Everybody poops.

We’ve been doing some renovations in our house and yesterday, as a result of a combination of those renovations and my being in a hurry, I did something less than lady-like and a little embarrassing.

Graham had removed the tank from the back of our powder room toilet so it would be easier to paint around it.

You know where this story is going already, don’t you?

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen…after I drank my coffee yesterday morning, I used that toilet, that very same toilet that had no tank on the back and therefore no means with which to flush it.

As I finished what I was—ahem—doing, I stood up to flush.

“Crap!” I exclaimed as I realized the extent of my idiocy.

This was not going to bode well with my husband. And when I say “not going to bode well,” I mean that it would provide him with some fantastic fodder to use against me in the weeks and, let’s face it, YEARS to come.

I remembered something about how you could pour water down a toilet to make it flush, but when I tried that, nothing seemed to happen, except that the water level rose. I put the kibosh on that plan at the risk of overflowing the bowl and making an even bigger dork of myself.

Later when Graham came home, I sat on the bottom stair in our foyer and broke the news to him.

“I did a bad thing today…” I said.

The expression on his face told me he thought I’d done something really bad, like wrecking the car or setting fire to his favourite Barone Sanitation ball cap.

“…in the bathroom down here,” I continued.

“Oh, you did a dirty thing?” he asked with a relieved smile.

“Yeah,” I said in my tiniest voice possible.

“Why didn’t you just consult your Internet friends? I’m sure someone could have told you that you can pour water down the bowl to flush the toilet. That’s all the tank does, just pours water in and gravity makes everything go down.”

Why hadn’t I consulted my Internet friends? I ask them everything else, for crying out loud.  Although I probably would have been subject to my fair share of twitter mockery, they were less likely to remind me of this renovation faux pas for years on end.

He was right about pouring the water down the bowl, of course; I just hadn’t poured enough. I went down to the basement to get a bucket, making Graham swear he wouldn’t open the lid of the toilet. It’s one thing for your husband to know that you’d pooped inside a non-functioning toilet; it’s another for him to bear witness to the deed.

I made him stand a respectable distance away from the bathroom as I poured the bucket of water quickly down the drain, effectively flushing the evidence away.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said. “I’m your husband.  Everybody poops.”

Last night as we roamed the aisles at Home Depot we neared the bathroom section.

“Hey look, Ame, there’s a new toilet,” he said.

I cringed.

I knew what was coming.

“Just don’t poop in that one, okay?”