Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[Phogfan86]

At around 9 this evening, the arm on the back of our toilet handle -- the one that pulls the chain inside the tank? -- broke. The temperature was in single digits and the wind was blowing 648 miles per hour, so I figured that until I can get out in the light of day tomorrow, when it's not brass monkey cold, I'll just reach in and pull the chain my own self. I was, however, informed that this would mean that my wife would have to put her hand in the water to grab the end of the chain.

Oh.

So, rather than go to a hardware store, I take my life into my own hands and head to WalMart.

I find the piece we need easy enough and come home. I set the toilet handle/arm on the kitchen table and go about my business. After 20 minutes or so, my wife gets up in a huff and starts to make the repair herself. Peachy.

She fooled with it for 45 minutes. For some reason, she can't get the plastic nut loose that holds the arm and handle together. She had every tool in the house out -- pliers, crescent wrenches, channel locks, saws, roto tillers, air compressors, wood chippers, bulldozers, the whole thing. She's frustrated with her own inability to get the plastic nut off and the new piece on, but she's also mad at me for not fixing it in the first place when I got home from WalMart.

So I bumble into the living room where she's sitting, giving me the skunk eye from the recliner. That is when I did something that I will pay for until, maybe, dinnertime tomorrow: I fixed the toilet.

I pulled my multi-tool out of my pocket and walked into the bathroom. Sitting on the seat, backwards, I somehow managed to get a grip on the plastic nut with the needle-nosed pliers first time I tried and it broke loose. I had the nut and, in turn, the old handle and broken arm off in about 45 seconds and the new one in almost as quickly.

I fixed it in about two minutes. She messed with it for about 45 minutes. She was furious.

She was mad when I didn't fix it and even madder when I did. I need a drink.