Amateur Strip Night
2004-09-04, 6:00 p.m.

Today's fortune:

Someone wants your body.

Let's be realistic. The only viable candidates for THAT one would be Igor or the Body Farm at UT. Neither one exactly thrills me.

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I am on here taking a fresh air break, allowing chemical stripper to do it's sticky work on the Hoosier cabinet outside. Let me begin by saying I have a newfound appreciation for the pros. Stripping layers of dirt-encrusted emulsion off a piece of furniture is NOT an easy task. It would have cost $300 to send it off for just stripping...worth every dang penny. Next time I'll know better. That's provided I don't expire today from the fumes associated with this little venture, even though I'm doing it in the great outdoors.

No matter the precautions, there is always one little area of visible skin that gets splashed by droplets of the paint stripper, which is composed of 1 part battery acid, 1 part liquid nitrogen, and 1 part pure fire. How do people do this without a complete Hazmat getup? And as soon as I'm suited up, with steamy safety goggles and gloves that adhere to my hands with suction force, right when I'm lifting a glom of uncoagulated lead onto the spatula, either my hair will fall in my face or my nose will itch. Guaranteed.

Hopefully this evening I will have a bare cabinet and be pleasantly high from the residual chemical haze, with skin intact and ready to paint tomorrow. The realist in me prays Hubby doesn't come home from work to find my remains melted into the pools of God-knows-what-chemicals-I'm-spraying-out-there. After this, my career as a stripper is offically over, one way or another.

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