When we first took possession of the home we live in now, I was amazed at the stupidity of the previous owner simply for the fact that when he finished the basement, he brazenly drywalled over the main water shut-off valve. And while I know squat about homeownership, I knew enough to question our home inspector when I (nor he) could locate it. They all looked at me like I was a nutjob for caring, but now I couldn’t be more thankful for finally installing that access panel.

This past weekend I decided to tackle painting the master bathroom. Truthfully I had been working on it for over a month, painstakingly stripping wallpaper, climbing on 15-foot ladders to the apex of the ceiling and dangling precariously to prep the walls for the one thing I hate above all others, painting. Last night, as I admired the beautiful paint job on the room that holds the tub and toilet, I decided that I should restore the disassembled commode to working order before heading to bed. Having done this trivial task a few times, I didn’t think much of it.

I was done in a matter of minutes and refilled the tank, but soon began to notice tiny drips from the bolts holding the reservoir to the bowl. This is the point at which my curiosity causes problems. As I ratcheted each of the three bolts one click tighter (to dutifully ensure a good seal), I heard it, the sound you don’t want to hear when working on a toilet full of water. The tiniest of tiny cracks.

OH SHIT.

I quickly reversed the direction of the ratchet and untightened each bolt. But as you’d expect the direction of this story to take, it was indeed too late.

As the toilet tank exploded, I watched it in slow motion from a sitting position adjacent to it and boy front row seating never looked so soggy. I did what anyone would do at this point, which was try to catch the GIAHUGIC piece of flying toilet before it hit my face, which in turn posed a new problem, since Exploded Toilets are made of very, very sharp ceramic. Cue awesome hand lacerations and blood going everywhere.

Now that the several gallons of water had landed in my lap and offering a refreshing bath, I turned my attention to the tiny spray angry geyser violently puking water all over the nicely painted bathroom. Quick-thinking handyman that I am, I immediately jumped for the local shut-off valve on the wall, at which point I was less than relieved to find out was also not working as one would wish. It decided to snap off into my hand, because God hates me, and now there’s standing water in the bathroom.

Trying to keep my shit together, I grabbed a pair of vice grips to manually turn the valve, but they were curiously wrapped in duct tape and provided little help. Then it hit me, as The Wife™ was screaming at me: go for the water shut off valve in the basement as fast as your tiny Irish legs will carry you!

I took off at full speed only to realize that my choice of attire would most certainly be a nuisance in my dash for success. Apparently XXXL sweatpants are surprisingly absorbent and in this case they seemed to have retained almost all the water, making me a giant, flailing Bounty Paper Towel. And when trying to run at full speed, this provided much the same aerodynamic drag as, say, a cow sprinting with a parachute on it’s back. So, the pants came off.

Dashing through the house in my boxers, blood and water flying everywhere, I finally found the shut-off valve. After cleaning up as much water as we could, I tried again to manually turn the local valve off (so to be able to restore water to the rest of the house), only to have it too snap off in my hand. It’s amazing how mocking a tiny piece of plastic can be. So at 9:42pm I realized I had 18 minutes to get to the hardware store before it closes. This is the hardware store that is 15 minutes away, the hardware store that surely will not let me inside wearing a pair of drenched XXXL paper towels and sporting an open flesh wound.

Driving one-handed at 95mph in the rain, I made it to the store with 3 minutes to spare plenty of time to pick up the part that I need and head home, sufficiently exhausted and equally pissed off.

So now that it’s all said and done can say that I’ve learned a few things here: 1) I now need to replace a portion of the kitchen ceiling, 2) I need to repaint the bathroom, 3) I need to buy a new toilet, and, 4) you can’t make stories like this up. And as I drove back from the hardware store, the first bit of consolation to hit me was, “Well, at least I’ll have something to write about tomorrow.”

Indeed.