Bathroom Jam

I think I mentioned that my wife is gone this week. Usually I try to surprise her with some sort of household improvement, even if it's just a little bit of extra cleaning. This week, however, I'm busy wearing my union editor hat so there may not be much of that.

If you have time, however, Reader's Digest provides solutions to nine common bathroom cleaning problems.

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As my wife finished cleaning the bathroom one day, she noticed the toilet wasn't flushing properly, and asked me to investigate. I couldn't fix the problem with a plunger, so I wound up dismantling the entire fixture ... no small feat for the non-plumber, home improvement-impaired man that I am.

I discovered, jammed down inside the drain, a purple rubber dinosaur, belonging to our five-year old son. I removed it and then painstakingly got all the toilet parts put back together properly.

To my surprise, it didn't flush and drain much better than it had before. As I pondered what to do next, our son wandered into the room. I explained what I was doing and pointed to the purple dinosaur as the source of the problem.

That's when he asked, "Did you get the green one out, too?"

[Joe's Clean Laffs]

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WORD for YOUR WEEK: It sounds like our friend above put that toilet back together meticulously. That word has its root in the Latin word, "metus," which meant fear. Someone who had "meticulosus" was fearful, or timid. The word in its current form has come to mean someone who is extremely or even obsessively careful about paying attention to details. Almost as if they were afraid to get it wrong. See how that word works?

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