I took the plunge
Well, I bought it, really.

It was another one of those things that every homeowner fears, and one of those things that no skinny white girl is ever proud of doing. We like to believe that we are not capable of such things.

I stopped up my toilet this week.

My first thought whenever anything goes wrong in my house is that it is the first sign that my entire house is probably about to implode, and that it is going to cost more money than I have to fix it. A simple toilet clog means that all of my pipes are about to fail, and blow up, and I am about 10 seconds away from another Money Pit moment.

Of course, then I stop being an idiot and I try to think of the practical, simple, cheap solution to the problem.

First, this happened on a weekday morning when I am trying to rush out the door to work. Nothing overflowed. The silly toilet just wouldn't flush, um, everything.

I am alone in my house, no one knows what is going on, and I am completely embarrassed that I have clogged up my toilet.

So, I pretty much have to leave it alone and go to work, after trying to flush it 108 times. I decide I am going to have to buy a plunger on my way home from work. I've lived here two years and I have never owned a plunger. I am pretty sure having to actually use a plumger might cause me to be violently ill.

Seriously, is there anything more gross than having to retrieve stuff that should already have gone down a toilet? I'm disgusted even writing that sentence.

But, I am a homeowner. I must take care of these things. If I must plunge, then plunge I will.

On my way home, I make an emergency stop into Walmart for a plunger. I figure I should be able to purchase a cheap plunger for about two dollars. But, I find that Walmart apparently only stocks fancy plungers that cost eight dollars. I'm thinking of those ugly red plungers on a wooden stick that seriously can't be worth more than 50 cents since it is created for the sole purpose of being in toilets. But all I find is a fancy white plunger that comes with a handy carrying case. When you twist the plunger around, it is hidden. So it looks like just a white stick sticking up from a white plastic bottom holder.

I guess it's for those people who would think to use the plunger as both a toilet fixing device AND a decoration.

Anyway, I get home with my fancy eight dollar plunger. I go to the toilet to see either what horrible thing awaits me after sitting there in a state of clog all day, or (I hope) to find that it has magically healed itself.

I try one last attempt to flush the toilet.

It totally flushes with no problem. Everything. Flushed.

So, what. It was like, tired this morning? Needed to rest all day? Sure, it's an old toilet. But it still has the one single important job of flushing everything that, um, goes in it. So that I don't ever have to admit to having stopped up a toilet.

I am a girl. We do not stop up toilets.

So now I have a brand-new, fancy plunger that I didn't use. I don't figure you can return a plunger to a store. How do you convince them that you didn't use it?

I might as well keep it. Someone may really clog my toilet someday, and I should be prepared to let them use my fancy plunger to un-stop it.

C.T.