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THE LESSON: DO NOT MIX HYDROCHLORIC ACID AND AMMONIA!

So, I need to preface this with, I love cleaning bathrooms. Seriously. LOVE!

I got a message from Squirreltail (the fiancee) saying that he wasn't feeling well a few Thursdays ago, so he was going to rest instead of cleaning his bathroom. To which my response was, "Come get me! I'll clean it for you, and we can spend time together with you resting! It'll be fun!"

So he did, and I set about cleaning his bathroom. Yay, bathroom cleaning! I was making up songs and singing them, all about cleaning his bathroom. This is how excited I was.

The very first thing that I did was spray everything down with those scrubbing bubbles. You know, the ones with the adorable little brushes that are supposed to come out of the can and go "swoosh!" over everything and leave it sparkling, only it doesn't do this, and instead just leaves a bubbly foam that you have to scrub off? Luckily, I'm smart enough to know how it actually works, so I wasn't terribly disappointed, even though it really would be awesome if I could see those cute little bubble brushes.

Unfortunately, I am not smart enough to read the ingredients, instead of assuming that the bubbles are bleach based, instead of ammonia based.

And I discovered what happens when you mix ammonia with hydrochloric acid.

In my defense, I know not to mix bleach and ammonia, because that causes mustard gas, or chlorine gas, or whatever you want to call it, and will burn your lungs badly and cause death. (Then again, we have to keep in mind that I, already knowing this, did just that a few months ago...)

I did, however, make Ammonium Chloride Gas, which is almost as bad, except that the symptoms, especially if you're me and dealing with these symptoms all the time, sneak up on you a lot slower.

The first thing that happened was the mother of all migraines. I mean, holy COW, that sucker hurt badly enough that I actually fell. The next thing that hit was the nausea and the dizzyness and the lights are really pretty when they spin like that-

So I left the room and sent an msn message via phone to my friend Colm, who really is a smarty head, asking what I should do if I accidentally mix hydrochloric acid and ammonia. His response was a very simple, "Get out of the room. Get out of the room now. Get the f*** out of the room right now and stay out."

So I did- but first I opened the windows and hit the vent button, which I really should have done that at the very beginning, except that I hate the vent, because it gives me a headache. ...And breathing in fumes doesn't give me a headache?

After about half an hour is when the nausea got really bad, only now I'm also dealing with seeing spots, and getting progressively dumber. So Squirreltail and I sit out on the porch for another half hour or so, before I go back inside and finish cleaning the bathroom, with him asking me random math questions to make sure that my brain is still functioning and not all DURPified.

I swear, I really am the dumbest genius I know sometimes. For the next three days, I had a nasty taste in my mouth that wouldn't go away, was still nauseas, and still migraining like heck. But the good news is, I didn't die, which ...really could have been a distinct possibility.