and the moral of the story is - wear oven gloves

A couple of years ago, the Husband bought me a pair of 'gauntlet' up to the elbow oven gloves. I think they are made for Aga users. He was getting fed up of the odd looks I used to get when people caught sight of my hands, wrists and arms, covered as they were with suspect scars. No self-harmer, me - just incapabale of taking anything out of the oven without burning myself. They are wonderful oven gloves. they look great hanging from a hook on my pan rack, along with the 'artful' strings of chillis. The trouble is that I'm never well enough prepared to get them off the hook and onto my arms before heading into the oven, and I usually just grab a tea towel and hope for the best.

I managed to pour really hot pork fat over my thumb on Tuesday night. I could see myself doing it as everything went into slow motion and a voice in my head said “Oh llloooookkkkkk yyyoooooooouuuu aaarrrrrreeeee ppooooooouuurrrrrinnggg rreeeeeaaallly hoott faatt over yourthumbandit’sgoingtoreally HURT”. The blister covers half my thumb from the cuticle to half way between the 2 joints. It doesn’t hurt any more – 2 paracetemol and an ibuprofen, followed by half a bottle of wine and some flapjack at book club sorted that out - but it is proving to be a real pain.

The Husband solicitously applied a dressing. Last night, I attempted some quilting while he was out at Scouts and managed to sew myself into the throw that I am currently having a cack-handed go at making.

Blue had to go back to hospital for his follow up blood test today. I am much more relaxed than I was last week, although I woke up this morning to find that the big black RELAPSE monster had managed to push open the lid of his box and was blowing raspberries at me from the naughty corner. As is always the way with children though, Blue is now a picture of health, so I managed to mainly give the monster a good stiff ignoring, and instead applied myself to locating some Emla anaesthetic cream so that I could get it on Blue before we left for hospital, and thus reduce our waiting time while we were there. There was a time when we had cupboards of the stuff, but no longer. I have clearly been in denial about the whole situation, as instead of organising this days ago, I left it till the day before yesterday to even begin to think about it. In the end, it took me till this morning to throw myself on the mercy of the GP down the road and get them to write me a prescription, hoping fervently that the local chemist stocked it. I was lucky. I got up to school to pick Blue up and take him in. Applying the cream and the dressing with the bandage on my thumb was a nightmare. I made a right hash of it, and poor Blue had Emla oozing out from the dressing and up his arms to the point that he couldn’t play on his DSi for the time that we did have to wait in hospital, for fear that there would be none left on the relevant area to be effective. Results tomorrow.

I can’t type very well with the bandage on my thumb, and I can’t put my contact lenses is – well, I could get them in but getting them out was a complete nightmare. The lack of contact lenses is not itself a disaster – I have perfectly serviceable specs, but I had forgotten how much onions make me cry. There I was weeping in to the African chicken when I realised what was wrong, no lenses means that all that horrid whatever it is in onions can get to my eyes and trigger the tears.

I took it to the chemist in the end. She suggested that it would probably be best to keep it uncovered unless I was ‘doing things’. Well, how ridiculous. I have 2 children and dog and 5 chickens. I am always ‘doing things’. However, given that the bandage hinders me in doing things, I have decided to take the advice and take it off.  I expect I shall live to regret this - while it doesn’t hurt now, I know that it will hurt like buggery if it bursts – but really, what’s a girl to do?? At least I can use it as an excuse to get out of the washing up, but perhaps, just perhaps, I will give the tea towels a rest and reach for the gloves.