The Toilet In The Dining Room

These things start innocently enough. You, for example, go to the bathroom, you grab your luggage and you go to the airport at 3:30 in the morning to go to China for a month with a clutch of your offspring. A month passes, the dumplings and lamb skewers (and things you don't want to hear about) get eaten, the kids have their music lessons, the weather is great, piles of friends are visited, an array of unleaveable antiques made earlier this year are obtained and packed to bring home, and all the sudden it's time to fly back to the US of A.
The flight is smooth, but long, and in Chicago, the second flight is delayed, then delayed again, then postponed, and finally it is ready for boarding, and the last leg of the trip leaves you tired, wide-eyed and exhausted, the last passengers off the plane, 12 time zones from where the day began.
Your wife, who you are glad to see, packs the luggage in the car, what will fit that is, and arranges the rest on the roof of the car saying nothing more grumbly than "What *is* all this? You didn't have this many suitcases when you *went* to China.." The drive home is effortless and quiet and dark, the roadsides lined with all manner of political speech urging the driving populace to vote, vote, vote for this one or that. Half an hour later, and we are over the threshold of our American home, and baggage begins to fill the first floor.
Heading to the bathroom to get rid of some of the tea consumed en route, one hears the wife say, "Make sure the plastic bowl isn't knocked over," a sort of odd warning for someone heading to the loo.
Sure enough, though, there in the bathroom, under the toilet tank, there is a large plastic bowl, one generally used for popcorn or washing lettuce. (Hmm. That's odd,) one thinks and does what one does in the w.c. Flushing the toilet, one can't then help but notice that water does seem to be dripping, at a fairly good rate, into the large plastic bowl. (What the dickens???,) thinks the toilet flusher. A close examination reveals that water is shooting out the top of the toilet tank. "What the hell," one shouts, and lifting the toilet tank observes a stream of water being fired at the right rear upper corner of the toilet tank.
Quelling the spray, one leaves the bathroom, somewhat more sodden than one might have expected going into it, and asks, calmly, of one's wife, "What happened to the toilet?" "Oh, that, it broke." "Yes," we observe, "It did. How did that happen?" "I don't know." (She doesn't know,) one thinks. (She was the only one here and the toilet was working and now it's broken and she doesn't know how it happened. Better let this drop...)
Over the next few days, jerry-rigged repairs work then fail, or just fail outright, culminating in the Great Failure when one of Number Two Son's friends flushes and doesn't jiggled, flooding the entire bathroom.
That's it. It's off to the Big Box Store, a Replacement Toilet is acquired and lugged home, and the plumber is called to schedule a visit. But it turns out that the Plumber has raised Plumbering Rates while one wasn't looking, and now charges just barely less than one's osteopath, with a New Minimum fee that is actually more than a visit to said osteopath. For changing a toilet? Two screws, one wax ring, a replacement connection hose and maybe fifteen minutes' work? "We'll get back to you," we say.
A call of Bitter Complaint is made to Wife who says it doesn't sound like a lot to her to change a toilet, but sensing Great Outrage she gives permission for one to attempt a replacement. And after Some Plumbing Repairs to Install a Water Shutoff Valve (something that should have been done when the toilet was installed by the prior owners) the toilet is, with only a little muttering, removed!
However, its removal reveals just how tatty the floor has become over time, and a Decision to Replace The Floor is made, and so now the toilet remains in the dining room, waiting to be hauled away, while the floor is Dealt With.
Luckily, Thanksgiving Looms, and a better deadline one could not be asked for. Thus we ask for your kind wishes as we return to the task before us.