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.