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 | mercurial |
Why do things happen, do you think? Out of the ordinary things, I mean. Things that don’t really have any lasting significance, things that just mean a little bit extra… work, or thought, or dealing-with. Those kind of things.
Things like: when your two-year-old breaks a mercury thermometer that you didn’t even know you owned, leading to a cleanup event involving an eyedropper and wet wipes and rubber gloves and old clothes. And then—guess what!—you’re supposed to stay out of the room for a while, to let the vaporized mercury clear out. And since the room in question is your bedroom, and since “for a while” includes overnight, you have to sleep somewhere else entirely. Like in another room, on a futon. (Firm organic cotton! Firmly wrapped in organic wool! Like sleeping on an uneven organic rock! Which was fun, since we were sleeping so well to begin with!) Not difficult to deal with, really, but certainly annoying.
Also my hair has been funked out all week, and not in a good way.
Which is not as irksome as the whole mercury spill thing, but still. Why oh why do things happen? Sometimes I wonder.
(Oh, alright. If nothing ever happened, well, that would be boring. And unhealthy. Okay, okay, things can happen. But next week, could the things revolve around unicorns and ice cream instead of mercury and frizz? That would be great.)
What an interesting event. I wouldn’t have thought to look up the hazmat procedures for this. I’d just clean up as best I could, just like when I was in middle school. I’m still alive. Just ignore the second head that grew off my shoulders.
Yikes — I’ve never even thought about a thermometer breaking… come to think of it, I don’t think we own a mercury thermometer — just the digital kind. Of course, as soon as I say that you know I’ll find one of the kids running around the house with one!
I remember playing with a bit of mercury from a broken thermometer when I was a kid. Hmm. That explains a lot!
If it was just us grown people living here, I would worry less, but you know, mercury exposure + developing toddler brains = maybe worth avoiding. Plus once the good people at poison control tell you to do something, you kind of feel like you ought to go ahead and do it.