The dangers of cleaning and home improvement. Just say no.

I’m not sure if any of you recall me referring to my desk as “the world’s messiest desk” before, which I typically do out of truthfulness. It’s not that I’m intentionally messy or disorganized, it’s just that I typically have multiple projects running simultaneously, as well as piles and piles of phone notes for those projects.

I tend to be a bit of a keeper of notes and papers. I go through and throw them away after some time, but I’m paranoid that I’m going to throw something away I’ll need, so it usually stays in a pile for a couple of weeks. Inevitably, my desk ends up being the place where I keep my ‘piles,’ much to the chagrin of my wife.

With taking my new job(s) in the past couple of weeks, I had obtained an inexpensive corner desk… but it wasn’t turning out to be large enough for a laser printer, four monitors, two computers. a router, a switch, and a VOIP phone.

Friday, I happened across the desk I wanted, and actually needed on Brookings Rummage sale. It was much bigger, had drawers unlike my current one, and it met with the spousal seal of approval.

That last part was important, since we’re on a bit of a cleaning frenzy with one of my wife’s brothers coming to visit our humble place in suburbia for the first time on Friday. He & his spouse are winding their way across the country on a post-retirement 2 month vacation.

I’m not sure what retirement is. I think it’s one of those things that people with regular jobs do when they get older. I’m likely going to be picking up cans in the ditch when I’m too old to be a Walmart greeter. (I had kids instead of money.)

So, back to the home clean-up project. We rearranged furniture, disassembled, reassembled, hung pictures that needed hanging long-ago, started calling cleaning people, cracking the whip on kids to pick up, etcetera and so on.

And we went and picked up my new desk.

It’s everything I wanted, it was inexpensive, and it doesn’t look bad at all. I should be able to work my job related duties from it, as well as my non-job related duties. And I should have room for that replacement monitor I’m getting shortly, so I’m back up to two.

Everything was going smoothly, except for that little hitch. Where I spent about two hours in the emergency room.

Putting things in perspective, except for a couple of splinters, I managed to design, cut, and assemble all components for my new deck without any personal injury. But, when I go to attach one bracket to join the two pieces of my desk together – in holes that had long been there – somehow I managed to get a chunk of particle board in my eye that refused to be flushed out.

In addition to not wanting to be flushed out, despite my persistence in flushing it with saline, flushing it in the shower, and flushing again in the sink, it managed to do quite the job in scratching up my eye.

At the emergency room, it was evident that I actually may have gotten it flushed out in one of my attempts. But it’s not that I could feel the difference after all the corneal abrasions. They said there was a V shaped one on the left of my eye. And a matching one on the right hand side of the same eye.

That’s it pictured above, looking like I’ve been in a car accident.

Aside from learning that painful lesson, The rest of the day was spent finishing the home improvement job before I allowed myself to take the pain pills I was prescribed…. which left me unmotivated and not wanting to do a thing. I imagine that’s much like pot petition workers.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to do much today. And I’m hoping that by tomorrow I’ll be able to cease with the pain medication altogether as I start on the work week.

Did I learn a lesson from all of this? I doubt I’ll start wearing safety glasses anytime soon for assembling furniture in my home.  So, if there is a lesson, the lesson is probably regarding the dangers of cleaning up for company, and how it can lead to motivation sapping prescription drugs.

So, remember: Avoid the dangers of cleaning and home improvement. Just say no.