Another Family Motto Shot to Heck

I'm sorry, but if you're squeamish at all, you might want to skip this one, due to the less than delicate nature of what I'm about to reveal.

Remember our new family motto, "Respect the Toilet"?


Well, unfortunately, someone didn't.


I'm not 100% sure who the guilty culprit is, but I have my suspicions.

Our house was built around the time the low-flow toilets were introduced. I'm not quite sure what we have now, but when Hal's brother and his wife were buying a new toilet a while ago, they only had low-flow (meaning easily clogged) models available. They actually said you could buy a higher volume toilet on the black market these days, I kid you not.

We had a nice Family Home Evening with the Bryans last night. I have to admit that we started out inviting them over here to roast hot dogs in our fire pit, but somehow ended up at their house. I hope they truly did want to have us over, because last summer a friend of Hal's asked us what we were doing the next Friday night. He said he was thinking of having a barbecue and asked us if we would like to join them. We said it sounded fun and then he told us they'd come over to OUR house on Friday night at 7:00. And they did, along with their four unruly kids. I still haven't recovered.


Hal was supposed to pick up the hot dogs last night, but he came home with such a whopper of a headache that I ran to the store with one of the kids. They had just been in the bathroom and as I walked past it on my way to the garage I knew there was a problem. I gently reminded the kid to please use air freshener. She told me she was just curling her hair. Hmm, a likely story.

We picked up the food, came home and got the rest of the family and then zipped over to the Bryans', barely making it on time. Hal still had his bad headache the whole time but toughed it out. He walked to and from their house to see if it would help any.

Anyway, back to the toilet incident, I will leave out several minor details, but believe me, there were many. Bottom line is that when we got home, our house still smelled really bad. I was not happy.

Morgan wanted to take a shower but then told me she didn't dare use the kids' bathroom because it looked like the toilet was going to be clogged again. Austin was upstairs on my toilet so we hurried him up. I then noticed the whole toilet full of toilet paper. And, to put this sensitively, he had not put anything in the toilet that required toilet paper. (He hasn't quite mastered the whole "drip dry" technique yet, if you know what I mean.)

We flushed that toilet and luckily it went down. I took Austin downstairs to wash his hands, all the way telling him that I was now his official "bathroom buddy". If he needed to go, I needed to be there too to supervise. Then I started giving Ally the lecture about how much toilet paper to use, when to flush, how many times to flush, etc., loud enough so Morgan could hear too from the bathroom. When Morgan came out I asked her if she had heard what I'd said. She said no, so I had to give the whole spiel a third time. I left Austin to wash his hands when I heard a distinct flush coming from out of that bathroom.

I ran for my life (toward the bathroom) because I didn't want a repeat incident from last week. It's a good thing I did, because the murky water in the toilet had risen to within inches of the rim. I hurried and turned off the water as fast as I could. At that point I started uttering a few potty words of my own. It was so disgusting I can't even describe it here. The water stopped about a half inch from the top of the toilet. Now why didn't I think to turn off the water before that? Morgan and I posted notes on both the door and the toilet but we forgot to take into account the fact that Austin can't read yet.

Hal walked in a few minutes later and I cautiously asked how his headache was (still terrible) and what kind of mood HE was in. I really didn't want to deal with it any more so he and Morgan took care of it. I couldn't bear to watch, but I did tell Morgan from the other room to be sure and move the shower curtain before he started plunging.

This pretty much shot any good feelings or intentions to do better that Hal and I had developed over Conference weekend. Those darn kids! I wonder what the next family motto is going to be that they will trash within a week.

As for me, I might have to start making some underworld connections so they can hook me up with a couple of those black market toilets.