I had the weirdest night last night, you don’t even know, and I have just got to tell somebody who wasn’t there, and I just don’t think it’s a good idea to tell my parents how incredibly dumb I was, okay? You would absolutely never guess how many degrees we have between us.
The helpful people in my thread about “how do I get this shit off these gross-ass floors?” are going to be so mad at me. And disappointed. I don’t know if I can even tell them. 'Cause, y’all, we totally knew better.
Through various annoying trials and tribulations, we rented a pressure washer yesterday to clean some floors at Himself’s new store. (New to him. Old and rundown to the rest of the world.) Gas powered, 3000 PSI, aka “The Finger of God” on the smallest nozzle.
Now, I know it is a Bad Idea to run a gas powered anything indoors. But we don’t have a back door, there was just no way to put it outside, and the building is huge and we felt it was well-ventilated. We put it in a room we weren’t working in and cut it off and went outside when our eyes stung. We did that one bathroom hardcore - didn’t get everything we wanted off the floor, but damn we got it clean. Took some of the wall with it and a great deal of paint and we didn’t even care, it was so joyous. Nobody, I assure you, has ever cleaned a toilet that fast.
We also did the edges of the floor in one of the big back rooms, and some of the other bathroom, which is possibly just irredeemably bad and gross and urgh. There is no drain, so for all of this the two of us switched off between washing and shop vaccing. We took frequent breaks, and had to go outside to empty the shop vac pretty often. We felt fine. We did take the extremely sensible precautions of safety glasses and earplugs (although my ears are still kinda funny.) We were probably in there working with the engine on and off, mostly on, including breaks, for maybe four hours?
Started to get a headache - figured it was the noise, and the fumes burning my eyes. Started to feel a little sick to my stomach, but I really had been kind of sick after lunch and figured it was just the smell and that. (Did you know that carbon monoxide poisoning affects your judgement?) Started shop-vaccing by leaning on the wall and putting my head down on the shelf. (It was a long day, I was tired.) Himself said “Hey, are you okay? I don’t feel so good, I’m going to get some fresh air.” “Nah, I’m fine. Just tired.”
So five minutes later I shut everything off and go outside, because my head hurts. As I get out there I realize I’m also feeling kind of faint and seriously sick. Also confused. Himself says his heart is thumping like crazy. Smart people would have gone to the emergency room, but did I mention confused? I knew, I think, that I was a lot sicker than him, but I didn’t do a very good job of telling anybody that. After dithering a bit about getting something to eat, he took me home, where I stumbled in and went to bed.
Here’s where it gets weird - twenty minutes later, I’m kind of thinking about calling him back and having him take me to the emergency room, and a car alarm goes off next door. It goes off just long enough for me to stagger to the window and see that it’s his car, and then it stops. (He was in my car.) Well, I figure he came back and switched cars, but, hey, maybe I ought to call him. He says it isn’t him and he’s coming back to check on it.
So five minutes after that I hear “HEY!” and running feet. Goddamn it, back into pants. I open the door and find his kind-of-sheltered friend on the porch, who squeaks my name and says, urgently, “Do you have something?” What, like, does your head hurt too? “I mean, like, you know, a gun? There was somebody in the car!” “Oh, yeah, sure. You want one too?” I think that kind of weirded her out. 
So I run and grab a gun, because, hell, his friend is in no way going to protect herself (not because I was planning on shooting somebody down in the street!), and when I head back out there I find out he’s run off after this homeless woman who had broken into his car and was sleeping in it, and he’s got his seven iron. (I do wish I’d seen how this started off - his seven iron was indeed in my car, but how do you end up grabbing a golf club to confront somebody who may be armed, drugged, and dangerous?) Evidently they came up, saw her in the car, and she started coming towards them rather than away and he freaked out a bit. (She turned a corner and he lost her, and the cops couldn’t find her either.) The cops came super-quick (I casually wandered back into the house and put the gun up) but didn’t file a report, since she didn’t steal anything.
And she got in because this one time in his entire life, a friend of his left the window down. Which is really creeping him out, because it makes him feel like he’s being followed all the time and people are waiting for him to slip up and give them one opportunity.
But you know the weird thing? After the cops left, I realized I felt perfectly fine! Still had a headache, but the dizziness, vertigo, nausea, etc.? Gone!
So, the bad news is, I got really sick because we were stupid, and my boyfriend chased some homeless woman down the street with a golf club. But the good news is, a car alarm actually did something for once (although it stopped going off after less than a minute?) and I found a cure for acute carbon monoxide poisoning.
Are we not just eat up with the dumbass? Seriously?