The month of October is set aside each year as a reminder to maintain one of the most important fixtures in your home.  A fixture that is at your service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  And you probably pay little attention to it unless it’s broken.  And if it’s broken it is of little use and can cause panic and distress in your home.  No, it’s not Smoke Alarm month.  October is “Toilet Tank Repair Month.”  Now don’t laugh.  Let’s give proper recognition to the importance of a well maintained toilet tank, otherwise unpleasant things happen.

For example, how about that middle of the night visit when you try to flush after use but the chain comes off the handle? Now you have to take everything off the toilet tank lid, set it on the floor and reach down into the cold tank water and try to find the chain and reattach it to the arm.  And the odds are that if you’re the man of the house, you’re trying to do all this without turning on the light and waking the better half, right?  And what do you think your chances are of going right back to sleep after fishing around, in the dark, in a tank of cold water for 2 minutes?

Oh, and how about this one; again, it’s the middle of the night (these things never happen during the day when you have time to actually repair them) and you approach the fixture, again in the dark and barefooted, and you step in a puddle of water.  Darn, the seal between the tank and bowl has failed and started leaking.  Not much you can do except turn off the cutoff and go back to bed.

Then later that night you’re sleeping really hard, in fact so hard that you’re slobbering on your pillow.  Guys know about this kind of sleep.  You don’t even feel the bed move when precious gets up to go to the bathroom.  The first thing she does is flip on the light and while yawning and moving to the toilet, she steps barefooted into the same little puddle.  Is she considerate of your sleep?  No way.  She screams and you bolt straight up in the middle of the bed wide awake, wiping the slobber from your face while she goes into a tirade about the water on the floor.  You would think a tsunami had gone through the bathroom while you were asleep.

The odds are slim and none that you will go back to sleep after waking to her blood curdling scream just as they were when you quietly, without disturbing precious, fished around in the dark with your arm up to the elbow in cold water to reattach the flush chain.

The moral of the story: for a good night’s sleep keep your toilet tank in good repair…

And by the way, Daylight Savings Time ends at midnight on November 3, a perfect time to replace the batteries in your smoke detectors.