Let me spin you a tale of woe and intrigue.

Our toilet leaks out the flusher handle thingy. So after having wrung out a towel for the umpteenth time I decide to investigate. I open the top and I see the issue… the toilet is over filling. Easy fix, I’m just going to bend the rod thingy with the ball thingy (yeah, I’m no plumber) down a bit so the ball thingy can signal the rod thingy to let the water thingy know to stop.

Easy peasy… except with my new found Viking strength as I bend the rod thingy I break the ball thingy off! Clean off!!! Now we’re fucked. So I MacGyver a fix in the interim with literally only a hair tie! I used an eslastic band meant for hair to fix a toilet! Am I the only one super impressed???

Anyway, fast forward and off I go to purchase a new rod thingy and ball thingy. When I’m at Builders I ask a dude in the bathroom section if my idea of just bending the rod thingy would work? Nope. It needs a new washer in the water thingy, sounds easy enough and armed with all the goods I come back home and decide I’m going to Suzelle DIY the shit out of this toilet. My husband won’t even know and he would be super stoked and proud that I managed to “plumber” the thingies!!!!

Except, I can’t figure out where to turn the water to the toilet off… I search for a tap but can’t find it. So I think to myself, “Okay, so while the toilet is flushing, in essence, the water isn’t running right? So I just need to keep the flusher thingy down!!” Pat on the back and baby in the basin as I start to try unscrew the water contraption where the new washer has to go into… big mistake. Huge. Fucking water everywhere!!!!! It is literally high pressure washing everything!!! Including the baby in the basin who thinks it’s Christmas!!! I had to do it… I had to call Husband. Sigh.

Long story short. I bought the wrong rod thingy, we replaced the washer (baby in the basin is covered in grease) and Husband James-Bonded the rod thingy to the old rod thingy that was the right length.

The toilet flushes again but still leaked out the flusher thingy. Worse now… I think baby in the basin must have thrown, hidden or “hocus pocus-ed” some parts or we failed to put Humpty Dumpty together again…

Time for a nap now… then YouTube!! At least I now know where to turn the water off (what a pa-larva that is!!! All I can say is there is a shaft, screws and baby bird skeletons!!) so once we know what we need to do we can fix that shit!

Note to self: wash towels. Buy more towels.

Update: I wrote this on Sunday afternoon but didn’t get a chance to publish. There has been an update to the story!

On Monday morning Husband and I turned the water off and went to visit my folks and drop off the kids! When we got home Husband wiggled things here and there and tightened and fastened until he could tighten and fasten no more! Then off I went to the dead-bird-cemetery shaft to turn the water back on. Nothing. No water. Did we mess things up even more? Upon further investigation, a main water pipe burst in our suburb and everyone’s water is off… so we don’t know if we fixed it! It is Tuesday morning and still no water!