Lye Burns and Rabbit Legs

Some days aren’t meant to be normal. You don’t know it ahead of time. It isn’t marked on your calendar so you can prepare. It isn’t announced on the radio as you get ready for work. And no one calls to tell your subscription to “ordinary” has been cancelled. But it has been. And ordinary is quickly and unexpectedly replaced with “odd.”

I had one such morning this morning. It wasn’t life-altering, devastating, or even “bad”, it just wasn’t routine. It was random.

The first thing that happened, though out of the ordinary, did not strike me as odd. I woke up 30 minutes before usual, and I was wide awake. I tried to reclaim my sleeping state but to no avail. So I climbed out of bed and started my daily routine. With an early start, I assumed I would be ahead of schedule and possibly able to get some extra things done before going to work.

Halfway through my morning rituals, I decided to attack one such extra task. My kitchen sink which was clogged had sat overnight with powerful chemicals “cooking” inside. I began running hot water down the drain (as instructed on the chemical bottle) to clean it out so I could hopefully use the sink to complete my mountain of dirty dishes. I peered in, wondering if the water was going to clog up or drain down. As I did, however, I felt a suspicious wetness on my leg along with an unpleasant burning sensation. I looked down to find the water was leaking from under the sink, out the cabinet doors and onto the floor. Only this wasn’t just water. This was lye.

I dialed up David, because this is the only way I know how to deal with a homeowner’s crisis – call a man. I woke the poor guy up, but he promised to be right over. I quickly focused my attention on my leg, dousing it with water and then using vinegar to neutralize the acid. Anytime you take a bottle of vinegar with you to the shower, you can no longer peg your day as “usual”.

Later, as David and I finished cleaning the area and investigating the source of the leak, we noticed that our dog, Brunner, had found some excitement of his own in the backyard. He’d gone hunting and was in the middle of devouring his prey when I peeked out the curtains. David, as his “dad,” was quite proud of this achievement. The poor rabbit and I felt differently.

Now, I understand that a dog catching and eating another animal is not unusual. But for me, this was a new thing… and definitely un-routine. What a breakfast - a mouth of fur, fresh pieces of flesh, and the crunch of bones. Not your typical Kibbles and Bits. I guess I always thought that animals ate one another like humans do when we eat meat. We eat the chicken; we leave the bone. But no – there was not a scrap remaining. My dog is walking around today with an entire rabbit in his belly.

And though I woke up a half an hour early, I ended up being a half an hour late to work. And instead of getting extra chores done at home, I now have more to do. Such is life.