Over the weekend Mom noticed that we had a good bit of water on the floor in the mechanical room in the basement. I traced it back to coming from the downstairs toilet. After some consideration we decided that it was a bit more than we wanted to deal with so we called in a plumber, who spent most of Monday with us.
It turned out there was a bit of a leak but it was greatly exacerbated by the tendency of the toilet to get stuck on due to the flush handle being broken. Naturally it was a model the manufacturer had discontinued, probably due to excess breakage. As a result we let the fast talking plumber talk us in to getting a brand new toilet with an allegedly lower repair cost and an extra three inches of length in front which I, for one, will appreciate.
The plumber installed everything by Monday evening, although the bill was a bit hefty. There was a bit of sealing he left to cure so I put a paper tape across the top with the word “CLOSED” on it to indicate that use was contraindicated. Naturally the kids asked “what does this mean?” to which I replied “it means ‘closed’, not open for use”. Corwin in particular was depressed over this state of affairs, but he endured. I asked Mom on Tuesday while the kids were gone how we would deal with the fight over first use, but Mom correctly anticipated that Corwin would be the sitter on that and so it proved — the first thing Corwin asked when he got home was whether he could re-open and christen it. It just shows that we sometimes do nice things for him.
