Friday, September 29, 2006

Polyurethane--great for floors and your skin!

Last night I was puttering around the garage picking up and looking for a good paintbrush. Suddenly (and quite oddly) I got the impulse to start dinner. So, I went the garage freezer for a bag of not-so-fresh frozen green beans. When I lifted the freezer lid, I inadvertently knocked off a gallon a polyurethane. Normally, this would not be a big deal because we always seal the can when we finish using it. There must have been some misalignment in the stars because the lid was not on the can tightly and the entire gallon of poly spilled onto the freezer and garage floor. Well, now what? PK was not due home for another hour and if I waited for him to help, the poly would start to harden. So, I took every old towel and rag in our home (we also seem to have a lot of old rags, but there's never enough when you really need them) and I wiped the syrup off the floor. It wasn't long before I and all my clothes were fully coated in a thick sticky mess of poly. It was just after I stripped down to my undies that I discovered that the mess had slowly started to expand and was now at the foot of PK's enormous, heavy table saw which was now firmly stuck to the concrete floor. I pushed and pulled to free it and finally managed to push it out of the reach of the still growing puddle of goo mixed with sawdust. I managed to get a majority of the slop up. Then I found a can of mineral spirits and dumped it all over the remaining mess. Then a dumped more mineral spirits on my hands and feet which were rapidly beginning to harden at an alarming pace. By the time PK got home, I had the mess pretty much under control. I am thankful for the cool weather this week. All those old and now highly flammable rags and my drenched clothes were tossed into an old garbage can which mercifully did not burst into flame as I feared. PK wasn't angry like I expected. In fact, he laughed heartily at the whole situation. Frankly, I think I would have preferred an angry explosion, but when your entire body is covered in a shiny clear coat, nothing seems very funny. Today, after a long shower, I am still a little sticky between my fingers and toes. However, I can now abandon my nightly shower for a a wipe down with furniture polish and a dust rag. And our garage floor is now water-proofed and shinier than LB's bald head. If you're thinking this all sounds like an episode straight out of a cartoon, then you are correctly visualizing the scenario.

By the way, we did not have green beans with dinner!

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2 comments:

Holly Schwendiman said...

Oh dear I can see the cartoon image in my mind! Maybe you're on to a new way to trap youth?

Hugs,
Holly
Holly's Corner

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Anonymous said...

How hilarious! Although I'm sure it wasn't funny at the time! It must have been rough trying to clean that mess up!

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