In my last post, Suzanne (@ADivorcedMom) explained that never having lived on her own meant acquiring new skills, such as learning to cook. I had lived on my own for about ten years before I got married and I knew how to cook but there were plenty of new skills around home maintenance that I had to learn. When Suzanne listed unclogging the toilet as one her new skills, I laughed. Here’s Suzanne:
My son has always been busy since the day he came out. He was a challenging child and he’s curious, inquisitive. He’s all the things you would want your child to be, but that makes him extra dangerous. Even to this day, he’s always into something.
He would constantly clog the toilet. He would stick things in there, my cell phone, his cars. He even dumped my whole makeup bag in there one time. He would tell me it was an experiment and think it was funny but unclogging the toilet was really challenging for me because I’d never had to do that before.
My dad was basically on call until after the first couple of times he said,
“You’re going to watch me and you’re going to do this the next time.”
Because whatever my son put down the toilet would get stuck in the pipe, it wasn’t just a matter of using the plunger. It meant turning the water off, unscrewing everything, taking it all apart and putting it together again. We had all the supplies on hand because this was just an average occurrence for us.
He would do it so frequently that after a while I just got used to and it didn’t even phase me.
The Divorce Coach Says
I stopped laughing at Suzanne’s story when I realized what she meant by unclogging the toilet. This was serious. Have you ever tried to lift an empty toilet? They are heavy and I’ve seen how tricky it is to line it up with the wax ring. I think as women, many of us are used to this being a “man’s job” but Suzanne proves that it’s learned skill and one I bet most of us are capable of handling. I’ve had my share of toilet disasters, including a couple of floods the last of which finally got me to quit procrastinating about changing the toilet flush mechanism in the problem toilet.
My latest toilet related challenge is getting my teens to change the toilet paper roll when it runs out … I’ve taken to sneaking paper from a fresh roll while writing a message on the empty roll and leaving it in place … Any other suggestions are welcome.
Photo credit: wheeldog – //www.flickr.com/photos/dougn/153494993/