Sssssssssssinge!

Oh, man, y’all. You are not going to believe what I managed to do.

So, we’re all enjoying nice, fresh bagels. There was quite a bagel-toasting festival going on in the Den for after-school snack yesterday afternoon, as there usually is when I come home clutching twelve of the things fresh from Costco.

Being greedy hungry, I decided to go in for a second bagel. Was I punished for my gluttony? Oh yes I was…

Just as I was reaching into the toaster oven to retrieve my bagel (yes, with my dominant hand, what else?), Eldest ran up and blurted out something. I have no idea what as my memory becomes somewhat hazy right around this point, but I turned and looked at her as I replied. Immediately, I was overwhelmed by a feeling. A disturbance in the Force, if you will.

Hmm, I thought to myself. Something is Not Right…

And I turned my head back around and observed a wisp of smoke rising as I pulled my middle finger off the glowing-red element.

It was so bad a burn it did not hurt. At first. For a rather long moment, it didn’t hurt. Instinct had me standing over the sink running cold water over it, but honestly I was wondering: Was it just my fingernail that got burned? Maybe the smoke was from the bagel? Because the finger didn’t hu-

And then…it started to Hurt. Oooooooh, baby. It hurt. In that way that only burns can hurt. The cold water suddenly began to feel warm, warmer, hot. Ow, ow, OW!

For heaven’s sake, it takes a World Class Klutz to pull this off. I mean, seriously. The burn is right across the pad of my middle finger, it isn’t like I just grazed the tip of my finger on the element. This is a full-on, second degree burn right across the fleshiest part of the finger.

Anyway, I kind of…lost track of the rest of the afternoon. I meant to respond to comments from yesterday (Toilet paper: 36 rolls. Cheese: the 3 pound block was $7.80, the 5 pound bag preshredded ~$9.19 for a miniscule savings of $0.80 a pound. Gasoline: yeah, has to come out of the cash BUT! I don’t drive as much as I used to and a full tank can last me almost three weeks.) but I sort of…forgot all about it.

I also meant to bake bread. But didn’t. Forgot all about it. Bread? What’s that? Never heard of it.

Then, this morning, when it was time to make Denizen lunches…oops. One tiny sliver of heel.

Two bagel sandwiches and a two mile roundtrip walk to drop the older two off at school, I came home and got busy. Bread rising! Dinner (pork roast with radishes and chard) into the crockpot! Butter softening for cookies (we were also out of cookies CAN YOU IMAGINE?!?!)! Breakfast dishes put away!

Shape the dough into loaves, whump up cookie dough and start making cookies. All is going very, very well at this point. The last batch of cookies comes out and the bread goes in. Smooth as butter.

Did you know (you probably did) that if you get a potholder wet, it will cease to protect you from the heat of the oven and instead intensify it until it burns with the intensity of a thousand suns?

Yes, I knew that too.

But my memory retrieval system chose not to trot forth this rather valuable bit of information until after I had thrust my wet-potholder-clad hand into the oven, seized hold of the bread pan and begun pulling it out of the oven.

@*^&@(O^!!!!!!!

In case you were wondering: If you drop a pan of hot bread fresh out of the oven so that you can shove your hand between your legs and jump up and down yelling “OUCH! @*^&@*^!! FOR THE LOVE OF @*^&@^!!!!”, it makes quite an interesting ‘thump’ on Pergo but as long as the bread stays in the pan, no real lasting harm done.

To the bread, anyway…

p.s.: I discovered something even better than an ice pack for a burn. Take the ice, put it into a glass, add vodka, triple sec, cranberry and lime juices, wrap burned hand around it and take your time…