I usually never pay any attention to those washing instructions on the little tags inside clothes. If I wreck something by putting it in the washer and dryer then it wasn't meant to be worn by me. At least, not more than once.
I used to always read the care instructions but these days they're created for the international community or just the United States of Illiterates and instead of words they just have all these cryptic symbols with x's and o's that make me feel like I'm playing tic tac toe not attempting to do the laundry. I have no idea what they mean.
But it doesn't matter because what I really want to talk about is bleach. You know chlorine. Cl. Maybe you've heard of it. Perhaps you've used it to whiten your whites or lighten your teeth or hair, sanitize toilets, clean grout, remove mold and mildew.
Recently I hit the pool supply store and bought some chlorine bleach to put in the pool because the water in it was green. I wanted it blue, preferably light blue. The big yellow jug had two caps -a little one on one side and a big one on the other.
I took the cap off the little hole and started walking around the pool trying to squirt the chlorine into the water. It was annoyingly slow. Like I imagine your stream of pee might be if you were a man in a public restroom stalling for time waiting for Mr. Right with a wide stance to come in.
So I turned the jug sideways and sat on it to make the chlorine come out faster. It did. But still not fast enough. Did I mention it was about 95,000 degrees outside? I am not a fan of sweating. I bounced up and down on the jug - not as much fun as it sounds- and the stream came out a little faster but I was working my way around the pool and worried that my psycho neighbors might be filming me and planning to send the footage to America's Funniest Home Videos or the F.B.I. so I stopped.
I was about halfway around the pool by then and still had more than half the container full of chlorine so I decided to speed things up. I took the cap off the big hole. That was more like it. The clear liquid bleach reputed to be twice the strength of the kind wimps use in the washing machine was positively gushing out into the pool.
As I moved around the pool's edge spreading the chlorine around I looked down impressed that I hadn't spilled a drop on my pants or shoes. Then the last liter or so came out more erratically for some reason and suddenly bounced up at me. I got a liberal splash of chlorine in both of my eyes.
I screamed something very "on the nose" like "OMG! I just got a lot of bleach in both of my eyes" as I dropped the chlorine jug and ran into the house to the kitchen sink. I flooded my eyes with water repeatedly without stopping except a few times for a second to blink and see if I could still see. I could, but it was all hazy and cloudy and then I'd quickly resume the frantic flooding and splashing.
The whole time I was thinking to myself, I better not go blind. So this is what I get for bitching about the bad haircut I got last week. Now I won't have to look at it! and other random thoughts like that until my eyes were so sore I wasn't sure if it was from the chlorine or the relentless splashing.
After about 20 minutes I turned off the water and called Poison Control (I'm one of those accident-prone hypochondriacs who has them on speed dial) and the very nice lady said I'd flushed my eyes long enough and to go lie down and shut them and keep them shut for thirty minutes and then she'd call me back.
I did just as she said and my sweet baby dog knew something was wrong and jumped up on the bed and sat next to me with her paws on my chest looking at me with concern the whole time. I couldn't actually see her looking at me but I just knew. She's "in heat" but seeing as I was in trouble she didn't try to hump me.
After exactly 30 minutes -- I'm amazing like that-- I'd shut my eyes at 3:12 and opened them at 3:42, I was happy to see I could still see but when I looked in the mirror I saw my eyes were redder than they'd ever been, even during Mardi Gras, and they hurt A LOT.
For a moment I stood stunned staring at my reflection, repulsed by my crazed monster red eyes and rat's nest of a hairDON'T but amused by the way they seemed to kind of work together, when the phone rang. It was the nice lady from Poison Control again.
She asked me how my eyes were.
"I can see," I said. "But they are really sore, really red, and they feel dry and scratchy like they're full of granules or something."
She told me I most likely had burns or abrasions on my eyes which could get infected and urged me to get to an eye doctor or hospital right away to get my eyes checked so I got a ride to a nearby VisionWorks.
They were surprisingly busy given the "economic downturn" and even though I heard the receptionist tell a caller, "Sorry, we're booked solid today, " she ushered me into the examination room immediately. I took off my sunglasses and she gave me a large plastic spoon that I'd have guessed was intended for baking.
"Cover your right eye and read the smallest line you can see on the chart" she said.
I did okay I guess. I could read the third line from the bottom pretty well. Then I had to do the same thing covering my left eye and I found out I could see better out of the left eye than the right although I'm not sure that's how it was before the accident.
She wrote the information on a chart and left and then the doctor came in so quickly behind her I wondered if it was actually the same person or if some kind of wizardry was going on there. He zoomed over to me, all serious, and made me sit in a chair behind some eye gizmo contraption with my chin in a cup while he examined my eyeballs with a bright white light. At first he didn't say anything which made me so nervous I blurted out,"So, no housework for at least six months, right? "
He ignored me and just said, "Look up. Look down. Look to the side. Roll your eyes like you're listening to a Republican."
Finally he turned the little light off and pulled away the little chin cup thingy which I'd found quite charming, much nicer than stirrups, and said, "They're not as bad as I thought they'd be," explaining that basically what I'd done amounted to sandblasting my corneas. He prescribed antibiotic drops and liquid tears to put in my eyes while they healed and said my eyes would feel a lot better by morning.
"I guess I shouldn't read or strain my eyes too much. " I said. "Avoid bright lights and stay out of the sun? "
He nodded. "And stay away from mirrors too -- at least until your hair grows out."
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