Apart from the Home Made Explosions our hubby/wifey team created recently, I must have run up a record of sorts in home-made incidents. Alas, good sense as I've found out, normally stays too relaxed on weekends when most home accidents happen to me.
One fine morning wifey was doing the washing. 'Washing' usually means the clothes as well as the floor of the kitchen. I needed the bathroom. I stepped barefooted down the eight-inch step on to the kitchen floor to reach the bathroom door. I reached the far side of the bathroom door on my behind before I knew what was happening. My super-speed forward propulsion was stopped only by my shin against the hard tiled edge. By the time I got up and looked at my throbbing shin an ugly purple-black V-crevice was forming. I almost blacked out from the searing pain.
I had to limp around for a while. That one hit took more than a month to heal. Now I make sure I wear non-slip-soled slippers at home. But I often wonder why they call them 'slippers'. I had a phobia for that word for a long while after that.
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I was once fixing a double-edged slicer on the blender. The razor-sharp blade nicked my palm. While I was looking for some plaster, wifey took the blade and wanted to fix it herself. Obviously she didn't want to let me cut myself again. Unfortunately, it slipped out of her hands. The thing bounced off the floor, slashed my left shin, dropped and bounced off the floor again and made two more cuts on my right toes. I quickly bandaged myself up and drove to the clinic. Luckily there was our regular doctor who was open on Sunday. I requested for priority because the pain was beginning to register in the brain. It probably works slower on weekends. I mean the pain receptor in the brain.
The slash on the shin required 4 stitches. The doctor thought I was still lucky. It closely missed the artery and the shin bone. That would have been a real mess. While he threaded on my skin with his needle he opined that the blade could have bounced higher and caused even more damage. I glanced at the smirk on his face and thought of Hannibal Lector. If he wasn't the company panel doctor I'd have stayed away from him.
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On another occasion, I was back-washing our Hurley filter with some hot water. I tried multi-tasking. My mind was elsewhere on some other thing I was doing at the same time. So I balanced the container of hot water on a stool placed near the kitchen sink and connected the tube into the filter outlet. Before I could walk away, the container come down on me and scalded my chest. At home in this tropical weather, I seldom wear a shirt unless I get visitors. It was a direct hit. When I got to the clinic, I asked the reception for priority. I earned an MC from work for two days. My boss asked me what happened. I said I had a hot bath.
You know; if you're a fixer you just can't stand by and do nothing if something in the house needs fixing. I used to get up on the roof and fixed leaks myself. It took me years to fix them after we'd moved into our current home. Those people called in by the contractors who're supposed to guarantee a leak-proof roof never did a good job of it. If you call them when it leaks, they never show up. Reason? It's raining... Of course we're not helped by our kind of monsoon rains which are never predictable in spite of their description; those leaks are equally unpredictable in their locations.
Now, since we extended our car porch to cover the whole of our front yard, I can't reach the roof with my 10-foot step ladder anymore. I had to give up my rooftop expeditions altogether. Which is high time too as I'm not getting any younger, so I learned. No one knows when I'd get too familiar with all that gallivanting around on the roof. I might just get too relaxed and then....
Well, I'm not a fiddler. Besides, my insurance guys wouldn't be too happy if they found out about my hobby.
But the huge drawback is that whenever it rains heavily and something gets stuck in some down pipe and the water runs to where it's not supposed to, I'd be wringing my hands and cursing under my breath, the contractor or whoever I deem responsible for the messy job.
Take it easy. Lots of things we cannot do any more, When we do, big big fuss. That's why the wifey says, I better pay someone than to shout or worry about you.
ReplyDeleteyalor..papa, don't try it..let the 'professional' to do (even if they aren't quite there)..even when i saw the blade u shown here, i felt a cold runs through my spine...
ReplyDeleteThere comes a time when I have to tolerate unsatisfactory work done. But then, if they're life threatening, that has zero tolerance. There was the day our next door neighbor wanted to extend their front porch awning and the workers discovered that the insulation of two cables connected to our house was almost cut off. The bloke who put up our awning simply cut a hole in the steel sheet and poke the cables through it. When the wind blows, the cables would swing and the sharp edge would cut on the insulation like a saw. That went on for 2 years. The workers saw sparks when they went up on the roof. Thank God, they decided to extend that awning.
ReplyDeleteI called my contractor. He was on holiday in Langkawi. But he called the awning supplier. They sent a seasoned old guy. He kept cussing and spitting about, "Kerja Bodoh", "Tak guna langsung" and all the superlatives. But he did a proper job of insulating the 2 cables with tape and covered the section with a spliced PVC pipe to completely wrap around the section. All that done without shutting down the current.
I thought I could have done it the same way if I could get up there. But then, someone at home would kill me....
Yipes, I don't particularly like to read this sort of stuff coz I've got a very creative mind. Adui.......sakit
ReplyDeleteyou're no fan of Freddy Kruger, I presume.
ReplyDelete