A New Toilet Seat

I wish I’d invited an audience this afternoon into our upstairs bathroom to watch me install a new toilet seat. I actually was able to do it, and with only a minimum amount of hassle, pain, and cursing (almost none). There was a sense of pride afterward, standing above my work, taking a pee. Truth be told – though this is widely known in the narrow circles I travel – I am not a “handyman” (a sexist term, I realize, but not being one, I don’t know what the accepted alternative is). Changing a light bulb – particularly those new, green, squiggly “energy smart” light bulbs – is about the limit of my contribution to home improvement projects. And even then, I’ve burnt out at least two of those bulbs (which are supposed to last five years) in less than three months. So you might imagine my sense of accomplishment in actually wielding a wrench such that the new toilet seat was installed apparently correctly and without breakage. The removal of the aged seat was the most difficult part, if only because I had to get down on the floor, with the handicap of a bad knee, and try to hunch over enough to see up to the bolts under the toilet to loosen them. But after not really that much effort (a surprise of no small degree), they were indeed freed. And the genius engineers who designed the new seat had replaced the old metal bolts with plastic ribbed bolts that I could tighten with my fingers from above, not a wrench, and so didn’t have to struggle back down to the floor and the pain of my bad knee. I’m thinking now of maybe an addition onto the kitchen. . . .