So what've you been doing tonight?

Guess what I've been doing for the last hour or so? Well, you'll never guess, so I shall tell you.

I woke up this morning from a night of freakish dreams about babies (deformed and abandoned by me, mostly; issues much?) and realized I had to go to the bathroom, made my way to the toilet, and, with an overflowing suavity the likes of which this world has rarely seen, tripped at just the right moment and hit the toilet tank at just the right angle, so that the whole thing cracked in six pieces and water poured out all over the floor in surprising amounts (what looks like not a whole lot when contained in a toilet tank looks like a whole lot more when poured on the floor at four-thirty in the morning, when it takes you a second to realize what's happening because your brain is still dwelling on mental pictures of babies with six eyes, and you're standing in the dark besides).

So I've cleaned it all up; stuck all my towels in the wash; finally got to use the bathroom; thanked Bachelor No. 2 for his fruitful grace in providing me with a second bathroom to use if I were ever dumbass enough to break the toilet in the first bathroom in the middle of the night; shooed the pets out of the second bathroom (which they never see; they displayed a surprised delight at its existence the likes of which I would reserve for those occasions I might open my armoire and discover a magical kingdom hidden therein); and discovered online that one might purchase a toilet tank on its own, thus sparing oneself both the expense and the logistical challenge of purchasing and transporting an entire toilet in the back seat of a Saturn.

Not a bad day's work, considering that it is now only 5:30 am and the alarm telling me that it is time to get up and start getting ready to go to work hasn't even rung yet, though that is coming, yea, inevitable as the tides. I guess I should go back to sleep, but somehow I can't see my way to it, and instead will add one last thing before going off to shower: I am thanking providence that this happened after the replacing of toilets became my responsibility, and not before, because the idea of calling a landlord and telling that landlord that I broke a toilet using nothing but my fat body and my own incomparable falling skills just makes me shudder. I will willingly pay the hundred dollars if it means I get to forego that pleasure.

Conversation

I went over to my parents' house this afternoon after work because my mother had made chicken piccata and wanted to give the leftovers to me (my father not being the sort to eat leftovers uncomplainingly). I told them about The Toilet Fiasco:

Dad (annoyed): So I guess I know what I'll be doing tomorrow.

Me: If you mean coming over to my house to put in a new toilet tank, you don't have to. I'll pick up the tank on the way home tonight and do it myself.

Dad: You can't do it yourself!

Me: Why not?

Mom: Yeah, why not?

I wasn't being all assertive and feminist when I asked why not (it rarely does much good to be all assertive and feminist with my father). I just didn't see why, after looking at how everything was put together while I was cleaning up this morning, doing the job myself was likely to be a job I couldn't do. It seemed simple enough to me.

And it was, too. Tonight I came home and did exactly what I told my father I was going to do, and now I have a working toilet again, and my father doesn't have to come over, and I don't have to listen to him bitch about having to do everything for me, and everybody wins.

Everybody seems to think that it's such a big deal, though -- not just my father. I wonder if it really is a big deal and I only succeeded because I didn't know enough to be intimidated, or if the world just thinks I am less capable than I really am. I may never learn the answer to this question, and I guess in the meantime I will continue to fumble and crash my way through all aspects of life, occasionally able to clean up the messes I make, good and proper.

:::

The chicken piccata, by the way, was excellent.