does anyone have a stupid award for me?

oh, yeah. i deserve a stupid award big time. i burned my hand last night wicked bad. right now, my thumb and pinky are bandaged up pretty thick (thanks to nathan my first aid specialist). last night though, he had everything but my pointer finger wrapped up.

connor and i had gone over to a friend's house for a play day and lunch with some friends from church. we had a great time and made it home for naps. i was wiped out so i decided to lay down since i knew i had planned an easy dinner. well, at the last minute i decided to make bread to go with our dinner. i knew i could do it in time b/c tuesday is nathan's late night at work and i could preheat the oven and let the bread rise on top of the stove.... it goes super fast if i do it that way. everything was going great. the bread was shaped and warming on my baking stone under the heat vent that comes out on top of the stove. at about 5:30 i decided it was big enough and i would pop it in the oven. i opened the oven door, grabbed the bottom of the baking stone and then reached for the top of the stone---yeah, the part that had been directly under the heat of the oven. MAMMA MIA!!!! OUCHIE VA VAVA!! ooh, that smarts. it was like slow motion.... it felt like i couldn't let go of the stone to get it in the oven and run my hand under water.

when i finally did let go i dropped that puppy like..... well, like a hot baking stone, and ran over to the sink. i thought just a quick rinse and i'd be back in business. not so much. i googled burn treatment hoping for a quick fix or a home made salve idea. much to my chagrin i found these instructions: run it under cold water. DUH! i had already done that and it wasn't helping. my hand was a fury of flames. well, it felt like that! the website said it could take 15 to 30 minutes for the cool water to really help the burn feel better. by then i had connor go get me a washcloth so i could wrap my hand and look up ideas online. i love having a 2-year-old. they will do ANYTHING that gives them a little independence. the only thing i could find online was to keep it in cool water and then loosely wrap it with antibiotic ointment. wonderful. sounds like the old northland days of going to the nurse.

nurse: what's wrong?
student: i have [a fever, chills, cough, sore throat ....any ailment known to man]
nurse: here's some nasal decongestant and cough medicine.

was that the only thing they stocked from the walmart weekly sale?? ok, weird memory thing in the middle of a story..... sorry.......

by then my fingers had burned a hole in the washcloth (no, not really... come on, haven't you ever heard of literary license? :~) and it was getting old re-wetting it and wrapping them up again, so this time i just got a bowl of cold water and sat down at the computer hoping to find more information. i wasn't finding anything profound, so i decided to try and finish cooking dinner.

just then nathan walked in the door.... early.... about an hour and a half early..... he was pale and went straight upstairs to bed. he had a serious headache and wasn't functional at all. when nathan gets a really bad headache he just has to eat a little something, sleep and get his toes rubbed. honest. there's some massage voodoo he knows about pressure points in his toes and it always seems to help. so i got the washcloth again and connor and i went upstairs to rub daddy's toes. when nathan realized i was only rubbing with my right hand he asked if something was wrong. i told him not to worry about it and connor and i just kept rubbing away.... of course, i had to go get the washcloth cooled off two times, but by then i think nathan was asleep so he didn't know about my hand yet. it was a good thing too b/c i know if he saw my hand he would have been at cvs trying to find some ointment or taking me to a walk-in clinic to get it checked even though his head was about to explode. phew! crisis averted. i knew he just needed to sleep and not worry about my little hand.

so a couple hours later, he woke up and got some dinner. my hand was still throbbing so i was trying to keep it in the bowl of water. after he ate, he looked over at me....slightly dazed... and said, "how's your hand?" i told him it was fine if it was in the water. so he came over to check it out and his eyes got huge. he said, "do you need to go to the doctor?" i said no, we just needed to figure out how to extinguish the flame that was my hand. we got connor in bed, and you guessed it, he was out the door to cvs in a flash. he asked the pharmacist what to do and got me some antibiotic ointment, and for the pain he nabbed me a slurpee. that was the best part. when he got home he wrapped up my fingers and got me some tylenol.

once we got my hand settled down he was making fun of me pretty bad. we were in the kitchen cleaning up dinner and he was grabbing knives by the blade saying, "is this the right way to do it? hey, is that pan hot? it's been on the stove for a while now, should i grab it with my hand?" by then we could laugh about it, and i told him i needed the stupid award for the day. he agreed wholeheartedly.

he told me he woke up two or three times last night and made sure i was sleeping ok. apparently, i was holding my hand up with my other hand to make sure my bandages didn't fall off. isn't he a precious head? oh, it gets better. this morning i couldn't bend my fingers right away, so nathan helped get me ready for the day before he headed to work. i was a pitiful mess. i'm fine, though, really. the pain is pretty much gone. as a matter of fact, i can't really feel my fingers. haha! and you better believe i used this to it's fullest today..... the dishes didn't get done until just before dinner tonight. i figured i couldn't hold off any more since i do have rubber gloves and bandaids covering my fingers. it's still hard to do regular things, but i'm figuring out how to get around the normal way i do everything. bottom line, it was a weird day. but it was nice and sunny so connor and i went for a walk down to nic's house. it was nice to get out before we get frozen again tomorrow.

before i give nathan all the credit, here's one of his sarcastic mocking texts from today:
make sure you don't over do it today. go slow & those dishes will be there when you get around to it.

isn't he hilarious? :~)

here's the picture nathan took so i won't forget about my lapse of judgment in the kitchen.

what he doesn't know is that i did it all for the slurpee.....

how much is a slurpee worth to you?
pretty good wrap up job i'd say. he used gauze and pre-wrap so it wouldn't be too tight.

ok, let me explain the next two pics. tonight i told connor to eat his dinner while i went upstairs to get ready. this is how i found him when i came back down the stairs:

the bottom of the tray needed some work, mom.