State- that is an absolutely heart-breaking story.... my heart goes out to you brother. that being said, here's my two cents on rules that MUST be followed to ensure that something of this nature never happen again...
1. ALWAYS do your extracting, soaking, mixing, pulls, etc. OVER A SINK. spills and accidents are always just waiting to happen. why not be waiting for them as well?
2. GLOVES, MASK AND GOGGLES. GMG. always. man, just the other day i was pouring my spent mimosa tea down the toilet and a blob hit the water and sent a splatter of lye-toilet water straight up into my eye!! if i hadn't had my goggles on i'd probably be lookin' like an old pirate right now and lamenting the good ol' days when i used to have depth perception. the fact that you started cleaning up something so incredibly caustic with your bare hands...well....i ain't gonna scold ya. you've figured that one out on your own..
3. if i'm gonna leave the job half-done and return to it the next day, the materials ALL go in the sink or the bathtub. i only work with glass and even then i bow down to the incredible dissolving power of lye. i've had large glass gallon jugs crack in a ring around the bottom after too much time containng a super basic solution. the stuff is corrosive beyond belief people. believe it. to put a plastic jug (even HDPE) ON TOP OF A BOOKCASE OVERNIGHT....um....yeah...not so much...
alright, enough of the tough love. i'm sure you are feeling just aweful enough as is. the gold to be found here lies in the greatest of all teachers: experience. i can pretty much bet my entire life's savings that you are going to be an incredibly by-the-book extractor henceforth. it sucks that you had to go through this ordeal, but something tells me that you're gonna be looking a lot like our dear brother DoingKermit from this day forward.
and that's a very good thing.
so- i'll tell you about MY biggest blunder extracting so you know you ain't alone...
when i first discovered d-Limonene, i put a little in a bowl, took it out back, and tried with a torch lighter to set it on fire. i wanted to see how volatile it was in comparison to other solvents. whereas naphtha, xylene and heptane will ignite immediately and burn with abandon, d-Limonene sat there with the flame lickin' it's surface with nothing to say in return.
"WOW!", thought i. "This stuff is as safe as apple juice!"
so i'm in the kitchen preparing an extraction using this 'safest-of-all-solvents'. Uncle Knucles standin' around being the worry-wart that he is.....
now usually, i put the solvent in a lab-quality pyrex flask and then put that i a glass pan of boiling water to heat the solvent. but hey! this stuff is totally non-flammable, right???? so i just put it straight into the glass pan without water as if i was heating up some chocolate milk or something.
it starts to get hot cause i can see the vapors curling off the surface...
Art is giving me all kinds of shit about this being stupid. i'm rolling my eyes at him.
i turn to grab the pan to take it off the flame and the second my hand touches the handle, the entire pan explodes into a giant ball of fire!
fortunately, my sink is directly behind me, opposite the stove. with my bare hand i grab the handle of this fireball and spin around, drop it in the sink and flip up the faucet, sending cold water down over the pan and effectively dousing the fire out.
in that 3 seconds of inferno-fun, i managed to:
a) burn the entire palm of my hand. blistery goodness for about a week.
and
b) my entire kitchen was covered in a fine layer of black soot....from just that brief combustive moment!! i spent AN ENTIRE DAY with a bucket of soapy water and a rag cleaning every wall, cabinet, bookcase, table, light, etc....all of which had this horrible, smeary black powder-goo. curtains were covered too! i can only imagine what i inhaled in those couple minutes i stayed in the kitchen making sure the crisis was fully averted...
in short, i did something incredibly stupid and i most certainly learned from the experience. in truth, the fact that it was SUCH a pain in the rump to clean up my mess made it only that much more powerful and ingrained of a lesson.
the bigger the consequences, the deeper the lesson.
hope that made you feel better my brother. we are all prone to moments of non-mindfulness. i'm glad you're okay (more or less) and i'm sending much love and compassion your way.
...and i'm PRAYING that Art doesn't read this post cuz i know he's gonna have a field day throwing his two cents in on that damn limonene adventure...
with the deepest love and gratitude!!
"Rise above the illusion of time and you will have tomorrow's
wisdom today."