How to Replace a Broken Toilet Seat

First, break it. Doesn't matter how. Being drunk helps. You won't remember the details and until confronted with the reality, you'll think it was a weird dream.

Don't replace it right away. There are more important things: brunches to attend, commas to delete, Say Yes to the Dress to watch. The detached lid is as cumbersome as a Novocaine-injected tongue, always in the way, but you put up with it. You even get used to the wobbliness after a couple of days. But upcoming house guests are a good motivator to fix it.

There two options: Call the landlord or do it yourself. The landlord is a nice guy, but you have a feeling that he worries about you a bit, the building's token Single Lady. Mr. Roeper also has a tendency of not saying when he's dropping by and you'd rather not hear him buzzing your door while stepping out of the shower. It wouldn't be the first time.

Plus, when you mention to your most handy-dandiest friend that it broke, in an off-handed way loaded with meaning, he replied "That's really easy to fix."

At Target, when the redshirt asks what size you need, say "Toilet-sized." When he doesn't laugh, just pick one, any one, then take it and your dumb joke home.

Start unscrewing the nuts holding the bolt part of the seat in place. A wrench would be helpful, but you probably don't have one. We evolved to have five fingers for several reasons and here is one of them. Your mind will wander as your fingers move in circles.

You can't remember your parents ever replacing toilet seats. If they did it, it must have been at night, when they did other secret adult stuff that you had to learn on your own, like filing taxes and walking in heels. Or you may have been too busy watching cartoons (a possibility). In college, one of the maintenance crew fixed a broken seat in your dorm bathroom. He teased you for your 12-inch TV and the next week knocked on your door with a massive television he found nestled next to the dumpster. It was constructed during Reagan's presidency and still worked. Even though you can picture him- a bald Paul Bunyan with a hearty laugh who loved to tell dirty jokes- you can't remember his name. This makes you sad.

Quite some time will have passed with minimal progress. Frustration grows.

Enter the wishing stage. Wish you hadn't broken it. Wish you were sitting anywhere but this dusty bathroom floor. Wish you weren't sweating. Wish you weren't so proud. Wish you weren't alone. Wish you hadn't wished that. Wish wish wish wish. Turn turn turn turn.

Stop. Realize the entire time, you have been turning the screws the wrong way. The plastic is warped, but you can pull out the old seat, fit the new one in through the holes, and a minute or two later, the new seat is screwed into place, as if it was always there.

Stand up. Open the lid. Shut the lid. Open it, shut it. Wash your hands, please.

Have a beer, have a glass of cheap wine, have a tumbler of melting ice and sharp gin. Even a plastic mug of Kool-Aid will work in a pinch. The most important part is to stand a little taller.

(Thanks to the How-To Issue for the inspiration.)

I have measured out my life in Popsicle sticks.

It's mid-July. I've been 27 for two weeks.

What have the late 20s been like so far? Well.

You make buffalo chicken dip for the office potluck even though there will be too much food (there's always too much food) mostly so the other ladies in the office won't give you a side eye.

You line up your shoes in the shelves where they belong instead of lying in doorways where Hurricane Andrea disposed of them like fallen trees before blowing out the door, late to work, because tripping of them will only slow down the hurricane and make it angry.

You're still working on your punctuality. You'll always be working on your punctuality.

You buy bright pink lip balm. You think you look ridiculous but a controlled kind of ridiculous, like the temporary tattoos you used to doodle on your arms with a Sharpie when you were 13 and wanted something permanent that you could regret. You never got those tattoos, but you embarrass yourself by taking photos of yourself in public to make up for it.

It's not all buffalo chicken dip and lip balm, pals. Some of the not-so-good stuff that have been hanging around for years are still there, like outdated clothes meant to be dropped off at the Goodwill that eventually make their way back to your closet. You only really make your bed in the winter or when you know someone is going to see it. You cover your chin whenever possible because chins are to you what necks were to the late great Nora Ephron. You know it's not healthy to listen in on other people's first dates in coffee shops rather than going on ones of your own but my god, this guy is never going to get laid if he keeps talking about how awkward the date is going as it's happening.

