I'm not a handy guy. I'm the opposite of handy (which apparently is maladroit, thankyouverymuchantonym.com). This is one of the reasons why I never wanted to own a home. I loved being a tenant and having the luxury of getting things fixed by picking up the phone. I suppose I can still do that, but it's not free anymore. If it wasn't for the absurd tax deduction I get from my mortgage, I would have never bought a home.

Anyway.

So, when something breaks around the house, invariably I have to have a professional fix it. Or, if it involves power tools, my wife jumps to the rescue. She loves her power drill, her circular saw, her automatic super-duper thing-fixer. Unfortunately, two things broke this last week that do not require power tools. Both of them were toilets. Double unfortunately, I have actually fixed toilets in the past.

My father is a mechanical engineer. He understands how everything works. As a loving and dutiful father, he did his best to teach me how things work. He taught me about cars. It didn't stick. He taught me about sprinklers and gardening. It didn't stick. He taught me about assorted household gadgets and that didn't stick either though. Toilets, however, stuck. Why, oh why, did it have to be toilets? Why did my brain make room for toilets and not for engines? We'll never know.

So, toilets are the one thing that I fix. It's a glamorous life I lead. Today, I got to fix two of them. The sad part is that I took two trips to the hardware store, bought about $30 worth of toilet innards, and didn't need any of it. Brainpower and a simple adjustment was all that was needed in both cases.

Man, I am ALMOST as smart as I need to be.