Emchap's Shit from the Internet 11/10/21 đ
I have spent much of this week in an incredibly one-sided fight with the toilet I inherited with this condo, which is a very glamorous way to spend a string of autumnal evenings.
It started out a few months ago when I noticed that periodically the toilet would run until I jiggled the stopper back into place. I did not super care about this (aside from some lingering environmental guilt) since I donât directly pay my water bill, but eventually prosocial spirit + the mention of our higher water bill by our condo president at the last condo meeting led me to finally decide to Deal With It.
I was informed by YouTube and the Home Depot that this wasnât a complicated fix; the most likely scenario was simply that the fill valve on it need to be replaced, and the kit was something like $10 at a hardware store. So I ordered it, pleased that plumbing seemsâunlike my own fieldâto have decided on functional universal standards for things like âhow big are the pipesâ, and waited for it to arrive. Having watched a video from the Home Depot on how to swap it out, I felt ready to Make Things Happen.
And initially, I did. The video I watched said to take the tank off as part of this replacement process, and I managed to do so without dropping the thing. (It was only later that I would realize that though I, personally, probably would have needed to do this because of the way my bathroom is arranged, itâs not actually a requirement and shouldnât have been in the godforsaken video). It was quick enough to swap the thing out, led by someoneâs dad on YouTube, and I got the whole kit and kaboodle put back in place, and turned on the water.
At this point, of course, the godforsaken thing started slowly but surely leaking from the tank bolts that hold the tank on top of the rest of it. No problem, thought I! And I googled how to fix it, and followed what seemed to be the steps, and I thought I was set.
I was not set. I woke up the next morning to soaked towels around my toilet base. It was at this point that I began to feel very stupid, which is the Worst.
When my boyfriend came over that evening, he found a much sweater and covered-in-decayed-rubber version of me than he was I assume anticipating, but he was very nice about my request that we go to the salvage hardware store near me to look at toilet tank bolts before we wandered off to get fried foods. We wandered around and looked at lamps.
Post-fried foods, though, we returned home and I determined to fix the stupid thing again. He wisely sat in the corner of the bathroom while I took the thing off, attempted to reassemble it with the new tank bolts, and then nearly started crying when it continued to leak upon reassembly. (He did start playing music from a shared Spotify playlist partway through, which did make me feel slightly like I was a feral dog that was being placated, but in a sweet way. Also I had been cursing at a toilet for 20 minutes by that point.)
He only stepped in when I gave up and asked for help, which was wise, and with fresh eyes/experience having previously installed a toilet because thatâs what you make sons do, figured out Iâd put part of the stupid set of bits below the bowl rather than between the bowl and the tank. We agreed that the diagram of the setup on the little bag was bad, because it was good to have a common enemy in the form of the bag diagram company. Back on the whole thing went, no water came out the bottom, everyone was happy.
Except that the next morning I woke up to soaked towels around the toilet again, which only got worse when I fucked with the bolts. At this point I was ready to pursue photosynthesis and yeet the goddamn thing into the void. (Or call a plumber, but the plumber I got in touch with had a 6 week wait time.) At this point I had decided that probably the process of removing and replacing the tank so many times might have caused the tank gasket to give out, so on my lunch break I scurried to the non-salvage hardware store (less scenic, better business hours) to grab the replacement part.
The non-salvage hardware store is run by the two characters from Oh Hello, and every single item in the store is somewhere in the back and must be Retrieved. They have to write out your receipt on carbon paper before taking it to a second location to charge your credit card. It took 40 minutes to buy the gasket, and by the end of it I was ready to take to the woods.
A meeting I had ended early, so I went back through the Whole Process again. Leaks continued and were somehow worse than before. I began to feel like the character in the Telltale Heart, but about a toilet. I screamed, cut the water off, and forced myself to walk away. (The boy from above, when he received this update, offered to take a look at it in case new eyes would help since it seemed to be upsetting me; it turns out my sexual orientation is âpeople who will offer to inspect your fucked up home plumbing because youâre sad.â)
And then, after work, I went through it one more time. I turned the water off. I drained the whole stupid thing into a bucket. I got fresh towels like I was going to give birth. I removed and re-tightened the tank bolts. I removed and re-applied the new gasket. I carefully set the whole thing back into place and tightened one side at a time, pressing straight down on the tank as much as I could. And then I put the towels down, and turned on the water, and waited. There were no leaks. I left the towels, and came to check on it every 20 minutes like a new parent, but they remained dry.
I feel like this has absolutely taken very stupid years off of my life, but itâs done for now, and itâs not leaking, and the stupid thing hasnât run at all since I installed the new flow valve.
Shit to read
I just paid to subscribe to Ask A Swole Womanâs substack.
Shit to eat
Plan to go out to a food truck.
Realize itâs cold as shit and raining and it gets dark at 4pm. Do not.
Instead, chop up an onion and three cloves of garlic. Cook them for 4 minutes with olive oil over medium heat.
Add a cup of sushi rice, cook for a few minutes.
Add half a cup of white wine, cook it off.
Add 2 teaspoons of kosher salt, explain the difference between kosher and table salt to the person watching you undertake this, explain how you once saw an Australian slow cooker Facebook group get REAL anti-Semitic about it even though itâs not the same kind of kosher, and then add 5 cups of water. Stir.
Add a shitload of pepper. Stir.
Bring to simmer and pop in the oven, lid on, for 40 minutes at 350. The recipe will say 25 minutes. The recipe is wrong.
Take it out, stir it up, toss in 3 tablespoons of butter and a few handfuls of parm. Stir.
Taste, ensure itâs good (it is), and serve. I had mine with a fried egg and some sauteed spinach.
Shit to watch
Shit to buy
Pizza.