I am pleased to recommend an online handyman service called TheRightPros.com. The downstairs 1/2 bathroom has a broken toilet and I went looking for a handyman to install the replacement toilet, a decent enough Kohler model I bought at Home Cheapot. (If you're thinking the installation of a toilet is so easy any idiot can do it, read below). Within half an hour of filling out an online form I had two calls from handymen in the area. I agreed to a price of $75 and made an appointment to have the work done Tuesday morning. The second guy said he could be here this morning but I told him someone else had called first and I would honor that. IAC Home Depot gave me a quote of around $225 for installation, which it took me about a nanosecond to pass on.

So why was I looking for someone to replace the toilet? Sounds simple, right? Well, I am sort of an unhandyman. I am not a klutz and can usually figure out how to do things, usually for the first time. I didn't learn how to do any of this stuff growing up. (The last Christmas my mom and dad were together she gave him a chainsaw as a bitter joke). This time I got myself in trouble by overthinking. The toilet was original with the house, meaning 17.5 years old. One of the bolts that connects the tank to the bowl had rusted out to the point that it broke in half. Every time anyone nudged it water leaked out. Replacement bolts are cheap at the hardware store so all I needed to do was shut off the water supply valve, drain the tank, pull out the broken bolt, put in the new one, and open the valve back up. But no. I had to analyze the global situation and think ahead. And that's where the trouble started.

If one of the bolts is shot the other one might also go before long, I thought. So I decided to replace both bolts. I went to the hardware store one fine Sunday morning and bought two bolts and nuts, a rust removal spray, and a socket wrench extender. The nut was situated about an inch up from the bottom so my regular 1/2 inch socket wouldn't reach it. (In case anyone is wondering, this whole affair occurred in a state of complete sobriety). I made at least three major mistakes.

The first was turning the wrench the wrong way. Toilet bolts are inserted from the top with the nut at the bottom. I turned the wrench the way I am used to removing nuts, to the left. Except with it being upside down I was tightening it, not loosening it. After a lot of effort I concluded that the left bolt was rusted too much to be removed so I should just leave the repair at the right bolt. (Way too late for that insight, Mike!)

The second mistake was trying to push the right side of the tank down flat. It had been raised slightly by the overtightening of the left bolt. Ignorant of the properties of ceramic, I pushed it down hard. That's when the tank split into about 8 pieces. At that point I no longer had a broken bolt, I had a toilet to replace.

The third and by far most expensive mistake was one of carelessness. During the repair attempt I noticed that a small amount of water was seeping into the tank, so I reached to the wall to tighten the shutoff valve. Not paying much attention to my hand's path. As it happened the top of my hand caught a sharp corner of the broken tank and began bleeding profusely. It didn't hurt but there was a lot of blood and I knew stitches were needed. My car is a stick shift so I knew I couldn't drive myself to the hospital without making the interior look like a murder scene. Luckily, one of my favorite neighbors was outside doing yard work and said sure.

He drove me to the hospital, the gash was stitched up (5), and back home we went. End of story, you think? Pffffw.

Not long afterward I received a bill from the hospital for $2600. I thought this is insane, this can't be. My medical insurance is crap (a whole different story) but $2600 for 5 stitches seems pretty extreme. I pay my bills and I paid it. But wait, there's more, as they say on the late night TV sales pitches. The $2600 uninsured bill was just from the hospital. A $1200 bill from the physicians' group followed. Bottom line, $3800 uninsured and so on me. Maybe President Obama was not so brain dead or socialist to make health care reform a priority.

When I talked to my insurance agent in hope that some of it would be covered, which it wasn't, he said if something like this happens again go to one of those for-profit emergency treatment places, not an ER attached to a hospital. He said the hospitals charge two or three times as much.