Another One of Ken's Projects

Ken came home from work this morning rarin' to go! Yesterday we had purchased some replacement parts for the toilet and he was adamant that they were getting installed this morning. Now this is a great thing, it's not every day that Ken decides to tackle a project mid-winter, especially when it's snowing outside. As he began listing the tasks he wanted to tackle I chimed in with, "Why don't you save it for tomorrow, I am NOT in the mood to help you today!"

Now, for those of you that are single or say, male perhaps, you may be confused as to why I made that comment. What? HE is going to do projects, what does she have to do with it? And those of you who are female and married are clicking their tongues thinking, "I know where this is going..."

I can't think of a single project in my ten years of marriage that my husband has been able to complete without my input. (This does not include his ability to make large unnecessary purchases without my input, that happens often enough.) Anyhow, if he's in the mood to tackle a project, he better okay it with me first or plan on having a grumpy wife in the near future.

Today Ken was feeling pretty sure of himself, however, and he told me to take my little nap (ooh, it's a horrible thing, my crazy messed up sleep cycle,) and insisted that he would be just fine without me. Just before dropping off to sleep, I may have asked him whether he was sure he had all the correct parts or not, but dreamland was upon me so I am not 100% on this. I crashed and he got to work tearing everything out of the toilet and removing the toilet seat.

I vaguely recall somebody calling out my name all nice-like a few times, but I finally woke up when Ken frustratingly yelled, "Wake up, Colleen, I need you to run to Home Depot!" Crap. Now what? It seems that the new toilet system was missing one, no two, wait THREE parts, and we had to go do an exchange. I asked if he had laid out all the parts before getting started (no,) and asked if he was certain that he didn't have the parts (yes.) Before walking out the door one of us had the foresight to double check that the new toilet seat was the correct size and sure enough it wasn't, so we grabbed that too and made our way to the store.

As we got to the plumbing aisle, a grumpy old man in an orange apron asked us what we needed and Ken explained that our product was missing a seal, and nut, and some other gadget. The old man took a look at the picture on our box and agreed that surely we would need these three items, and then proceeded to pick up a new box and look through it for our parts. Then he picked up another box and another. None of the boxes on the shelf seemed to have the parts we needed! (Ironically, nearly every box on the shelf had been opened and damaged, as if other customers had scrounged through them looking for parts that were not there.)

After about a dozen boxes, the frustrated employee came across a box that had the three parts rolling about loosely, and handed them to us. He then returned the box (missing three pieces) to the shelf and walked away. Niiiice. We then picked out a toilet seat of proper dimension and made our way home to finish the project.

As soon as we got home Ken emptied the parts out of the box and got to work competing the remaining additions to his assembly when all of the sudden he let out an exasperated "You've got to be kidding me!" I hopped up to see what was wrong this time when Ken lifted a sub-assembly up in the air and said, "Why would they have put these parts together like this? I had the missing parts all along!" For the next ten minutes I heard about how stupid the toilet-part-replacement-company was to combine a few pieces rather than let them rattle around loosely in the bottom of a box, and I rolled my eyes and pretended not to hear him.

Finally Ken disappeared into the bathroom to install the rest of the pieces and I settled into my news. Not two minutes later, "Colleeeeeeeen!" And that's when I knew the project would go no further without 100% of my attention. Within ten minutes I'd walked him through the remaining steps and we had a functioning toilet and a shiny new toilet seat. We both took a step back to admire our accomplishment, and Ken decided he'd better get to sleep. Before leaving the room, though, I reminded him that the boys would be home soon, and if he wanted to be the very first one to pee all over the brand new toilet seat now was his chance. After all the trouble we had been through, I think he actually considered it.