It's A Boy!

When K's rather excited concerns about the lead paint reached a head earlier today we decided that the best thing to do was not to panic without any evidence but to go out and buy a lead paint testing kit. So, after buying that kit and $240 worth of other things at Home Depot, we recently arrived home, got our swab out and swabbed a bit of the exposed paint on the floors.

I waited anxiously, much like I imagine awaiting the results of a pregnancy test would be (although that's a topic for another time and anther blog), to see what color the little indicator turned.

...and it was brownish yellowish. Which we think is a good thing, as it was supposed to turn pink if there was lead, and yellow if there was no lead, and I think it just picked up some of the brown from the paint and the dirt on the floor.

Now, we aren't completely convinced that this means we are in the clear -- in particular, it's hard to ever pin too much hope on the results of a test that cost $2 for two of them -- but the handy internet suggests that false positives are far more likely than false negatives with this test, so we are cautiously moving ahead and planning to have the workers come in and sand the floor.

Incidentally, while we were at the Home Depot they did not have a single checkout lane open. So we had to use the Self-Check-Out machines which I have used with mixed results at several grocery stores. But I want to add my voice to the chorus of people who dislike self-checkout at Home Depot. It just doesn't work when you have varying items of such varying sizes and shapes, and when you need one of the attendants to scan the large items and the small items, since half of what you buy at the Home Depot counts as either a large item or a small item.