"Verla Kay and the Evil Toilet"

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was an Evil Toilet who lived in the house of a children's author named Verla Kay.

Now it's important to this story that you understand it was the author who was named Verla Kay, and not the toilet. The toilet didn't have a name. Perhaps that's why the toilet was so evil - because it didn't have any name except just, "The Toilet." And that's not a very glamorous or exciting name, when you think about it.

Not that Verla Kay was prone to thinking about her toilet much, but then perhaps that's what caused all of her problems to begin with. She just never thought enough about her toilet.

But I'm getting away from the problem and since that's why you are listening to this story, let's jump right in and take a look at Verla Kay's day yesterday. Because that's when it all started - yesterday.

Verla Kay had a disastrous kitchen and bathroom floor in her little trailer. At some point, new cream-colored linoleum (or maybe it used to be white at some point and it had just faded out to cream colored over the years) had been laid over the original gold and brown Spanish tile linoleum in the tiny kitchen floor and even tinier bathroom floor.

Now you should know that this was not a very professional linoleum job. Whoever put it down glued it - but not all over. Whoever installed this flooring must have mis-measured, or else they just bought a remnant piece that wasn't big enough, because it didn't go all the way under the refrigerator or the the stove. It just went a tiny way under and then stopped. And since it wasn't glued under the appliances, over the years it had obviously talked to The Evil Toilet and it curled.

It curled up. Off the floor. It was impossible for Verla Kay to clean the floor around the fridge and stove, because of the lifting linoleum. The fridge couldn't be pulled out of it's cubby hole to clean behind or under it because it would have torn up the linoleum coming out of the hole. The same problem existed with the kitchen stove. And there was dirt back there, behind both appliances! Evil, nasty, horrible, unclean DIRT. (Especially behind and under the fridge. The stove had been replaced last year, so at least there was only one year of dirt under it. Who knows how many years of dirt had accumulated under and behind that fridge? It had been there for many, many years.)

But what does all this have to do with The Evil Toilet, you ask? Be patient. I'm getting there. Believe me, I'm getting there.

So one day Verla Kay and her husband decided they wanted to replace that nasty linoleum with some wonderful, new flooring. Being frugal people, they decided they (meaning Verla Kay, since her husband has a very bad back and bad knees) would install the new flooring themselves.

Now this wasn't such a strange idea for them, since remodeling houses and working on things like installing new flooring was pretty much all Verla Kay and her husband have done for the past eight years. But they didn't realize that this remodel project was going to be different from all the rest. They didn't know they harbored An Evil Toilet in this trailer!

At first, things went well. They borrowed a moving dolly from the Park Office and moved the refrigerator out into the living room and set it onto a piece of siding on the carpet. They plugged it in and put all the perishables they'd taken out of it to move it back into it.

Then they looked into the cubby hole where the refrigerator had been sitting for so many years. It must have been many years! The amount of dirt on that floor was enough to make a sane person run screaming for help. They almost did. Verla Kay fainted when she saw how dirty it was, because she knew she was going to have to be the one to get down on her hands and knees and clean up that horrible mess. And of course, she was. And so she did. She cried and screamed and cursed and yelled at the dirt first. But it just would not clean itself up, so finally, she did it with rags (that immediately got thrown into the trash) and disinfectant cleaners.

Once the refrigerator was out of the room, the stove could be pulled out. The gas was disconnected and the gas line capped off, the stove was very carefully pulled out of its cubbyhole, and it was moved with the moving dolly onto another piece of siding that had been previously placed on the living room rug.

Now the living room isn't very big in this little trailer, so that's pretty much all that would fit in there. The kitchen and bathroom are connected, one right after the other, and the bedroom is on the other side of the bathroom, so naturally the logical place to put the toilet while the floor was being replaced was in the bedroom.

With that decision made, Verla Kay and her husband turned the water off to the house, and with a plastic disposable cup, all the water in the toilet was drained out, and the toilet was unhooked and carefully moved onto another piece of siding placed on the carpet in the bedroom.

