With some much-welcomed time off from work, I decided to use the holiday this past weekend to get some work done. The Wife™ and I have been slowly working our way through the house with paint brushes, ardently trying to undo what the previous, apparently color-challenged tenants had done. And though I hate painting more than having a hot poker shoved, well, anywhere, I decided we should knock out the family room, front hallway, stairwell and upstairs hall. In short, I was willing to surrender four and a half days of vacation time to doing that which I loath most. Happy holidays!

Wednesday afternoon, after changing the oil in my car (another totally awesome vacation-like activity?) I started the trim work. Having a week or two of wall prep already completed, I was resolved to get all the trimming done in order to paint on Thursday. And despite spilling an entire beer into the dog’s crate (you’re welcome Jonas!), everything was uneventful. I should have been wary.

As Thursday came and went, this trend of normalcy continued and by Thursday night we had a base coat on the entire living room (leaving the front hallway for me to do on Friday morning.) The Wife™ decided to partake in that Black Friday malarky, so Dogzilla and I hung out and sipped cosmos on the back deck avoided each other so I could get some painting done. For the first time ever, Jonas actually played in the yard by himself for three glorious, unbelievable hours. I should have known that I was in for something.

I was on such a roll after finishing another round of painting that I decided to up the ante and do wall prep work on the entire basement. I was flying. Spackling this. Sanding that. Moving furniture. I was a machine! Then I smelled the cooler.

I had forgotten that I had left some trisodium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate in water in a cooler to clean some empty beer bottles. And since I left it there for three weeks unattended, some mold had begun to grow. Not a problem. Remember? I was a machine!

I emptied the cooler and busted out the bleach. Grabbing a sponge I set to scrubbing the cooler clean. Perhaps it was the paint fumes. Maybe it was the fact that I was getting too big for my paint-stained britches. Whatever the case, I scrubbed a bit too vehemently and accidentally shot a stream of highly concentrated bleach directly into my left eye.

What happened next is not really known. I do slightly recall thrashing about the basement kitchenette like a neutered gorilla, making all the motions of wanting to scream but without producing actual sound. For a solid thirty seconds at least I was sure my days of being bi-ocular were done. I was sure that I had effectively burned my eye out.

Clearly God was smiting me for finishing the painting without incident.

In the end, I spent the better part of 15 minutes washing my left eye out with water from a shot glass (because my head is too large to fit under a faucet. Duh.). The ultimate victim in all of this was my productivity. No more painting that day. No more spackling. I spent Thanksgiving dinner #2 with a swollen eye and bruised ego.

And the worst part is that the entire time I thought Jonas was playing in the yard by himself, he was somehow stealing toys from other dogs through the fence line. I still haven’t figured out how he did it, but even this morning he produced Foreign Toy Numero Five out of thin air. Maybe I’ll pour some bleach on them and see if he likes them just as much.