I Learned Something Today

Today was an interesting day to say the least. I was supposed to go out for coffee with a guy I know from the Flood this morning. We have been trying to connect for a long time. Since he works in Sherwood Park and that is where I was going to be in the afternoon, I schedualled a time with him.

But he didn't show up.

That ranks extremely low in my books and I was none too pleased. But the odd thing was the barrista working at the Sherwood Park Starbucks said to me when I walked in, "You're Kayle and you go to Harvest!"

I said, "Who are you and how do you know this information?"

Turns out she and her husband visited Harvest on and off for a while and remembered me. The story get's even wilder when she told me that they really liked me and have decided to name their first son 'Kayle'. I thought she was joking, but nope... she sure wasn't!! So I have decided that I must go to that Starbucks a little more often when I am in Sherwood Park. Make sure I get to check up on my namesake.

I then moved onto praying at the store. It went very well. Yvonne was suprised that people showed up and we were surprised that she was surprised that people showed up! I don't know what was going on there, but the afternoon turned out great. A lady came who had previously been told there was no prayer and we were able to focus on her the entire time. It was a sweet time to say the least. God came really strongly to this wonderful lady.

Then this evening was the traditional Friday night veg-a-thon. Sorry, Kristy-anne, I know you have been praying, but I think that made our time even better! haha!! Although I did have a slight "incident" before the TV watching began which almost caused me never to watch TV again.

If you will look at the title of this entry, you will notice that I said I learned something today. What could I have possibly learned? Simple, I have learned to read carefully anything that you put into your eyes.

Our whole family wears contacts. Mine were a little dry and bothering me, so I went into Aaron's bathroom and grabbed the contact lense solution. It was a big bottle and looked normal so I tipped that baby over and gave it a big squeeze directly into my right eye.

What I didn't know was that I was pouring a significant amount of burning acid directly into my cornea. This is a special solution that Aaron uses for his contacts and there are warnings all over the bottle NOT to have direct eye contact with this solution. You have to put it in a special contact lense case which will neutralize the solution in six to eight hours and ONLY then are you able to put your contacts back in.

So you can imagine what pouring that directly into your eyeball socket would feel like.

Actually, you can't.

I began to panic in the bathroom and couldn't figure out what to do. I knew I needed help but I also couldn't move because suddenly my eye was being eaten away by this lovely acid. Or so it felt. I finally got my wits about me and popped my contact out and poured some water on it. Strangely, pouring water on a contact doesn't help make your eye feel better when it's melting. There was a small little bottle of something on the counter, but I was not prepared to put another mystery substance in my eye at that time.

I then went to get help. I made some sort of sound when I got out of the bathroom, but nobody was around to hear my pitiful grunt. I couldn't figure out what to do because I was in so much pain that I couldn't really yell and I was trying to figure out how the heck I would get down the stairs and get some help and then walk all the way back up the stairs. Yes, it really hurt that bad.

Luckily, Aaron walked up the stairs right at that moment and I said something along the lines of, "I need solution NOW." Aaron went to get some from Bobbie's bathroom and to my horror I heard Bobbie say, "I don't know if I have any!" At this point I was trying to figure out how to get my head under the bathroom tap and how much more it would hurt to turn the tap on directly into my eye.

Bobbie did have a bit and I was able to begin flushing my eye out, which took a surprisingly long time for the pain to get back to manageable levels. Once I realized that my eye wasn't actually going to explode I began to read the bottle for signs that I would also not be going blind. I was happy (and sad) to note that all the package said was to not put this stuff in one's eye or else burning and stinging will occur.

All I have to say is that they have no idea what they were talking about. I would have been happy with some burning or stinging. Try, "If this comes in contact with your eye, you would rather have someone slowly peel back your conjuctiva with a jagged, rusty spoon and then sprinkle sea salt in the open wound."

That is more accurate.

And with that, I am now going to bed.