I Am a Toilet Hero!

And so we have come nearly full-circle here in NaBloPoSloland, from a post about poop and pee early on, to high-minded political outrage and analysis, to seasonal grouching, to linguistic pedantry, and now, on the final day of November, we're back to the poop.

If you are very squeamish, you should probably just stop here.

I think I have mentioned our mono-toilet (uni-toilet?) state. That one toilet became clogged this morning. It was flushed, and the flushing was counterproductive to the point of almost--but not quite--overflowing and breaching the carefully-tended divide that we maintain in our culture between The Toilet and Everything Else Except Possibly a Baby's Diaper. It was perilously close, but it didn't quite go there.

Plunging was not productive, and just made everything more disgusting.

I waited. It drained, but slowly.

I flushed again. Oh--mistake.

So, I turned to the Internet, and found this handy link, which included a very helpful video. What I especially like about the video is that the voiceover has a British accent and at the end, after the person in the video has successfully unclogged the toilet (with appropriate discouraged and disgusted facial expressions), the voiceover voice says, in a brisk and cheerful and yet matter-of-fact manner, "Well done. You've been very brave."

Somehow this gave me the courage to go on, and I gathered the recommended supplies: rubber gloves, newspapers, bucket, and wire hanger, and ventured once more into the breach.

Where I proceeded to try everything recommended in the video, in rapid succession. At first, none of it worked, and I was about to send the Renaissance Woman out to Home Depot for a toilet snake.

But then! I tried letting it drain down again, and plunging again, and I thought I heard signs of progress in the pipes. So I dumped in a big bucket of cold water, and it flushed! And I dumped in another bucket, and it flushed again!

And then I washed and disinfected everything, including my hands, and went out to the kitchen and announced the toilet fixed. Which was good, because by then everyone else had to use it.

The End!