But you have to remember, this was an Evil Toilet. Apparently The Evil Toilet didn't want to be placed in the bedroom. Perhaps it felt left out because it wasn't in the living room with the Stove and the Refrigerator? We might never know, but what we do know is that it didn't like being put in the bedroom!

It leaked quietly and silently after it was placed onto the piece of siding. Luckily, the siding was thick enough to contain the leakage and keep it out of the carpet.

Meantime, Verla Kay proceeded to install the floor. It went in just fine in the refrigerator cubby hole. But then, she got into the main part of the kitchen with it. Disaster! Nightmare! Nothing fit together correctly. The strange nooks and crannies and jogs and jigs in the trailer walls around the cupboards, and the slanted sink area and the door frame into the bathroom and the jogs and nooks and floor vents made installation a nightmare for Verla Kay.

She screamed. She cried. She put flooring down and ripped it back out. She put more flooring down and ripped it back out. She cursed. She screamed and cried some more. (It did not help.)

She called for her husband's help. She thought about throwing the installation tools at him. But she knew that would only create more problems, so she managed to contain herself and she only threw them onto the floor a few times. That did make her feel better.

Eventually, after a very long day, (and dinner out at Coco's Restaurant in town) the flooring was finally all installed. Hooray! There was much rejoicing in the house. But Verla Kay and her husband had forgotten one very important thing. The Evil Toilet sitting on the paneling board in the bedroom.

They lifted the toilet, and carried it into the bathroom. It was still leaking, unfortunately. It leaked across the bedroom carpet and onto the new floor in the bathroom. But Verla Kay and her husband refused to be cowed by The Evil Toilet.

Verla Kay put the new wax ring under it, then they placed the toilet on the bolts over the hole. The Evil Toilet was bolted down, the water was hooked back up and turned on and they tested it. No leaks. Yay!

Then they flushed it. Oops! It wouldn't flush!

Now why was that? It couldn't possibly have been from the fact that they forgot to remove the rag stuffed into the hole to keep the sewer gasses from coming into the house while the Evil Toilet was in the bedroom, could it?

Oh, the horrors of getting old and losing your mind and your memory!

Okay. So now it was to do all over again. Turn off the water, bail out the toilet, unhook the toilet and water line, lift the toilet and oh, look! There's the rag! Still in the hole, plugging it up so nicely!

Verla Kay removed the rag (EWWWW!) and the toilet was replaced on the bolts and the now empty hole.
It was bolted down, the water line was hooked back up, the water was turned on, and no leaks. Yay!

Then they flushed the toilet... and it leaked all over the new floor. The wax ring needed replacing again.

By this time it was 10:00 PM, and both Verla Kay and her husband were tired, cranky and frustrated. Yes, WalMart, which is right next door to the RV park is open 24 hours, but who wants to walk over to WalMart and across their big parking lot at ten at night for a wax ring? Not Verla Kay or her husband! So The Evil Toilet still sits in the bathroom, laughing and snickering at Verla Kay and her husband.

And it's all to do over again today, after a new wax ring has been purchased. Hopefully, Good will triumph over Evil and the toilet will work without leaking the third time it's placed back onto The Sewer Hole and the water has been turned back on for the third time.

But for now? It's time to take a walk over to WalMart and buy another Wax Ring.

Verla Kay hopes The Evil Toilet will love this ring and will accept it and be not-so-evil in the future. She hopes....

And that's the story of The Evil Toilet. Be careful it doesn't visit your house!

P.S. The trim hasn't been put back around the edges of the walls in these photos yet. When it is, there won't be any more gaps between the flooring and the walls. It's almost done!

The refrigerator nook looking from the living room into the bathroom.

The stove nook.

The Evil Toilet looking into the kitchen and living room beyond.

Aha! The new wax ring has been purchased. The water was turned off yet again, the toilet drained once more, it was lifted up, Verla Kay put the new wax ring under it, it was bolted back to the floor, water line was reattached, water was turned back on and it was flushed. 

It...

did...

not...

leak!

Hooray! The Evil Toilet has been conquered! 

Good has triumphed!

And so ends a satisfactory saga in the life of Verla Kay.