My toilet got clogged and backed up this morning. I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say, it was an EPIC TOILET FAIL. The grossness was just beyond belief.
Now, my building has a live-in super who we can call on in emergencies, but this was actually so gross that I was embarrassed to go knock on his door (Y’all know I’m not easily embarrassed, so you can imagine just how gross it had to be for me to feel that way.) Instead, I borrowed a plunger from my neighbors and went to work myself.
And I fixed it. The toilet works again. Cue the Hallelujah Chorus.
I mopped the floors, then washed them and the commode with disinfectant, then washed them again, then threw out the rags I’d used. If I could have steam-sterilized the whole bathroom, I would have. Then I went for a run while everything dried and tried to forget the whole ordeal.
Have you ever had to tackle something unexpectedly gross/scary/hard and been proud of how well you coped? Please share in the comments.
Having a baby has meant dealing with gross situations on a daily basis, and as a person who has always been very squeamish about poo/vomit/bodily fluids, I am always impressed at how all of that turns off when something comes up with my kid. Sudden projectile vomiting, explosive diapers, various minor injuries– I’m aces at jumping in to set order to chaos that would have made me feel nauseated pre-baby.
After the crisis is averted, THAT’S when the grossness of the situation hits me and I have to sit down for a minute and take deep breaths.
This is my last year living in the dorms. The dorms are my school are rather elderly and the one I’m living in this year has old and hollow walls. The girls above me were not clean with their food and so we had a mouse move in around January. We called the facilities people who called an exterminator who laid down some snap traps that were totally ineffective. Luckily, however, the campus cat hanging out in my room kept the mouse away for the most part.
But, once the weather got warm a couple of weeks ago, the cat wasn’t around as much and the mouse got very bold to the point one night I saw it climbing my furniture and eating my food (that I had in plastic bags on the top shelf!). Normally my boyfriend helps me deal with gross things but he was away having dinner with his mom, so I was on my own. I read online that mice dislike strong smells and tried to go buy some fresh mint but the grocery store was out. In total creeped out desperation, I decided to use the can of Febreze air freshener that I got in freshman year — I sprayed like half the can over the whole side of the room where I kept seeing the mouse. Nothing happened for a little bit and then, for the first time, I heard some panicked squeaking, then some rustling, and then nothing. I have not seen a sign of it since and it took about 4 days for the Febreze smell to dissipate from my room. I don’t know if I killed it or if it just decide that my room is bad news, but the thing is gone, and I am sooo happy about it.
Videos on youtube showed me how to take apart my toilet a couple months ago. You can learn to do anything from a video on youtube.
It was a job for a licensed plumber, but I was proud of myself for not freaking out when the main pipe that ran from the upstairs apartment to mine broke. And for standing up to my landlord who was initially to cheap to hire someone, and attempted to fix it himself.
I actually just took my stand mixer apart today, and put it back together. What’s wrong with it is still a mystery (the simple gear issue that I suspected does not seem to be the problem), but man, was that machine grease nasty. I was pretty proud of myself, though – it was easy to do, and even tough i now have to take the mixer to a professional, I feel good about it!
I’ve dealt with some toilet situations. Shudder. But yeah, sometimes its between just dealing with it yourself and calling someone which can be worse.
I’m a pretty decent plunger now.
Two words: canine pancreatitis.
*squick warning*
Three days of cleaning up a kennel that looked like multiple used diapers had exploded in it, bathing Lil’Snookum’s butt lest it attract flies (and therefore maggots), sticky corn syrup and pink Pepto on a white fur coat, and don’t get me started on the adventures in oral antibiotics. The moral of the story: no more table scraps for Fluffy. Aren’t pets fun?
I’m with Molly. It’s amazing the emount of revolting situations a child can create. I’ve been stunned at how I’ve been able to fix / salvage situations that are just unbelievably icky.
I’ve been able to do amazingly creative fix-it solutions with kids broken / torn / cracked / whatever items. Nothing like hysterics to make a mom creative with fixing.
The clutch on my car wasn’t right, with crunchy gear changes to boot (and I don’t have the $s to deal with a gear-box, etc car problems). So I decided to adjust the clutch myself – with the help of google and my flatmate.
My flatmate was in the driver’s seat, and I had my hand in the engine. My roommate placed the clutch where it should be, and I adjusted the clutch.
The clutch works good, with no crunchy gear changes. All without having to go to a mechanic!
Well, this one time, my *favorite* vibe stopped working, and because I knew I had just replaced the batteries, I was pretty pissed/distraught. Fortunately, through some tinkering, I discovered that there was a problem with one of the internal wires failing to connect, which I totally fixed myself (using some needle-nosed pliers and a bit of vibe-surgery). I’m not gonna lie, I was totally proud of myself, and it was one of the more satisfying (heh heh) fix-it experiences of my life.
I’ve repaired a number of slightly-bad electronics. It’s amazing how handy that soldering iron from undergrad physics lab has been.
