Journal of a Sabbatical

December 9, 1998

cats, chaos, and chemistry

Everything is in chaos this morning. Dawna hasn't come to work. Bonnie-Wednesday hasn't shown up. There's a new volunteer who's never done any of this before. Everywhere I step I feel like I'm in somebody's way. I've lost count of how many times I've bumped into the new volunteer.

I got here late anyway. The frozen lock on the car door was a bit of a shock after the record high 77 degrees.

Ringworm? why are there bags labeled ringworm under the sink when the last of the ringworm kitties was liberated two weeks ago? Phone's ringing and ringing. One of Tuesday's volunteers comes in to work because her cat has gone missing and she needs something to do. I start bumping into her too. She picks up a bag of laundry labeled "ringworm" and asks "Does somebody here have ringworm?" We never get an answer on the ringworm. Bob makes a copy of the cartoon on the wall: worm weddings, the bride worm, the groom worm and the ring worm.

When everybody is out of the room, Bob asks me if Roberta has called me. Nope. Why? She's organizing a lunch for Dawna. Huh? Roberta left a message on Bob's answering machine that Dawna resigned. That would certainly explain why she's not here training the new volunteer.

The new Bonnie tells me you're not supposed to mix bleach and dishwashing liquid. One of the Tuesday night people who's a nurse told her - yelled at her - that it causes a dangerous chemical reaction. That people have died from it . Huh? I vaguely remember from high school chemistry that there was something you were never supposed to mix with chlorine or it would explode. I'm pretty sure it wasn't Dawn dishwashing liquid because I've been doing that for a year and haven't exploded yet. Not that I learned that much in high school chemistry. Sister Vincenthea mainly taught us about the commies under the beds and how we shouldn't read Time Magazine because it was "pinko". Can't trust those pinkos to boil water over the Bunsen burner. one of the women from downstairs comes up to ask if we're ok with the heat. What does that mean? There isn't any. The hot water is tepid. Maybe that keeps the bleach/Dawn chemical reaction in check.

I overhear Bonnie telling Eileen on the phone that Dawna is out with a migraine today. The hot water comes back on. I'm getting panicked about the bleach/dishwashing liquid interaction. I've been poisoning myself all this time?!? Cubby pees on the counter next to the clean dishes. Fortunately, she missed the clean dishes. She can't help it. She was born with bobtail and it makes her incontinent when she's jumping around with a full bladder. I'm splashing water out of the sink 'cause I'm trying to wash two large litter boxes that don't fit in the sink, The Tuesday volunteer is afraid she'll fall on the wet floor so puts a new towel there and I trip over it. Everybody trips over it. It's worse than the wet floor. I mop up the floor with the towel and put it in the laundry room out of the way. The phones keep ringing.

In the car, I'm obsessing about the bleach and wishing I could remember some chemistry, any chemistry, and at the same time listening to Michael Corrente interviewing Peter Farrelly. Corrente is making a film of Farrelly's novel, Outside Providence. Farrelly is talking about how he and his brother didn't know anything about directing when they made Dumb and Dumber and I'm checking myself for symptoms of bleach/dishwashing liquid poisoning. Too bad I don't know what the symptoms are. Corrente is asking Farrelly what makes Rhode Island funny. Rhode Island is inherently funny. Corrente is building a film studio there - that's something I read in the Providence Journal, not something they're talking about in this rebroadcast interview. Maybe I could get Ned to introduce me to the Farrelly brothers and I could get them to make a film of me dying from bleaching the litter boxes. Segue to Jonathan Richman singing the title song from There's Something About Mary....

I swear that seal is watching me. Maybe he wants my spinach pie. Is the bleach/dishwashing liquid seeping from my hands into the spinach pie? The seal pops up again even closer to the shore. He is watching me! Today's the big annual deer hunt at the refuge so I can't go look for birds there. There's no seal hunt so here I sit at the mouth of the Merrimack watching a seal watch me. A few ring-billed gulls circle and drop mussels on the rocks to break them open. A flock of pigeons wheels overhead. And one solitary loon dives deep and doesn't come up for a long time.