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Blue Sky

A New Throne for the Queen: Everyday Magic, Day 818

Updated: Sep 28, 2023


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So today I decided to fix our toilet — the one in “my” bathroom, a place I’m very fond of. Even Ken, who was out of town for the weekend, thought it was plausible I could remove the toilet, turn it upside down, and shake out whatever was stuck within (we suspected a tiny bottle of essential oil).


I actually read instructions, which I rarely do, and even watched a youtube video on how to successfully remove your toilet. Equipped with a sponge, bowl to catch water once I disconnected the toilet from the wall, cloth to stuff in the hole in the floor to avoid sewer fumes, and several wrenches and pliers, I headed confidently into the bathroom. I also brought my phone in case I got trapped in there. At first, it was a textbook removal. Surely, I thought, I would be done with this whole deal, and be reattaching the toilet within 20 minutes. Then I would drink a gin and tonic on the veranda, no matter that I have no veranda and don’t drink.


But as it goes with most household repairs, plans changed. Once I hauled the big, heavy canister of porcelain out to the back deck and turned it over, I discovered that even a modest amount of shaking didn’t make the toilet hiccup up the essential oil (rose, I believe). I was wondering what to do next when I noticed a big crack in the tank, one I put there by shaking it. Ken was on his way back to town when he got a call instructing him to meet me in aisle 8 of Home Depot, where the proud new toilets wait for adoption.


Ken took the new toilet in stride, selecting with me not the very cheapest, but the next-to-the-cheapest one, which was wicked heavy to lift into the back of the CRV, and even heavier to lift out and up the back deck to the bedroom door. Ken  installed the beautiful new toilet while I read the instructions aloud, occasionally losing the English pages and trying to figure out what the Spanish was saying about the washers. It was complicated, much more than it should have been, and involved counting a lot of screws and plastic do-dads.


As I drove the old toilet to town to gingerly place near a trash bin before scurrying away, I thought about my time with all that porcelain. We moved to this house when I was nine-month’s pregnant with triplets, or at least that’s what people said I looked like. I was actually six-month’s pregnant with Forest, and let’s just say the toilet and I became fast friends. This was my refuge of choice when I had trouble with chemo over a decade later, and over the years, I’ve parked myself here to read a great deal of powerful poetry and pore over photos of evening gowns in People magazine. The toilet reigns as the most private seat in the house, something very exciting when I had three little kids underfoot.


The new toilet is stunningly attractive with its gleaming curves. It’s also a little higher and bigger. “That’s a big-ass toilet,” I told Ken, who wisely just nodded. The new toilet, and I know it’s just the way it’s made, smiled warmly at me.

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