the much-awaited toilet story

Look, Ma! I can type with two hands now. The cast is off, but I'm now supposed to be wearing a splint for 4 weeks (UGH) and I begin physical therapy this afternoon. Or what I call pinky push-ups. Poor widdle pinky. She hurts.

Okay, the toilet story.

Because S. and I have been planning to redo the floors in both upstairs bathrooms, we decided now was as good a time as any to replace the toilets in each. In his case, the tank cover was broken and there was a small crack on the base, and in my case, well, I just like new and clean. So we went to Home Depot one lovely Thursday evening (the night before I had my cast put on) and purchased two new toilet sets. It was an all-in-one thing--the whole toilet in one box, including everything you need to install the dang thing. It took a bit for S. to get both toilets into the back seat of my little Civic, but he did it, and we were on our way home after stopping to say hi to Jim in the parking lot. I had to tell him all about my pinky woes. He told S. he was very sorry. heh.

When we got home, I parked in the driveway so that S. could get the toilets out more easily. After we opened the garage door, I went in and opened the door to the house so the girls could come outside and say hi. For you out-of-towners who haven't seen Annabelle in a while, she's turned into one of those dogs who will stand right by my side without a leash. It makes my heart hurt to see this because it was so long coming. Wrigley, though, it seems, was from the start this kind of dog. So so attached to S. and me that she would be thrilled to come out and greet us and just check out the new toilets. Except this time she saw a bunny. And she was off running across the street. Meanwhile, S. has got one toilet box precariously out of the car and he's asking me to open the front door to the house, but I'm freaking out because Wrigley just got away, and the next thing I know I hear a very loud crash. The toilet box. It has fallen. In the middle of the driveway. But we can't really pay much attention to that because Wrigley's running loose. So S. goes on foot, I get in the car, Annabelle hops into the backseat with the second toilet, and we go get that little shit. She was fine, we were fine, but the toilet, it was not.

When we get back to the house, I say to S., "I have no compunction about returning this to Home Depot. Hillary used to work there and they take anything back--even shit-stained toilet seats. They'll take this back." I actually used the word compunction. Nice.

We open the box. Maybe it's not broken. S. pulls out the tank. It's in one piece. Great. But the base, well, we can't count that high. Many, many pieces.

S. and I have a conversation about what we're going to tell the people at Home Depot. I have no morals, so I say, we'll just tell them it's broken. S. doesn't want to lie. Me: We'll say we dropped it because the handles on the box are wimpy. This conversation continues on and off until the next day when we actually put the damn thing back in the car and go back to Home Depot. As we're pushing the thing to the return desk, S. tells me I'm doing this. He doesn't want to lie. We want our money back, but honestly. I keep mentioning the shit-stained toilet seat that Hillary has made me associate with Home Depot returns.

I hand the person the receipt, say we'd like to return this toilet. She looks at me, looks at the box, and does her scanning. The money will be credited to our card. Nobody ever looked inside the box.

We walk through the store to pick up a couple other things we need. Me: Honey, we could've put a garden gnome in that box and they would'nt've known the difference.

S.: Why would anyone return a garden gnome?