Bob called me from work today and asked me to go back in the bathroom and look in the toilet.  Having raised three sons, this is not the first time that I have had that requested of me.  Usually it meant that somebody had evacuated their bowels in the shape of an animal or maybe their initials.  I don’t fall for this anymore, but since Bob didn’t seem to be holding back laughter, I accommodated him (though not without a clarifying question).

“Why do you want me to look in the toilet, did you leave a little present for me there?” I asked.  Of course, that was not the case, but I couldn’t disappoint him by not asking.

Let me give you the scoop about our commode.  I’ve been losing sleep over it – literally.  You could say that I’m (sorry) pooped.  This is how the night starts – I begin drifting off to sleep and then I hear a soft flushing noise coming from our bathroom.  It’s short lived but effective in keeping me awake and it happens intermittently.  Sometimes just for variety the flushing mechanism moans like a motor trying to turn over until I finally drag myself out of bed and turn the water off.  By the way, these are sounds that only a woman can hear.  I know this because Bob sleeps right through them.  Since he does believe me and has on occasion even admitted to hearing these sounds, he has purposed to bring peace and quiet back to our bathroom.

Sleek, Luxurious, Annoying

Usually this is an easy fix but not this time.  The problem is we bought one of those fancy-shmancy push button toilets from Costco.  The flusher button is split in two pieces.  You push the small one for pee and the large one for feces.

I confess we were blinded by the glamour of this classy porcelain throne without a handle sticking out the side of it marring its beauty.  We just never stopped to consider the difficulty of replacing parts.  Another bad idea was putting the model number inside the tank.  Thanks to our hard water down here in Orlando, that number had long since been obliterated.

But we have a happy ending to our story.  Costco, which is in contention with Disney World for being the happiest place on earth, came to our rescue.  I went down there and talked to the lady at the customer service counter.  She looked up our records all the way back to January of 2009 when we made this purchase and gave me all the information we needed.  Bob called the company today.  They told us our toilet is under warranty and in 3-7 business days we’ll be sitting pretty with a straight flush.