I have to say that the situation which confounded me the most was when my car bottomed out in soft gravel. I have 4-WD but I was stuck, and I had to unload hundreds of pounds of stuff first to address the situation. I had some help, but it was more in the form of me asking, “Can you push while I put this in gear?” I would desperately love to know more about How Cars Work but don’t really know where to go to get the confidence to do anything other than add fluids and change tires.
I once came home to a pair of police cars in front of the house and my brother standing in the doorway covered with blood. Some kid had hit him on the temple with a beer bottle. It wasn’t actually all that bad, but head injuries and blood… Anyway, I helped as best I could until the police left and all departed to the ER. I actually managed to get most of the blood on the floor cleaned up before having a panic attack! I was very proud.
I’m totally mechanically disinclined – my moms taught themselves to fix cars, hang drywall, rewire houses, build decks, etc. It skipped me. Every so often though, something clicks and I can fix something with an actual tool. I LOVE this feeling!
Not really anything significant to share though, my victories are things like getting the hooks in the door so the dog can’t get out, or figuring out that tightening the screws on the door plates make the door close correctly. Minor stuff to anyone else, but for me, a huge WHOO HOO.
Two words: equine reflux. And two more: bovine parturition.
‘Nuf said.
@Mackey you soooo beat my toilet disassembly story. But, I’ve got a clutch so crunchy I buy it granola. Link to your resources Please?
My father ingrained in me the idea that anything was fixable if only you look at it thoroughly and logically. So I learned to fix my bicycle at an early age (very important where I come from) and grew up fairly unafraid of technical stuff.
I diagnose and fix computers on a daily basis. I’m fairly certain I can do anything that any not-professional can do, man or woman. And why not?
But that I’m not daunted doesn’t mean I’m very good at it. I had to call in help to fix my washing machine (even if the solution was fairly simple, electricity scares me). And I must admit: I could’ve done it myself, but not as good as the help did it.
What I am proud of? The screen of my iPhone broke, and I replaced and fixed it myself. I trembled all through it, but I kept thinking that if other amateurs could do it, with the help of google and solid thinking, so could I. And I did it.
I thank my father for that attitude.
May I just say that all you ladies fucking rock!
Like Rrrowdy, I come from a line of mechanically capable females but seem to have taken after my decidedly un-handy father. But I’m discovering through necessity that I’m capable of more than I thought.
For example, today I took apart my Dyson vacuum cleaner to clear out a massive hairball that was cutting off the suction. Clogs seem to be the theme of my weekend.
Er…well, any time I can figure out something computer-related by myself, I consider it a major triumph. Not that it’s a regular occurrence, but when it happens it’s welcome.
The walls in the bathroom of my house were awful when I moved in. There were three layers of wallpaper and it had been peeling off. The previous owner tore down what was loose, and then just painted over everything. The walls were all uneven, you could see the print of the remaining paper through the thin spots in the paint, and it looked like a mess.
I pulled all the hardware and the mirror down, scraped what was left of the painted-over wallpaper off, and got to work with drywall joint compound. I floated the walls back to smooth and even patched up some of the gaps that the paper had concealed. Then I primed and painted it, and rehung everything.
Making walls smooth is difficult, which is why most people choose to texture them. My brother (who has done renovations like this for a living for the last decade) was incredibly impressed with my work. And I’m extremely proud of my pristine, new-looking bathroom!
For toilet overflows, it’s good to orient yourself in advance where the toilet’s shut-off valve is. It’s usually on the wall just behind the toilet. It’s a knob you twist clockwise to shut off the water in the event of an overflow. I check for this every party I attend, just like the nearest emergency exits on every flight – actually more religiously.
Our toilets suck so I have to plunge at least once a week. It never gets any less disgusting though.
I fixed my broken toaster oven a few months ago. When it suddenly stopped working I went online to see if it had happened to anyone else and found out what had likely gone wrong (a fuse had blown). I opened it up, cut the fuse out, put the two ends of the wire back together and it worked! I did have my husband borrow the soddering tools from work to finish but that was the easy part.
I also replaced the ceiling fan in my bedroom when I was 16. It had been sitting in our living room for a year waiting for my BIL to install it so when it got hot again I decided just to do it myself. My mother freaked out and made my BIL open it up to make sure I had done it correctly but I had
@rodriguez – taking your toilet apart is pretty speccy!
I didn’t bookmark the resource I got from google unfortunately (it was largely to check that what i thought was the clutch was in fact so). Type in your car make, model and year, and “clutch adjustment”, and you’ll be surprised what exists curtesy of google’s search function.
Standing barefoot in water and horseshit as I dug out the blocked drains. There was no point in wearing boots – the water would have been over the top of them. And at least with my feet bare, I could feel the edge of the drains so I didn’t fall in while digging the muck out.
That or having my arms up inside a cow’s uterus trying to turn a calf without a glove.
But I’m probably less squeamish than most – I grew up on a farm and sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.
Ooh! And reaching into a horse’s mouth and down it’s throat to retrieve the plastic bag it had swallowed and gagged on. That was not the brightest horse I’ve ever worked with.