Tuesday-10:30am

Relaxed?

Karma and I had an R&R day yesterday. :)

I watched Sunshine Cleaning:

Financially on shaky ground yet determined to send her son to a top private school, Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams) teams up with her unreliable sister, Norah (Emily Blunt), to start a new company that specializes in biohazard removal and crime scene cleanup. Tired of doing all of the work for other people, whether in her job cleaning homes or in her failed relationships, Rose is finally ready to use her entrepreneurial spirit to tidy up her own life.

I loved it! I would never want to do anything like that for a living, but it is interesting to learn about--from your armchair. Back when I had cable I watched police shows and documentaries where they found bodies, etc.

I got as close to it as I ever care to. When I worked in the senior building one of the ladies (with diabetes who could hardly feel her legs) somehow rubbed a scab off her ankle and nearly bled to death in the laundry room! By the time she noticed the blood pumping out of her ankle her slippers were sloshing and the floor was so wet she was having a hard time standing up. She didn't want to get blood on the hallway carpeting, she said, so she sat down in the blood and called for help. A neighbor lady finally came to investigate and called me immediately. (I was the overnight, live-in emergency person.) I grabbed some clothing and pressed on the pumping vein. Told the neighbor to call 911. I kept pressure on the wound until they came and kept the two ladies calm. (I have been known to be good in a crisis.)

But--after the ambulance took her away I was left with what looked like a murder scene! Blood was everywhere! Had sprayed on the washers and dryers--the lady had fallen a couple of times and so there were bloody hand prints all over the machines and the table and the door and the wall--pools of blood were thick and congealing. Just like the girls in the movie when they started, I knew nothing about how to handle "biohazard materials". Never even occurred to me it was anything "biohazard"--was just Myrtle's blood. I lived there. They were all like family to me. So, I just started cleaning.

The neighbor lady kept me company from the hallway (sweet woman) and was moral support for me for the first couple of hours while I tackled my "crime scene". Not knowing any better I took the bloody plastic sheeting and assorted trash from the EMT's and put it in a plastic trash bag and carried it down to the dumpster. I washed all Myrtle's clothing three times except for the few really saturated items that were on the floor--they went into the plastic trash bag. I just scrubbed everything up--no gloves. I learned that congealed blood is like very soft liver that splits thru your fingers when you try to move it. (Almost lost my cookies!) Was kind of like trying to pick up mercury. Had to use a broom and dustpan. Masses of blood does have a strong odd coppery smell that I probably won't ever forget.

Anyways, when I was finally done (took hours!) and after I had gone home and showered--I walked back up to take a good long look--check to see if I had missed anything anyone could see, you know? And when I stood there looking at the sparkling clean laundry room--and while I checked the insides of the machines--it felt really good. Was one of the most horrible things I had ever had to do, and yet you really felt like you had fixed something. Helped. Saved all my senior friends from waking up to a horrible, frightening scene, you know. I could have shut the door and put a sign on it and left it for the maintenance man to arrive in the morning. [He was very glad I didn't do that, I could tell--hehe! I did tell him to move the machines and check underneath them and anywhere I couldn't reach on the walls for blood. There was more.] I got mildly reprimanded for not using biohazard rules--even tho I had never been given them or told the rules.

Anyways, maybe that is why I felt I had a special affinity to the movie? (But it has been rated highly by viewers.) I watched the bonus feature where they talked to two women who actually did do that for a living. And--well--I'll pass. What I went thru was easy peasy compared to what they have to do in real life at crime scenes and death locations. I am just glad that there are people in this world who will do these jobs. Say! I wonder if they have ever had that guy do that on that show "Dirty Jobs"?

On a lighter note--I watched Duplicity on Sunday while I was working on the cards.

Julia Roberts and Clive Owen co-star in this curveball-throwing thriller as a pair of romantically involved corporate operatives who are entangled in a bitter rivalry between two mammoth pharmaceutical companies. Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson convincingly round out the heavyweight cast as warring big pharma CEOs in this intriguing espionage effort from writer-director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton).

Wasn't a good idea to be watching that movie while doing something else. Was one of those movies where you needed to pay close attention to detail. I got the gist of it, tho--and the twist at the end. Was okay--pretty good, I guess. I may have liked it better had I paid closer attention.

Today--Caroline is coming this afternoon. Dark day. Supposed to rain. Got to get moving. :):)