Calamity Jane.

The other day i got battery acid, bleach, and rubber cement on my hands. Just, you know, part of a day in the life.

My bike light wasn't working, and when i cracked 'er open to replace the batteries, i was greeted with a nasty white, grainy film. After removing the spent batteries, i noticed piles of the stuff, beneath, and all over the metal contacts themselves. Asked Nat to look up if there was a way to clean this stuff off, or if i had to buy a whole new bike light. Turns out i had corroded battery badness all over my hands. Yum. This fact was especially fun because i happened to have a big old fresh cut on my left palm from trying to pick up a piece of beargrass at work while i was unknowingly stepping on the other end. sliiiiiiiice.

Later, i was patching the inner tube for my back wheel–it was definitely a bad day for bikes–and while stubbornly squeezing the tube of adhesive, i didn't notice that the flimsy metal casing had ripped open (probably from my thumbnail) and was oozing "TOXIC ☠ POISON" all over my fingers. Peeled it off in a tizzy.

The bleach thing is commonplace: we have it at work, in a repurposed dish soap bottle. a few drops go into almost every clean bucket of water before we put new flowers in it. Helps to keep the bacteria levels down. The downside of this arrangement is that sometimes the bottle falls into the sink, sending little droplets spraying every which way; my clothes are spattered with scads of tiny, light spots. And, on the odd occasion, one of us will grab it to wash our hands with. Oops.

Besides all of this, my hands are just jacked in general. When you use your hands as tools, this can (and certainly will) happen. Also, i don't wear gloves at work because it impedes my ability to handle anything efficiently. In fact, at the stained glass store where i used to work, we didn't wear gloves, either. When you are moving around a four foot-by-two foot sheet of glass, you want to be damn sure that you can feel the glass in your fingers. There is not a whole lot of room for error, and i have never found a glove skin-tight enough to dispel all unease. At least one of us, on any given day, had a bandage on her fingers from a glass cut. People (customers, acquaintances) would always tell us to "just wear gloves"– ah, thank you, Captains Obvious.

Stripping the greens off of the lower stems of flowers and leafy items leaves you with shriveled, permanently dirty hands. Painting your nails is basically an exercise in futility, and no amount of lotion will drench your parched palms. The amount of time that your hands are wet makes for a chapped skin affair for the ages. Sometimes, when a really precious girl says to me, "i would just love to work with flowers", it is all i can do to contain my snicker. Girly, i think, you can kiss that French manicure goodbye (see above reasoning). And your designer clothes (hello, pollen stains!), and your high heels (concrete for 8 hours, anyone?), and your breezy attitude (seriously, we are selling people something that's already dead, and at 3x the market price). i have, in fact, worked with people like that, and it just never pans out. You either aren't afraid to get dirty, or you are. You can't work in the flower shop all day and expect to leave immaculate. It's just not part of the deal.

Although, i suppose it does have its rewards...