Yes, I took the day off, too. And I had a sub today so I could go to another meeting and tell some other teachers at a SCARY-looking elementary school all about this thing I do to help monitor student progress. And APM today is so lame, you might think I'm still taking the day off.
Whatever. In two weeks, I don't have to work any more, and I think I'm already done in my head. (What that does mean is that I'll be checking in here a little more often.)
So while I was cleaning out the closet over the weekend, I found some cute shoes that, at one time, were rather redundant, but, not wanting to get rid of them, I put away in a box. It's been a tragic few weeks in the shoe department, what with several casualties due to age, wear, and crushing discomfort, and it was a pleasant surprise to find the square-toed, light tan Mary Janes, since I have absolutely no other summery shoes except plastic Walgreen's flip-flops. Anyway, I wore them today, and now have matching dime-sized blisters on my heels. Ick....
In a surprising departure from Girly Shoe Land, today's APM deals not with cute-but-painful shoes, but instead with blisters. Tell me about the most awkward blister you ever got, where it was, and how you got it.
Here's mine:
I was working at a Habit for Humanity house, assembling the kitchen cabinets from cheap particleboard kits. All I had was hand tools, and the pilot holes drilled in the pieces were all but worthless. After an hour of struggling, sweating, and muttering curses under my breath (I was, after all, representing my chapter of Amnesty International), I looked down at the palm of my hand, where I had been press-twisting on the screwdriver so hard, I had not only formed but already torn off a half-dollar-sized blister right in the center. There wasn't even any way to bandage it, so it stung constantly for a week, and got all stiff so I could barely write or eat with my right hand.
Plus, it was embarrassing, and there was no way after that they were going to let me play with the power tools.
14 comments:
The most awkward in terms of how it was acquired, has to be the series of them I got while sitting on the can one morning. Sitting there, reading the paper, with the spousally required candle burning on the sink nearby. The candle had burned down to nothing but a pool of hot wax, and a rapidly diminishing wick. I turned my head back over my shoulder to blow the thing out and managed to blow scalding wax out all over my shoulder, and arm. Still have the scars were the blisters once were.
Let's see.
There was the time I burned my peeps while smoking on the can as I tried to ash between my legs; I quit smoking shortly after that one...
Then there was the time I pulled the glowing red rock from the campfire while on a fishing trip in New Mexico(remember that night Tammy?) to observe how neat it looked, then 2 minutes later I set my full weight on the same rock as I was standing up and gave myself 3rd degree burns and nerve damage under my left pinky...
Or the time I was cooking bacon naked and the grease popped and, again, I burned myself right on the peeps...
And those aren't even my most embarrassing stories. ;)
Tyson no longer has peeps, by the way. Apparently, they melted.
Fire hot. Fire burn, Tyson.
I am still trying to figure out why anyone would want to cook nude. Don't get me wrong... nothing is better that being naked. But somehow, the whole hot popping grease -- bare flesh thing defies logic. It leaves me wondering if Tyson was high or possibly trying to impress someone from the previous night with his studly bacon frying.
I was trying blow on the coals in an old wood fired sove with a small door on it. I got a little to close and branded my forehead on the side of the stove. I called in sick for several days.
I was eating spaghetti in my bra and panties from the comfort of a secondhand barcalounger. The plate was balanced in my lap atop a towel. Seinfeld was on. George had "shrinkage". I had hysteria.
You've all seen me laugh, and you know it's not pretty. Hot spaghetti sauce splashed all over my tummy. I had a yucky blister by my belly button... and the part of the burn that didn't blister was shaped like Africa.
Would have made more sense if it had been shaped like Italy, though.
Has anyone else but me noticed that Erin's blister was the result of her noble charitable work ... but the rest of us were just too stupid to handle hot things with care?
Oh, Tammy. That was priceless. I just laughed and laughed... I am stilling chuckling and smiling.
I don't have any embarrassing blisters. I got blisters on all my fingertips once from practicing the harp too much. See... boring.
But, TYSON!! Hee hee. Looks like a place for good Tyson story. Tyson visited us in Austin. I hope haven't told this one yet. That would be embarrassing. Anyway, Devyn was still a baby. We had a big rattle with a suction cup bottom that stuck to his high chair tray. I came home and there sat Tyson, ever so nonchalantly like "everything is perfectly normal here," but with a big red circle on his forhead. I looked at Tyson, greeted him, and he said something like, "I was just reading blah blah blah." I said, "Tyson... did you stick the rattle to your forhead?" He said, "That's a little freaky, Elaine... how did you know?" I said, "The big red spot on your forhead." He jumped up, "SHIT! It left a mark?" I had to laugh. He then confessed the rattle actually got stuck there and he had trouble getting it off.
I invisioned Tyson as I was unloading the car and walking up to the house pulling with all his might, cursing like a sailor, then POP off comes the rattel just as I open the door to see Mr. Cool-and Calm sitting as if nothing had happened... with a big, perfectly round, red hickey beaming from his forhead.
Laughing so hard... can't breathe...
Man, come on now Elaine...
That technically wasn't a blister. :)
Two things:
1. Topless Cooking. I was boiling lasagna noodles without a shirt on, and as I smooshed them around in the pot, a veritable tidal wave of boiling water splashed out and onto my stomach. My skin was okay, though, except where the water soaked the waistband of my jeans. Apparently I didn't get them off fast enough, so I had an inch-wide pink mark across my belly.
2. Suction Cup Faux Pas. When I was thirteen, my brother had a battery-powered, personal-sized fan with a suction cup on the base. We had just gotten back from the pool, and it was approximately three thousand degrees outside. "Wouldn't it be great," I thought, "if I could rig this thing to blow on my face while I watch TV?" So I stuck it right in the center of my sternum, right above my boobs. When I finally got it unstuck, I had a three-inch red circle on my chest for the next week.
But I was nice and cool while I watched Saved by the Bell on TV.
I just remembered... when Devyn was little guy, like a few months old, I had him in a Baby Byorn front pack. I was into the whole attachment parenting thing. Hey, look at me... I am a 90's with it mom... I can cuddle and love on my baby while I cook dinner. Devyn's toes would disagree with that assessment. It took me a few times to figure out why every time I got close enough to the stove to stir or do anything productive he wiggled so much. No real damage was done. He didn't even cry... but at least my 6 month old had enough sense to know that you put the baby down to cook dinner.
And THAT, Elaine, is where the inspiration came from for all those frightening fairy tales where they cook small children.
Speaking of frightening fairy tales, has anyone else seen Pan's Labyrinth? We just got done watching it, and my God... so, so dark. Intriguing, interesting, but dark, dark dark...
Yes, we saw it. I really liked it.
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