Sunday, August 28, 2005

 

Define "potable"

So...the other day at home I went to the bathroom. No big deal. As I always do after visiting the commode, I reached for the handle, pushed down (pulled down? I'm not sure of my flushing motion) and...nothing. nada. no resistance.

Sighing, I opened up the back of the toilet. Sometimes stuff catches and whatnot, and some jiggling is required to make it all work. I looked into the dodgy back-toilet area, and the handle wasn't connected to anything. The plastic arm (that I never before noticed, nor cared about) was just floating around in the water, impotent.

I yelled for my dad (one of the many perks of living at home) and he came upstairs, I told him the toilet was broken. He sighed and he

plummeted his hand in the water -



let me repeat that.

Plummeted His Hand in The Water and pulled on the plastic arm and the toilet finally did ITS duty and flushed.

I basically yelled "EEWWW!!!" in a horrified voice. He said "Meghan. It's potable water! you could drink out of that!" My response was something along the lines of "I don't care if you CAN drink it, it's coming out of a toilet."

Later that night I had forgotten about the stupid thing being broken, so I had to plunge my hand in there to pull on the chain. Ew.

(my dad fixed it earlier today, so in this pic has the plastic arm working. I'm sorry I don't have an accurate portrait of the useless arm)

In other disgusting news, the other day I was having Frosted Flakes and reading the paper (by "paper" I mean the comics, ann landers and the living arts section. No bad news before breakfast!). I polished off one bowl, and I decided to have another. With one eye on the paper and the other on the bowl, I began pouring.

Something black, wriggly and NOT frosted tumbled out of the box, onto my flakes and took a swan dive into my milk. IT WAS AN ANT. I gave a yelp of alarm/disgust, and my mom, without looking up from her section of the paper, said "What is it, an ant? This isn't fear factor Meghan, just take it out."

She said all of that entirely too calmly. It made me wonder how many ants she's surreptitiously dug out of morning meals over the years. I took my bowl, emptied the contents off the front porch, and took all of this as a sign to have a piece of coffee cake.

Comments:
I was up to my eyes in toilet water when I got my plumbing merit badge!
 
Meg, sweetie, that's the water BEFORE it goes into the toilet. Think of it as a small version of one of those big water towers.
 
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