Life Lessons usually come in the least expected ways.

Toilet problems at my house have been a reoccurring event.

I like to consider deeply moving insights into the human psyche, and before 7 this morning I had my arm up to the elbow in a pipe in my bathroom floor which solicited such insight.

The odds of things happening sometimes are outstanding.

We have decided after being in our home for 2 years that our family is getting a bit too cramped in our small suburban home and we found another house on a few acres of land that would fit us just right.

We must first sell our current home before we can do anything, and since my youngest have unfettered creative streaks we have to do a lot of fixing things around the house to get it close to sellable.

Our first project, renovating our kitchen, is almost completed and instead of finishing one project and then beginning another we started on our second project last night…

Removing the toilet for the second time to figure out why it gets clogged so easily and to replace the flooring in the bathroom.

The toilet the first time around had a small plastic bathtub toy as the cause. The toilet clog number 2 was a too large to make it around the bend poop.  Did not see that coming.  I was sure the clog was from a toy of some sort, and yet this is not the reason my arm was in a pipe.

The new flooring is a must because who knew one’s son could get an “over aggressive circumcision” which causes one to have a very messy urine stream that requires corrective surgery.  You can trust me when I say a newly aiming pee-er with pressurized urine makes for one messy bathroom.  Yet this is not the reason for the hand in the hole, and now that I think about it I may need to replace the popcorn ceiling.

Last night we removed the toilet and old flooring and cleaned the concrete floor and went to bed to let it dry and hopefully dream about how exactly to get that poop out.

My husband awoke first this morning and went into the bathroom to retrieve some papers that had been signed and needed to be returned to school today.  Why I set that paper down in the bathroom sink is beyond me, but why my husband tries to walk around the house without his glasses on knowing he can’t see is even more confusing.

I awake to “no way.”

I hesitate to ask what happened.

He tells me that a small hard plastic cup sitting on the sink was knocked off (because his blind self didn’t see it) and that it bounced 2 times and landing just-so and went down the open hole in the floor where the toilet had been.

[I now know that when removing a toilet one must plug the hole to keep sewer gases from escaping.]

We dummies had the fan on all night and just sucked all those gases into our attic space.  First good news is:  at least our house has not ignited.

My husband was angrier that he didn’t react and catch the bouncing cup before it went down the hole more so than the rogue cup.  I reassured him no one could have ever expected the cup would actually land so perfectly in a 4 inch section of the 12 square foot room.

He said it even spun around the rim a few times like a basketball before going in…it was like the cup was laughing at him on the way down.

I was beside myself and could not stop grinning (I was trying desperately to not laugh).  I began creating a contraption out of a hanger and duct tape in the hopes I could retrieve the cup, hence the hand in a hole.  This was very laughable to me.  Not so much to my husband, he was too busy having visions of busted concrete to see the humorous points.

It was my husband who has mentioned to more than one person that whatever hoops he needs to jump through to get this house sold he would jump.

Hoop number 1

Take a gander at that hair.

The duct tape contraption was unsuccessful and so was the vacuum cleaner, so now I am awaiting the Conway Services man or my husband with a stronger vacuum, whoever arrives first.

I decided I would share my insight while I waited.

Deep insightful lesson:

Trust your hunches they will steer you in the right direction.

Husband says he had the inkling last night to place something over the hole, but ignored it.

Just go ahead and do or say that thing that arises within you, because you never know when that thing you do actually saves someone’s life.