Just when you thought I couldn't be any weirder...

I know you all have been dying to see the inside of my toilet. 

Prior to residing with us, this toilet was in the barn of my in-laws' neighbor who is a retired dentist (I could not make this stuff up).  It is the toilet closest to our bedroom and it has not been fully functional for awhile - the flapper leaked so the toilet ran all the time. We worked around that by turning the water off to the toilet so the well didn't run dry and turning the valve back on and waiting for the tank to fill up in order to flush. This "fix" worked well enough for a few months (yes, months). And then last week the valve stopped working, and we (read: Micah) found ourselves properly motivated to buy replacement parts and fix the toilet. A trip to Rhea lumber later and we had a tab at Rhea, a valve that ended up not being right (I have been told that it was for CPVC & we needed PVC...whatever that means) and a flapper that in spite of being labeled "universal" did not fit properly and needed to be manually closed or it leaked!  The "solution" was to place a small towel under the valve and reach into the tank to readjust the flapper after you flush. We (read: I) returned the valve (and payed off the tab), but the flapper had already been installed and was therefore ours to keep.

I spent a few hours this afternoon trying to figure out how to get my toilet to flush all by itself. After attempts including supplies such as razors, nails heated over the stove, pen caps and curling ribbon - Paper clips saved the day.  YAY office supplies!! So I thought I'd share. 

To further bizare-ize this post, I decided to start watermarking images posted here and have chosen this photo of the inside of my toilet tank to be the first.

Oddly enough, this is not an April Fools Day joke post... Seriously, this is how I spent the better part of my Sunday afternoon.