Near Death Experiences

It's been a bizarre weekend.

My friend Amy is getting married and had her bachelorette party last night. It was at the house of one of her friends in South Auckland. Bob was out of town and wasn't able to play taxi driver for me as usual, so my friend Sarah and I set out on our own.

The theme of the bachelorette party was Moulin Rouge, so we were all hussied up in low cut tops, lots of makeup, high heels, the works. We got directions from Wises.com (same idea as Mapquest) and headed out. Now, mind you, Sarah is from the North Shore and doesn't drive out south often, and I don't drive at all....and also, we both have difficulty telling left from right.

We got off the motorway at the East Tamaki exit. This isn't a very nice area of town and we were a little worried. We were following the directions to the letter but soon found ourselves lost.
So picture it...two completely tarted-up white girls popping U-turns every half a block and staring desperately at a map book...in the middle of Otara! For you Colorado folks, that would be like bloody 5 Points or Montbello! Turns out the Wises directions were wrong and told us to turn left when we should have turned right. We made it though!

Then, on Sunday, Bob and I invited a bunch of friends over for a Thanksgiving dinner. (Yes, I know, Thanksgiving was on Thursday, but since it's not a holiday here, and I can't be asked to cook up a big dinner party on a Thursday night, we did it on Sunday instead). We were cleaning up the house and Bob said he would mop the outside bathroom. Sweet!

(Random but important fact: We have two bathrooms. There's a piddly little one with a useless shower inside the house, and the big nice one with the kick ass shower can only be accessed by walking across the back porch).

He found that we were nearly out of Handy Andy, the stuff we usually use to mop, so I said use bleach with a bit of dish soap. Then I went inside. I was cleaning the inside bathroom and he called out to me. I went to see what was up and saw that he had knocked the bucket over and water was EVERYWHERE. I got the hose and sprayed down the porch while he pushed the excess sudsy water out of the bathroom. He was complaining that there was a very strong smell of chemicals. I said, "Yeah hon, that's called BLEACH." It took him about 20 minutes to get all the water off the floor.

A few hours later he was still complaining that he smelled that chemical smell, that his stomach was queasy and that he had a weird taste in his mouth. I asked him what he used to mop the floor, and he said he used the last half-capful of Handy Andy and bleach. I ran to the bathroom and looked at the Handy Andy bottle.

Handy Andy is ammonia!!!!!

So just as our Thanksgiving guests started to arrive, I was Googling what to do when someone has been exposed to a mixture of ammonia and bleach (which, FYI, makes chlorine gas, a nerve agent used in chemical warfare...) and every website said to dial 911!!!

So off to the emergency doctor's clinic we went. They saw him and referred him to the Emergency Room at the hospital. Bob dropped me back home to tend to the 6 house guests who were happily chatting and cooking dinner for me (Bonus!) and went to the hospital. Fortunately, he was home within an hour and we ended up having a lovely Thanksgiving dinner.

At Random

I feel like I should blog more. I do love writing, but I find that often I can't think of things to say. Writing about work is a bit taboo because of confidentiality, which is hard for me because the nature of my work at the hospital is that of human drama. In what other job does one have to ask "Who died?" when returning from holiday? I so wish that I could use this outlet to process the pain I see every day, but alas, I cannot.

But my life outside of work isn't exactly noteworthy most of the time...I have a happy, blissfully simple life. Here's a little taste of the simple things I do:

I'm trying to knit a hat for a friend who's having a baby girl. This is more difficult than it might seem. So far I've made a "flat" hat that looks more like a doily than anything else, and also a strange thing that looks a lot like a giant nipple. Poor Bob cringes every time I say, "I want to go to the shop to buy more knitting stuff." He's about as happy in the craft store as I am at the drum shop. I will have to pester him soon to take me shopping for baby knitting patterns, lest I spend the rest of my days knitting flats and nipples.

We planted a garden in our back yard and nothing has died! All of our potatoes have sprouted leaves. We go outside every day after work to see how much everything has grown, and to be honest, it's amazing! I seriously thought everything was going to die. Surprise!

I picked some of my herbs and made some extra delicious chicken stuffed with cream cheese and fresh herbs and wrapped in bacon for dinner tonight. It was so good! I love using fresh herbs. Bob says that anything and everything is good if you wrap it in bacon. I think I agree!

I just killed a little bug that was crawling on the computer screen. There's a part of me that feels a bit bad right now...

We had a Halloween party on Saturday night. Katie and I decorated my house in black crepe paper and balloons and had yummy treats, such as:
Hell's Balls (Meatballs in BBQ sauce)
Wings of Fire (Hot hot hot chicken wings)
Occult Cakes (cupcakes)
Final Breath of Garlic (garlic cheese spread and crackers)
Pus Pockets (cream filled doughnuts)
Death Dip (onion soup and condensed cream)

I thought I was quite clever with naming the food. A fair amount of people turned up dressed as everything from NFL football players to doctors to Alice Cooper. I was a butterfly and Bob was White Trash. It was fabulous! Funny story...As the night went on and we all got tipsier, I ended up full-on kissing two of my girl friends! The truly funny thing was that each time, Bob was sitting just a few feet away, but failed to notice. I forgot how nice it is to kiss girls...I love my Bob, but DAMN! Yes, there are photos. No, you can't see them.

Okay, so maybe I'm not so boring........