...There's apparently a lot more going on there than I ever really thought. I think that's pretty scary. After all, I'm not the stereotypical helpless girl that sees a jiggly handle and shrieks, "There is no God!". I've done some minor plumbing fixes myself - replaced a cracked seat, reattached the chain in the tank, replaced the chain in the tank when it rusted through, tightened a jiggly handle. But despite my amazing Fem-Power muscles and Ms. Fixed-It-Herself title... well, there's a lot more going on there than I ever really thought.
I had my meeting with my contractor and my consultant yesterday, to review the renovation work to be done on the house. We went over the time-line and the budget. I signed yet more papers. Included among them was an allowance sheet and an unnaturally large number of house-minutiae that I have to pick. My contractor's list of things to choose included a number of items which I, as an apartment renter, really never gave much consideration to. "Hey! It's a faucet! Water comes out of it. Call the landlord if it begins vomiting water all over the floor!". Honestly, it's a bit overwhelming. But armed with Tony's handy-dandy list, off to Home Depot I went. I figured I'd start with the bathroom. It's the smallest room in the house, so it couldn't possibly be that bad, right?
The lovely lady who was taking inventory in the store last night proved me entirely wrong. Even what I thought would be the simplest decision turned out to have far, far more components than I anticipated. I think our conversation went something like this:
"So, what sort of toilet are you looking for?"
"A white one."
"That's it?"
"Well, a white one, yeah. Maybe one of those new low-flow ones that doesn't use so much water it sounds like an airplane is landing in your bathroom might be nice. Are those expensive?" (I am, after all, on a government-reviewed budget. When the money runs out, they don't magically give me more. I'm not a too-big-to-fail bank.)
"Well, do you want luxury height or standard height? Do you want a round or elongated bowl? What sort of tank style do you want? Have you considered FLUSH POWAH?!?!?" (Which she didn't really say that way, but that's how it came out in my head.)
At that point, I realized that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. At all. Nor was I especially concerned about any of these things. As I said, I wanted a white, relatively water-efficient toilet that wasn't particularly expensive. As long as it performs its essential function, the rest is bells and whistles I'm not especially concerned about. So I gave her this sort of confused look and then proceeded to explain to her that given the price range of toilets and the allowance permitted by my contractor, I would like a "nice" one. This narrowed it down to four as opposed to well over a dozen, although there were apparently still decisions regarding bowl shape and seat height to be made. Please excuse me while I ask, "Who the eff cares?"
Cue helpful boyfriend, who spends entirely too much time on the internet reading Cracked.com articles, informing me that although the "luxury height" one - which, by the way, apparently means it's the height of a regular chair as opposed to lower down - had a fancy looking tank, the standard height ones that are closer to the ground are "healthier" for the user. Why he knows this? Aside from the generic "INTERNETS!!!" excuse that also explains why I know a lot of things I really shouldn't know and would probably rather not consider? I can't really say. Either way, I'll spare you the gross details that Cracked.com included, which it seems he felt the need to share with me. Let's just say it involved the words "muscles" and leave it at that.
The ultimate result of this is that somehow, my complete and utter lack of any sort of real knowledge regarding plumbing combined with my apparent lack of enthusiasm for toilet aesthetics turned me into a raccoon in headlights, entirely too paralyzed to make any sort of rational decision. After all, what if I pick the wrong one?!? This really shouldn't be bothering me all that much. As I said to my friend Marian last night, "....It's a toilet. It's sole purpose is to make poop and other yucky things not be in my bathroom. Does this toilet do that? Will it continue to do that without having some catastrophic failure some time down the line? THEN IT'S FINE."
My sole consolation in all of this is that although I appear to be lacking some sort of fundamental girl nesting gene, I'm not the only one. Thank you, Marian, for reassuring me that you don't care what your toilet looks like, either.
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