Man, I fucking hope I wake up tomorrow alive and kicking.

I was just trying to clean up some of the dirtier corners of a white couch with some kind of upholstery whitener and brightener. The jug the shit came in mentioned goggles and gloves prominently, but it said nothing about the need for a gas mask.

It’s about 2:30 a.m., a briskly cold, New England in February, as in below freezing, kind of night, and I’m standing on the back porch wheezing and trying to get something good inside my lungs. Whatever I’ve been breathing, all I feel is the pervasive smell (despite a wide open room with a door to the outside opened).

Maybe this poisoning is a close kin to the fabled, dental poisoning of 2004.

To ward off death by asphyxiation, I’ve left the ventilation fan running in the bathroom, and I’m sleeping with a bedroom window open. I just ain’t ready to go yet.