Replacing a toilet...with a little help from Wynonna

 A week ago Friday, the handle on the guest bathroom toilet broke off. 

Because guests were scheduled to come over the next day for dinner. 

Then a freak spring snowstorm happened and the dinner was cancelled,

which turned out to be a good thing because nothing says entertaining

 like having to explain a broken toilet.

So I had a week to contemplate: 

a) the difficulty of finding replacement parts for a 13-year-old toilet, or

b) replacing the whole damned thing.

 Since this toilet had a few pre-existing conditions 

(some of the innards were held together with baling wire

and hard-water deposits were corroding everything else),

I opted for a total toilet replacement. 

I purchased a new one online, and all 100-plus pounds of it

were waiting for me when I went to Home Depot to pick it up.

A man in an orange apron and I wrestled it into the back seat of the truck,

thinking that might improve its chances of surviving a trip down the dirt road.

He refused my invitation to come back to the ranch and help me unload it,

so I got to fret all the way home about how I would get it out of the truck

and into the house in one piece.

Then Wynonna smiled down upon me and said,

"You got 160 pounds of me in and out of that truck. Same principle."

 Such a smart pig she was. 

She also could probably figure out a better method than duct tape 

to fix the garage door weather-stripping, but that's a blog post for another time.

 Anyway, the hard part was over. 

Now I just had to harness all that bold power and install it.

 My personal YouTube plumber taught me a few tricks,

and it wasn't too bad, though Smooch might argue that point.

 Smooch: You swear too much.

 Three hours later, the old toilet was out in the yard, 

and I had a pretty handle attached to a new toilet. 

 Then the fun began.

I smashed that old fixture to smithereens because I didn't want
to look at an old toilet in the back yard until my next trip to the dump.

Now that's what I call bold power. 

p.s. It turns out that my personal plumber is part of See Jane Drill.

How did I not know about this site until now?!