Each week, a new article becomes the essay the internet can't stop talking about, and lately they've been ones that give me a mild anxiety akin to five cups of coffee. If it's not the usual topics (marriage, kids, and Having It All), it's about the how the youth are in financial ruin, how friendships after 30 turn to dust, or how having a cat makes you crazy. I'm thankful though that I'm not where I was five years ago or so, where it would have pushed me into 10 cups of coffee anxiety. I can take whatever worries the world throws at me and I think that means I'm happy. Or I'm happy because I can take the world's throws? I don't know, but I think I'm okay.

If this was a made-for-TV romantic comedy, I'd end this with something like Just because I haven't fallen in love doesn't mean I haven't tripped over it. I can practically hear Jennifer Love Hewitt saying that. Instead, I'll just leave you with this: I don't have the answers, I just have myself.

And I ask is for Lifetime to let me play myself in She Rolled Hey Eyes At It All: The Andrea Disaster Story. If Joan and Melissa can play themselves, anyone can.

Responsibility is disgusting and other woes of adulthood

This morning, I woke up ridiculously early to do laundry. Ridiculously early for me means 7:30. I know most of you get up at the crack of dawn and wah wah wah. If you want to sleep in, work in newspapers.

Anyway, I'm one of those people who take a while to actually wake up, but for some odd reason, I had a bit of a skip in my step today. I put on some coffee, made oatmeal with strawberries and bananas, danced around the kitchen. I even put on Carole King like some 70s hippie lady who lounges barefoot on window seats with her cat. I opened the window and breezes were flowing like it was an easy Sunday morning instead of a tense Tuesday. It's too late, baby, yeah, it's too late. I should have taken that as an omen.

While I drank my coffee, I washed some dishes and left more to soak in the sink. I was going to leave for the laundromat, but I decided to do the responsible thing and wash the rest of the dishes. Like a real adult, I told myself. I mentally patted myself on the back for not being a slacker and oh, don't worry, I paid dearly for this.

I opened the cupboard door to put a plate away and...

A mouse.

A mouse was scurrying across my pantry shelf.

A mouse was scurrying across to the other side of my pantry shelf.

A mouse was scurrying across my pantry shelf and I was screaming and strangling a tea towel.

I grabbed my cell phone and ran into the living room, curling up on the couch with my feet off the floor. I'm not afraid of rodents per say, like bats, snakes, spiders or sloths, but let's just say that my kids will never have a pet mouse no matter how much they beg. I called my dad ("Daaaaaaad, there's a mouuuuuuuse in my apaaaaaartmennnnnnnt."). He suggested using spring loaded traps and I barked out a pure, genuine laugh. I can't even be in the same room as a mouse, so there is not way in heaven or hell am I touching a dead one.

"Hey Andrea," I can practically hear you say. "Don't you have a cat? Where was he?"

My cat was in the living room, hanging out on the back of the couch, absolutely useless.

 

Okay, adorably useless, but still USELESS.

To Harold's credit, he is declawed, so I don't know how much help he would have been (I didn't do it to him, nor did the previous owner).

I'll spare you the details of what went down- no, I didn't kill it, but it got pretty gross. I did have a moment, though, where I really, really, really wished I wasn't dealing with this alone. On any other day, I take a bit of pride in my independence. I've assembled my own furniture, dealt with shitty plumbing, and done other minor repairs around the place. This time, I wished there was a guy around in my life for me to be like, "Hey, Man Friend, if you do this, I will [fill in the blank favor]." But you know, if wishes were fishes, I'd be a mermaid, so the only thing to do is put on a pair of gloves and deal with it. Beyonce and the girls warned me a decade ago: Ladies, it ain't easy bein' independent.

And despite all that, I still got to the laundromat and did two loads of laundry. What. What.