Here's another thing I don't miss about Florida.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Everyone thinks, if you live in
Florida you must have a pool. I thought that way too when I first moved here,
and when I bought this house the pool was important. I used to go in the pool
every day during the summer, but as the years have gone by the frequency has
gone down. Way down, this year I’ve used the pool four times. The problem is,
even if you never use it you have to maintain it. I could pay a pool service
$80 or more a month to do the maintenance, but they only come once a week. By
the sixth day the water is looking a bit green. So I do my own pool
maintenance. I scoop out the leaves, scrub down the sides, and I add the
chemicals. Chlorine, muriatic acid, algaecide, clarifier, etc....
I was adjusting the pH level
Saturday morning. I was pouring the muriatic acid into the pool which I have
done before. Usually I close my eyes or wear a pair of glasses to protect my eyes.
For some reason I did it with my eyes open and of course a drop of acid flew up
directly into my left eye. It burned. In a panic I stumbled over to the garden
hose and started flooding my eye with water. As I did that the hose dragged
across the pool deck and spilled the open container of acid. This released
noxious fumes. All I could think of was the movie ‘Alien’ and the acid blood of
the creature eating through my eye and the pool deck. After five minutes of thoroughly
washing my eye and the deck with water, I calmly went into the house and told
Mark "You need to take me to the emergency room.". Well you would
have thought I told him the grim reaper was waiting right outside the door. "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH LORD
PLEASE.....OH WHAT'S HAPPENED? OH GOD, PLEASE NO BLOOD....I CAN'T STAND
BLOOD.... OH JESUS WHAT DID YOU CUT OFF?" On and on he went in a panic. Mark can't
handle stressful situations.
After a scary ride to the E.R. at
Holy Cross Hospital and a forty five minute wait for a doctor to see me,
everything turned out fine. The doctor explained why they weren’t in a big
hurry to check my eye. Acid burns the surface and then doesn’t allow anymore to
be absorbed into the eye. Then he said "If it had been an alkaline your
eye would have been liquefied." Nice to know.
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