April 16th: Day of Disaster

In addition to the amazingly horrifying college shootings yesterday, Billy and I had our own versions (though not nearly so bad, but nearly as dangerous).
The first near-disaster was the compost pile. On Sunday Billy and I spent the afternoon cleaning up the yard. I spent three full hours cleaning up dog poop from the winter. Meanwhile, he spent the same amount of time burning wood scraps and bark left over from the winter. He had a bunch of ash left over, so yesterday morning he dutifully added it to the compost pile. He swears it was cool when he put it in the compost. Then he went to the store. When he came back, he saw this huge plume of smoke rising into the air near our house. When he pulled into the alley, he saw: 1) the compost pile on fire 2) our neighbor, contractor Bob Kearn, fighting the fire with our pitchfork. Much cursing and flailing ensued. Bob Kearn, with the pitchfork, beat the fire. Billy meanwhile drug buckets full of pond water and muck to throw on the fire. Eventually they got it out. Normally Bob Kearn's fleet of trucks, vans, cars, etc in front of his house every day really annoys me, but yesterday I was actually glad for Bob Kearn being around. And I am also glad that the garage and house and entire neighborhood didn't burn down.
I was not immune to the disasters. I have been in limbo waiting for various decisions to come down the pipeline in my life the past few weeks, and I am going stir crazy. I have cleaned every possible surface in my home, so it was time for me to do some projects. I decided to refinish the tub. They make kits for everything now, and this is one of them. So, with the kit, you also have to buy all sorts of scary sounding chemicals. So, I was driving my cart around home depot with all of these supplies and chemicals. I went to the self checkout and was putting my things through the scanner when I realized that one of the chemicals, the tri-sodium phosphate, had actually exploded all over my items, and was melting--yes, melting--the paint off of all of the spray cans, the labels off of my drop clothes, and pretty much everything else. I kind of freaked out because I hate chemicals anyway, and this was not only all over my items, but all over my hands! I begged one of the checkout girls to help me. She "read" the bottle and told me it didn't seem like it would be harmful. When I got home, I found out otherwise. Turns out you are never supposed to let that stuff get on your skin b/c it causes birth defects and about 20 different kinds of cancer. Nice.
After that, I decided maybe that yesterday wasn't the day to start the tub refinishing project after all. So, I decided to do a simpler project--I decided to repaint the inside of the medicine cabinet. I began by removing all of the items and then sanding down the insides with a piece of sturdy steel wool. The next thing I know, the steel wool is a flaming, metallic orb of death in my hands, and I am getting zapped. Yes, that's right, I got a little electrocuted. The top of my head was really, really hot, and the wool was still aflame in my hands until I finally realized that maybe I should drop it. The weird thing was that neither my hand nor my head show any signs of damage. Maybe it was the previous inadvertent absorbtion of trisodium phosphate. I don't know. Either way, I gave up on both projects and just decided to watch TV for awhile until the string of near-death experiences was over. I am hoping the little jolt that I received will make me a genius or, better yet, give me psychic abilities.
One pieces of joyful news from yesterday: I am an aunt again. My sister in law had her third little girl yesterday--6 pounds 9 oz--who they *think* they are going to name Georgia.
Happy Birthday Georgia!