sitting at the table in the kitchen eating breakfast, when I heard a dripping noise. Looking up, I could see the bulge in the ceiling where the water was collecting, and the spot where it was actively leaking through. Got that cleaned up, called my dad (“Daaaaaaaaaad! Heeeeeelp!”) and he explained that the bolt would probably have to be replaced. A little while later he called back and said I shouldn’t do it myself and should seek out a professional since there were so many ways it could go wrong (a few of which I found out myself, but I’m getting to that…)

The visit with my cousin was fabulous in all senses of the word [3], but part of me spent the weekend fretting about the leak, which was being contained with rags around the base of the toilet. Sunday afternoon, after I dropped him at the bus station, I went to Canadian Tire to see if I could get replacement bolts.

(An aside: whenever I go to Canadian Tire/Home Depot/Home Hardware/etc. for a specific purpose, I feel helpless, defensive, and inadequate. Twice, I approached a salesperson to ask for help and had them walk past me to help someone else, usually a man, in coveralls and work clothes who looked like they already knew what they were doing.)

After wandering around for a while, I found the necessary hardware. I should have taken them home and left it at that, but I was bound and determined to get the damn thing fixed. I figured out how to drain the tank and shut off the water source (go me!) and had a go at getting the bolts out. No dice – the washer at the bottom of the bolt was so badly corroded I couldn’t really get it loose. However, I did manage to get it loose enough that it was no longer tight to the base, and there was considerable wiggle room. It was also at this point that I accidentally knocked over the lid of the tank, which was leaning against the wall, and watched it shatter into four pieces. [4]

The toilet wasn’t unusable at this point – if I wanted to flush, I just needed to put a couple of buckets of water into the tank. In fact, it reminded me a lot of when I was younger and living at home in the country, where we were on a cistern – when the power went out, we couldn’t flush the toilet because the water pump didn’t work, so we would use the same bucket solution.

Fortunately, when I was asking the Exec Assistant at work if she could recommend a good plumber, she told me not to worry and called her husband to come fix it; which he did, and now it works again. Except for the lid, which I need to figure out how to replace.

Back to what I was saying at the beginning – I would dearly love to have someone around the house to hand this whole situation over to fix. I can fix a lot of things on my own, but major repairs (like this) just bring up all these feelings of helplessness and inadequacy. I know I should be proud of the fact I don’t have to rely on someone else for shelter and security, but there are certainly times it would be nice to have someone to do the things that I can’t do.

[1] He’s retired now, so I labour under the delusion that he’ll drop everything and rush up to lend a hand. So fa, it hasn’t happened yet.
[2] I live in a world completely undisturbed by reality, and I’ll thank you to indulge my little fantasies!
[3] And we were even sober for some of the time!
[4] It was just the icing on what had been a spectacularly bad week – with a few bright spots – so my descent into despair and hopelessness was a short one.