Evil Shop Vac

Both Paul and I acknowledge that we are getting seriously burned out on our building project. We are just ready to be done and moved in already! In lieu of this revelation, we agreed to find a contractor to paint all of our trim and doors. This way, the finish product will have a very smooth/high gloss look, and it will get done in a fraction of the time. (Because if we had tried to do it...well, I guarantee it would have pushed our move-in day back by almost another month!)

Our shop vac has been my regular companion the last couple days as we clean and prep for the painter to come in. After all that crazy pudding -which I am happy to relinquish my queenship over - and the sanding that ensued, we had quite a mess on our hands! Paul vacuumed a good part of the house, but the final rooms fell to me. He explained the method he established for thoroughly going over the individual rooms...suction along the bottom of the baseboards, change to the soft nozzle and go over all paintable surfaces, and finally vacuum the entire floor. No problem. I strapped on my dust mask (no more sinus infections for me, thank you very much) and got to work.

About half way through the first room, I grabbed the handle to reposition the shop vac and got shocked. It smarted, but it wasn't THAT bad, and I chalked it up to static building up from the friction when rolling across the floor. Back to work. A short while later, the thing shocked me again! I felt a little more irritated and gave myself a mental pep-talk to grab the plastic handle next time. Sure enough, next time I moved it, I grabbed the plastic handle and it worked like a charm. I congratulated myself on my cunning ability to outsmart the shop vac.

One room later, I was vacuuming along and came up a little short in reaching one corner. I gave the hose a tug, knowing the shop vac would follow. It did follow, straight into my bare calf and showed me its displeasure at being drug around with a wicked shock to my leg! ARG! It felt like I was bit! I tried to suck it up and keep working. When Paul came to check on me a short while later, I had been shocked a few more times, and my displeasure flowed out: "This stupid shop vac keeps shocking me! First I was shocked on the handle, but it keeps hitting my leg and shocking me! It feels like I'm getting bit!" I complain. Not the tiniest flicker of surprise shows on his face. He simply, rather matter or factly, responds, "Yeah. That's why I taped the handle...to help prevent that. Didn't you know I got it for free from my Dad's work? No one wanted it because they complained it shocked them." And then he walked away.

What a lovely bit of news...only too bad he didn't share it in advance! Then, maybe I would have been prepared to do battle with the evil shop vac.