Update to the cautionary tale of woe

Remember, folks, don’t let this happen to you!

So how to get rid of this leaking mess?

The transfer began with a large glass peanut butter jar, which I plucked off a shelf in the basement.  The first jar I picked up was unusually heavy.  Upon closer inspection I noted that the big jar had several jars inside of it.  It was the matryoshka doll of jars.  I had to look through the jars until I found a lonely barren jar. I figured it wouldn’t mind giving up its life.

Then I made a transfer bridge out of tinfoil to minimize mess.  Surprisingly, my mother did not object to this blatant waste of a valuable, reusable commodity.

It quickly became clear that this was going to be messy so I decided to sacrifice my one pair of gloves to the cause.  This is no small sacrifice, because last week I had cuts on all but three of my fingers.  I have one particularly annoying slash on my index finger which I keep re-opening.  Most recently I caught it on something rough and tore off a big flap of flesh.  My fuckfingers, on the other hand (not literally), have escaped unscathed.  Probably because they get so much exercise.

Also I donned my hazmat suit.  Sorry, no pictures.  I cut holes in a trash bag and stuck some of my extremities through.  But my sleeves still protruded so I took off some of my clothes.  Again, sorry, no pictures.  Because I did this I did not spill any paint.  Except for my extremities.  You know that if I hadn’t donned this ridiculous apparel I would have had a tragic accident.  By the way, copious vigorous application of rubbing alcohol will take paint off skin.  Except now I have a dark red spot on my forearm.

Here’s the photo of the transfer in progress.  The receiving container used to hold detergent.  Some optimistic soul had saved the laundry measure scoop just in case.  You can see the blobs of near-solid paint in the bucket.  I had to press down and dig the jar into the paint, and it would evacuate with a truly terrifying noise and a big splash.  Kind of like … well, let’s just say maybe I should have added some paper to float in the bucket.

After a while the paint became too thick to use the jar.  The jar also got too slippery to hold onto and the paint wouldn’t shake out of it easily.  My mother surprised me yet again by offering another jar.  You can see it in the photo above.  She also almost fell in the paint.

Instead I opted to use a spoon.  Since I was covered in thick blue goo, I yelled for my mom.

“Mom!  Would you please bring me that large old spoon that I saw in the old crisper drawer of the refrigerator?”

Mom:  “What old spoon?  What drawer?”

Me:  “You know, that old metal crisper drawer out of the refrigerator we used to have that is now stuck underneath the sink!”

Mom:  “Who would save a crisper drawer?  What are you talking about?”

Mom:  (rummaging around)

Mom:  “Hey, there IS a spoon in there!”

After I had the paint safely saved in the other container I attempted to pry the can off the floor.  Here it is.  The goo you see was truly amazingly sticky.  If you had a worst enemy (I don’t, of course), this stuff would be great to stick on the bottom of their shoes.  Speaking of which, I might actually have a few good candidates for this.

One hour, lots of paint thinner and one whanging headache later, the paint vessels were safely enclosed in contractor trash bags, I tore myself out of the plastic garbage bag without remembering that the neighbor’s basement window looks right into the one I was standing in front of, and I was off.