Flushed With Success

My toilet is all fixed now. Yay! I'm sure you were all terribly worried about it.

As it happens, I was correct both in that a) I probably could have put things back together myself, and b) it was a good idea to have the professionals come and do it to ensure that it wouldn't break again. Turned out what happened was that a little washer thingy on the end of the hose (which I'm pretty sure I installed according to instructions when I replaced the fill valve thingy a couple of years ago) popped off, finally, under the pressure of all that H₂O. Instead of just putting it back the way it was, which is what I probably would have done, the plumbers instead installed a new hose with the washer bit already very firmly attached. I'm not exactly thrilled about having to pay the money (which was fairly reasonable by plumbers' standards, but still non-trivial), but I'd say it was worth it both for peace of mind, given that if it had broken again while I wasn't home the results could have been deeply awful, and for me not having to spend an afternoon mucking around with a toilet.