ONE MAN.
ONE TOILET.
ONE HELL OF A NIGHT.

I opened the window. Turned on the exhaust fan. Gave the Lysol a workload that was never mentioned during its job interview.

The smell stayed put.

Not faded. Not relocated. Stayed. Like it had paid the mortgage and wanted to know why I was messing with the thermostat.

I cleaned the bathroom, left the fan running, and opened another window. At that point I wasn't freshening up the house. I was negotiating its release.

Of course Tucker was away from home. My teenage boy has approximately nine hundred things that smell like a cabin, a pie, or a man who owns a clean shirt. The one evening I needed any of that shit, he was nowhere to be found.

I stood in the hallway wondering whether you can condemn your own house or whether somebody from the county has to come out and agree with you.

Then I heard water running.

The toilet had apparently decided that what this situation really needed was a second problem.

I took the tank lid off and had a look. Turns out the toilet wasn't having feelings. The flapper was worn out.

On a toilet that uses one, that's the little rubber seal down in the tank. It lifts when you flush, then drops back over the opening to hold the water in. When it gets worn, warped, or crusted up and won't seal, water leaks into the bowl. The fill valve keeps replacing it. That's the running you hear.

Mine was about as committed to holding water as I was to going back in that bathroom.

I shut off the toilet's water supply, flushed to empty the tank, and took the old flapper off. I matched the replacement to the toilet, hooked it up, and left a little slack in the chain so it could close all the way. Turned the water back on, let the tank fill, and checked the seal and the flush.

Quiet. Finally.

Not every running toilet is a flapper, but it's worth checking the seal, the chain, and the tank's water level before deciding the whole damn toilet needs replacing.

By the time Tucker got home, the toilet was fixed, the bathroom was cleaned, and I'd ventilated the place enough to qualify as an outdoor structure.

Still didn't smell particularly pleasant.

Now, I've spent years giving that boy shit about his Scentsy stuff. All those nice-smelling products. All that attention paid to whether a room smells welcoming. Meanwhile, my approach to home fragrance has generally been to stop whatever's causing the smell.

Well. I'd done that. And cleaned. And opened the windows. The last little bit of atmosphere was apparently above my pay grade.

Tucker put some of his Scentsy products to work, and the cleaned, aired-out house started smelling like somewhere a person might choose to live again.

Wasn't fixing the plumbing. Wasn't making anything dangerous safe. Just making the place smell pleasant after I'd handled the actual mess. Which, under the circumstances, felt pretty damn impressive.

The look on that boy's face was unbearable. He thought the whole thing was hilarious. I could practically see him filing it away for every family gathering between now and my funeral.

So there it is, in writing. My teenage son was right. I was wrong. His nice-smelling shit earned its place in the house.

I expect this document to be used against me.