My new exciting eyelid injury, ADHD Tax Edition

[cimorene]

On Sunday when we were walking around the neighborhood with my SIL's dog, I walked right into the bottom corner of an overhanging cement balcony because my hat completely blocked it from view and I had forgotten it was there when I paused to point at some retro bicycles.

The corner impacted right on the orbital ridge and tore a cut in the middle of my eyebrow, but the bone protected my eye itself, and the raffia hat protected the wound from getting dirt in it. It bled for an annoying amount of time, and the inner half of the crease of the eyelid started turning purple yesterday, and today the eyelid is swollen just enough to be really annoying any time I shift my gaze at all.

It's like that Twiggyesque 60s eyeshadow where the crease is outlined in a black line and then it shades dark above it but the whole of the eyelid itself is light. Not exactly like, though, since the bruising only goes about halfway.

Other stuff, besides my eyelid injury

Wax and I have started trying to accomplish some of the mountain of home renovation tasks now that we are both on vacation, but have wasted a fair amount of daylight so far. Yesterday evening, however, we sat down and made a hopefully complete list of all the stuff we need done and then organized and prioritized it with highlighter and little symbols. So that at least felt very good; hopefully it will also prove effective.

The enzymatic cleaner that we bought is effective at dispelling the smell of cat pee! That's something at least.

The paint remover that we bought has been moderately effective at getting the five million old coats of thick oil paint off the cute little metal railings on the front stoop. There are two more railings opposite the stoop and then there's a TON of metal railing on the balcony, but we used up one can of paint remover already. Hopefully the next can of it will be better - this did definitely work but it took 48 hours and still didn't manage to eat all the way through the paint layers.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

So sorry about your eye! Hope your projects go well.

[which_chick]

If you have a very well-ventilated area in which to work and the metal railings are not too complex in terms of metalwork (like, simpler shapes, twisted wrought iron, etc), you might do well with a handheld propane torch such as one might used to sweat copper pipe together. Hot up a small area of the paint until it bubbles/blackens, then scrape it off with a putty knife or similar. You can also use steel wool to clean up the metal after the putty knife scrape. It's OK to re-apply the torch to get off more layers if the first go-round doesn't work.

I would not do this in an enclosed space, because fumes, but outside should be fine as long as you're not leaning like 2" over the work surface.

[cimorene]

Actually I have a heat gun! MIL bought it for trying to remove the paint from an old cabinet back in the day. Our railings are just bent tubular pipes with zero decorations - the affordable minimalist modernist era in Finland - and the scraping and so on is just tiring, there are no hard-to-reach crevices, thank goodness. I have often envied our next-door neighbors, who have the same metal frame on their railings but with a cute curved zigzag of bars underneath, but I'm very glad I'm not trying to strip theirs.