October 29, 2010

• Quick Thinking, not necessarily clear thinking

  Sometimes, I  handle crises swiftly and well; sometimes not so well.  Yesterday, I was cleaning out a long-neglected, nasty, dank and dirty corner under the kitchen sink and countertop.  It had been used to store cleaning products, tools and hardware before I moved in.  I inherited some items under there from previous residents and added more of my own.  Finding anything under there was always a chore, and more and more so as the clutter grew.  It was a job of spelunking to get all the way back into the under-counter corner, and nobody had dared it for years, just pushing things farther back to make room for new stuff.

  After I’d put on my headlamp, crawled in there, and pulled everything out, I noticed that I had 3 cans of WD40 aerosol penetrating oil.  One felt full, but had no spray nozzle on top (a good explanation for why it was so rusty on the outside but still full), of the other two, both of which were nearly empty, one had a nozzle that would fit the full can.  I pulled it off its empty can and stuck it down into the hole in the top of the full one.  It sprayed.  I took my finger off the nozzle and it kept on spraying, so I quickly removed the nozzle.  Before I could get my thumb over the hole to stop the spewing, I’d gotten a spray over my glasses and face.

  By the time I’d located a small jar, taken it and the can outside, and let the can empty itself into the jar, I had WD40 on my hands, wrists, and shirt as well as my face.  I washed up and cleaned up the mess.  Then I started feeling nauseated, and read the cautions on the label:  avoid inhaling fumes and avoid contact with skin.  I could still smell the stuff on my hands, so I washed up again.  While I was cleaning my glasses, one of the nose pads came off and got lost.  Doug and I searched for it and failed to find it.  That’s something that’s going to need to be fixed, when I can get to town.

  The nausea concerned me, so I went online to check out poison control, got the phone number for the poison control hotline, called and learned that the inhalation was more dangerous than the skin contact.  I was advised to go outside and get some fresh air, and to call 911 if I experienced any shortness of breath.  Amazingly, considering my chronic asthma and emphysema, I didn’t.  It was too cold out there to just stand around breathing the air.  I asked Doug to wipe down the area of the spill while I put on Koji’s head collar and leash, then I took him for a leisurely walk out to the mail box by the highway.

  Along the way, reading tracks in the fresh snow, I made an interesting discovery.  I can recognize the distinctive tracks of three different neighborhood dogs.  Buddy, a beagle, and Rusty the chihuahua, always run together, and their tracks are unmistakable among those of bigger dogs.  One of the biggest dogs, Bear, always walks with his human, who uses a walking stick, making their tracks pretty easy to identify.  The thing that most distinguishes Koji’s trail from the others is that everyone else’s is relatively straight.  My dog likes to go from one side of the road to the other, checking his p-mail and smelling everything.

  

  • 5:44 pm
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