They're at it Again

It's 1:00am and I stumble out of bed in the dark and head to the bathroom. Shouldn't have had that extra glass of water before bed. I close the door to the bathroom and flip on the light. As I'm sitting there pondering the meaning of life and minding my own business, I see some movement in the bathtub and the hairs raise on the back of my neck. It's a big bad wolf spider, and it's climbing out of the tub.

I'm mid-stream when this is all happening and I finish my business as quickly as possible so I can get out of the way of my quickly approaching attacker. I'm ill equipped in my sleeping garb and bare feet. I look around me straining to find some sort of weapon. Seth is sleeping soundly in the room next to me, unaware of the terrifying event taking place.

I grab the first viable option I see: a can of hairspray. I stand back and spray the emerging spider and it falls back into the bottom of the tub. I rush forward as fast as possible and turn the water on, furiously trying to splash this huge monster in an attempt to wash it back down the dark drain where it surely came from.

But, to my horror, I am too slow. He has escaped my drowning attempts and made his way over to the shower curtain. I try to pull it away before it can climb up and into the curtain's protective folds, but again I am too late.

For several minutes I dart forward and back, pulling at the outside curtain, trying futilely to find the chill inducing Houdini. After a few tries I finally catch a glimpse of the spider. He is half-way up the curtain. I jump back and grab the hairspray again. I pelt the curtain with the spray, but it does nothing. The attacker is safely tucked back into one of the large folds in the curtain. And then I lose him again.

I stand there on the cold floor frozen in fear. What am I going to do? I can't just let this spider get away. He is sure to attack me again in the morning and I will never sleep knowing there is a large hairy wolf spider roaming freely. I make a final decision. I need reinforcements.

I open the door to the bathroom and let the light shine into the bedroom. Seth is lying on his back and I can't tell if he is still asleep or not. I slowly climb onto the bed on all fours, staring down at him, studying his eyelids to see if they are cracked open. Suddenly Seth is startled awake by my presence. "What's going on? What time is it?" he says in a cranky voice, obviously disturbed from a restful state. "THERE'S A BIG GIANT SPIDER IN THE BATHROOM AND IT'S LOST IN THE SHOWER CURTAIN AND I NEED YOU TO KILL IT!" I say in desperation. My knight in shining armor immediately gets out of the warm cocoon of soft bedding and heads into the bright bathroom to rid me of my attacker.

I tell him the spider is near the top of the inside curtain and he pulls it open to look. Suddenly the spider climbs over the top of the shower rod and is just inches away from Seth. "AH!! IT'S RIGHT THERE! IT'S RIGHT THERE!" I half-scream. Seth steps back in a non-phased manner and grabs a couple sheets of toilet paper. Toilet Paper. This brave brave man is using toilet paper to kill a WOLF SPIDER. He grabs the spider and then opens the tissue to make sure the spider was killed/captured. It is still alive and starts climbing out, but no matter, he nonchalantly wraps it back up again. "THROW IN IT IN TOILET QUICK!!" I yell, obviously more alarmed than Seth. He slowly opens the lid and throws it in. "HURRY FLUSH IT!!" Seth, flushes the toilet and the spider is gone. "You're my hero" I say as I hug my sleepy husband. He chuckles at my insanity and climbs back in bed. I climb in after him and snuggle up. This is my spider killer. My wonderful spider killing husband.

A Girl's Gotta Do What a Girl's Gotta Do

Do any of you know what this is?

No, it's not THAT. {Blush}

Well I know what it is. It's called a flapper and all of you have at least one. You've probably never seen it, or haven't had a close enough view of one to realize that's what this picture is. But, why would you? The flapper lives in your toilet!

That's right my friends, there's a flapper living in your toilet. It's the thing that lifts up every time you flush so the water can get out of the tank and into the toilet bowl. If you don't believe me, go take the lid off the tank and flush your toilet. There it is! It's waving at you! HA!

Why am I doing a post about toilet parts? Well it just so happens that the plastic chain attached to the flapper in MY bathroom broke off last night when I flushed. Stupid piece of junk. Who uses a plastic chain? Cheap apartments, that's who. So, I had to stick my hand in the tank to lift up the flapper in order to get it to flush. No big deal, but I definitely didn't want to have to do that forever.

So at this point you're probably wondering why I didn't just call the apartment maintenance guys to come fix it and stop my whining. I could have. But I didn't really want to. There are several reasons why:

#1 I hate calling people.

#2 I don't like strangers coming into our apartment.

#3 I figured it'd be a pretty cheap fix.

#4 I kind of wanted to see if I could fix it.

So I'm a sucker for home repairs. I know that sounds really weird. Not that I'd attempt anything huge, but simple projects I'm totally game for. I've installed shower heads and light fixtures and such, so I figured this wouldn't be too bad. It's not like the toilet exploded and there were parts everywhere. It was just a simple flapper replacement!

When I got home from work today, I turned the water off behind the toilet, flushed it one more time to get the water out, and took the flapper off. Simple enough, right? Then I cleaned the thing off because it looked disgusting, and put it in my purse. I always hear stories about people having to go back to the hardware store ten times because they don't get the right parts, especially for plumbing projects. I figured if I took it with me, I'd up my chances of not having to go back and forth a million times.

I headed down the street to Lowe's and found their plumbing department. There on the wall were all the toilet parts. And there they were... flappers. All new and sparkling in their plastic packages, just waiting for me to bring them home and put them in my toilet. But, only one would be chosen. I picked a beautiful red one that was just under $5. It was the cheapest one and looked just like the one in my purse, only this one had a metal chain attached. Classy.

I went and paid the lady and took my brand new shiny flapper home. Gracie met me at the door and followed me back to the bathroom to help install our new found friend, Flappy. Gracie sat on the toilet seat looking into the bowl while I trimmed off excess parts and installed Flappy. The first time I hooked him up, the chain was too long and it didn't let enough water out to flush. But, after taking it up a couple links and trying again, my toilet was back to normal. Gracie was very impressed.

All of this took less than 30 minutes, and that included driving to Lowe's and back. It only cost me $4.88 and there wasn't even any cursing involved! Plus it was kind of fun. Does that make me a plumber? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I have a good enough crack to qualify. Anyway, welcome to the family, Flappy, it's nice to have you here.