So as you know, I recently hid some geocaches in Coggshall Park here in Fitchburg (and they're doing well, thanks). There is however one sad, and incredibly stupid, note to this story, which I have neglected mentioning here because I was so pissed off at myself. Let me tell you what happened…
Once I had received the cache boxes I noticed that they had scuffs and marks, and yellow writing on one side indicating the type of ammo that was originally stored in the box. Around 8 PM that night I started thinking: I ought to spraypaint over that, just to cover that up and make them look a little less threatening. I had gotten it into my head that if a wandering muggle found a cache container and saw ammo-related words stenciled on it, they might become alarmed and remove the box.
I knew that I had picked up some cans of spraypaint years ago for a project that Lynnea and I had done spraypainting rocks, but I had no idea where they were. Probably somewhere in the barn.
So I went digging around in the barn and at length found the spraycans in a ratty plastic shopping bag on a shelf. I figured, it wouldn't matter how old they were… it's not like they're ancient or anything. Paint is paint, right? I selected a can of gloss black enamel, and another of forest green enamel. I figured in order to keep the letters from showing through, I would need to paint black over them, let that dry a bit, and then paint over them again in green. While noting with satisfaction that the paint was the quick-drying variety, I shivered. It was cold! Spring had only recently begun.
I thought to myself: Ahh I'll just paint these inside… it's not like I'm doing a whole piece of furniture or something… just a few quick sprays over one small area.
What could possibly go wrong?
For the record: you NEVER spraypaint indoors. The fumes are nasty, and um, something really bad could happen, especially if you are a fucktard moron who's rarely held a handtool. Like me.
So into the house I went with my unassailable reason and my aged cans of pressurized paint, to quickly touch up my ammo box. I laid out a few large pads of paper on my den floor, and using duct tape, covered the parts of the ammo box that I didn't want to get paint on. I was satisfied and pleased with myself for taking what I referred to at the time as “proper precautions.”
What a great blog article this will make! I thought.
So having prepared I proceeded to uncap the black paint. Or rather try to uncap the black paint. See these old cans of paint had been used once and recapped after. And the paint that had droozled down out of the sprayer had settled against the cap and basically glued it to the lid. And they had been that way for years. The spraycan lids are made of plastic, and have a notch where you insert a screwdriver to pry off the lid.
But this lid wasn't budging and it was only with the greatest of difficulty that I managed to finally get the lid to pop off. Maybe the green paint won't be as bad, I thought. The black paint sprayed very messily, with a lot of spots and splatter… probably because it was old? But it worked well enough and it took all of 3 seconds to coat the tiny area I was painting, and I was done.
The odor was strong 
but I decided to go ahead and finish the job. Just one more quick spray and this box was done. So while the black paint dried, I set about removing the lid from the green paint can. Again it was a surprisingly hard struggle and just when I thought the lid was going to come off I heard a loud crack and looked down to see that a large chunk of the plastic lid had snapped off around the area where the notch was.
“You've gotta be kidding me!” I said aloud.
Now what? There was no notch to brace the screwdriver in, but I wasn't going to let that stop me, I simply rotated the can and worked the tip of the screwdriver under the lid where there was no notch. But this made me nervous. I actually thought to myself: gee, I hope I don't puncture the can. Resolving to be “very careful” I began gently working the screwdriver against the lid.
About this time Pat came downstairs. I suspect she probably smelled the paint and wanted to know what fool thing I was doing now. She entered the door of the study and I looked up at her.
“What're you–” she began.
*POINK* *WSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH* 
Everything after that is a bit of a green blur in my memory. The screwdriver had punctured the can, and green paint began spraying out all over my den, my hands, and my unassailable logic. In under a second, green spray had speckled a large area of the rug, the floor, and shot through the door onto the dining room floor. My desk got a huge splotch of green on it, as did Patty's. The nearest wall was not spared.
I yelled “Oh FUCK!” And proceeded to attempt to exit the house with my angrily hissing disaster as rapidly as possible.
You know, some people think well on their feet, and some don't. I'm one of the latter. If I had thought about it, perhaps I would have just jammed my thumb against the hole and run out with the can that way.
Instead I dropped the can on one of the giant pads of paper, rolled it up, and ran out of the house carrying it that way, and with every little pause and step in my gate a splortch of paint would run out of one or the other open end of this roll, depositing itself on whatever object I didn't want green paint on that happened to be nearby.
Out of the den, splertch, through the dining room, splot, splootch, and through the kitchen I ran, splat, splitch. All along the way, leaving quick-drying forest green evidence of my immense stupidity and spouting some rather inventive expletives. Then I reached the closed back door, and realized, with both hands on the paint bomb, opening the door was going to be a challenge, so I stopped short. SPLOOOSH. Right on the door and the floor of the primary entrance to our house. Greaaaat. First thing visitors get to see when they come by.
“Hi welcome to my home! I'm a fucking moron!”
But I digress.
With some difficulty I managed to open the fucking door–it was approximately this moment that everything in the immediate vicinity became “fucking” in my opinion–and then proceeded out onto our fucking back porch, SPLORTCH, up the fucking walk, splish, splatch, into the fucking barn where I stopped at the fucking trashbarrel, BLOOSH, and dropped the fucking mess inside and slammed down the fucking lid on top of it. The whole episode had taken about 10 seconds.
My hands were green. As was a stunningly visible portion of my downstairs and my unassailable logic. My ratty clothes, on the other hand, were spotless. Not a speck of green anywhere except on my shoes. Which is a good thing, because you know, I change my clothes often but wear the same shoes every day. I wouldn't want to forget this little experience. 
And what followed was an evening of self-loathing and self-ridicule like none in recent memory. I had ruined everything to avoid five minutes in the cold. 
Idiot. We attempted to wipe up the worst of it, but it was no use. What we needed was paint thinner. We didn't have any. My ”proper precautions” didn't include paint thinner.
Well we were planning on carpeting the den and dining room anyway. And replacing the kitchen floor.
Patty to her credit was very good about it, seeing that there was nothing that could be done, she reasonably took the position that there was no point being mad.
For which I'm very grateful, I didn't need anyone to tell me that this wasn't exactly a stellar example of my shining brilliance.
So that's my sad tale of stupidity. I hope you got some yuks out of it, and take with it a warning to never try to spraypaint inside, because shit happens.
Edit: added photographic evidence.
Here's mine in a new experimental format. Good luck…
So I was on the geocaching.com forums today responding to a harmless thread about the longest amount of time one has ever spent looking for a cache… then I noticed the signature line of the person I happened to be responding to…
Today I finally managed to get away briefly and hide two Plastered Dragon Geocaches that I have been wanting to do for a long time.
