Vacuosity

Visine

I brought Julia and Jaimeson home today. They have been at her parent's all week. Her mother asked me if I had missed Jaimeson. Truth is, I didn't; not until this morning, which was the first chance I had to actually think about it.

She has changed a lot this week. She babbles now, sits up really well, and is great with people.She smiles all the time and has great facial expressions. It seems like she understands a lot more of what's going now, instead of just watching and trying to figure it out.



As I cleaned the bathroom today, and inhaled the harsh chemicals, I was reminded of Julia's mother. She had to transfer from her job cleaning scopes at the hospital because of the damage the chemicals were doing to her throat and lungs. It made me realize what it was probably like for her. I felt a bit bad for not giving it much consideration when she talked about it.

I thought too about when I worked for a small contractor. By that I mean that the contracts were small, and the guy's company was small, not that the contractor himself was small (even though he was).

I mostly did industrial cleaning for him, but sometimes we'd go out and do construction work too. He specialized in tuck pointing. We would also clean old brick with industrial chemicals and even hydrochloric acid.

I was quite shaken up when, my first day on the job, there was a careless accident (I wasn't involved, thankfully) and one of the workers was sprayed in the eyes with acid. It was pretty awful; he was screaming and they tried to flush them out with water from the truck but the water was hot and he was nearly burned on top of it all.

We took him to the hospital and everything seemed alright for him after he was treated. My boss, Jim, gave him a few days off with pay, which was the least he could do since it was his fault. At the time, I said the only thing I could think of to make it any better.

"I read recently that the eyes are the fastest healing part of the human body."

Jim is a terribly nice man, and it would have killed him to have been responsible for any permanent injury. He grabbed onto that line and repeated it a couple of times like it was the only thing that might assuage his guilt.

As for the other guy, I never saw him again.

posted by David @ 9:41 p.m.