Wrong Corner

Went back to the doctor yesterday. I swore there was infection brewing after a hellish weekend where I popped pills like candy. He said I was "healing beautifully" and everything looked perfectly normal.

I win.

Now my foot is all red and inflamed, swollen up, shooting electric shocks throughout the nerves, and generally ticking me off.

I'll pick up an antibiotic as soon as the pharmacy opens in the morning, but I can barely walk on it tonight.

I'm so sick of this! I would give anything for Hermione's time turner.

Turning The Corner!!

Well, I think the worst is definitely over! This past weekend I think the nerves were finally wide awake, but they've gone into "normal" mode now. I can see skin starting to grow on my foot (I'd take a picture but Sweetie hid the camera somewhere), and I'm down to just 800 mg Ibuprofens a couple of times a day. Yippee Skippy!!! Still wearing a sock over the bandages instead of a shoe, which makes walking across the playground at school a little awkward, but I'm walking!

And I'm going to be teaching my Civil War unit for Gifted/Talented for the next three weeks, which makes me very happy! I finally get to show the kids my replica bullets Sweetie bought me a few years ago. He knew I'd love them :)

Angels Among Us

Burns hurt--more than anything else I can think of. There's just no way around it. At first, I had kind of hoped that the nerves in the top of my foot were fried. In comparison to losing the nerves in my fingers, it was no big deal in the "big picture" of it all, and I didn't mind not feeling the pain so much.

Oh, they're alive and well. And angry.

I'm back on the pills, after not taking a single one since the day it happened. I'd be on the sauce, too, if I could walk into the liquor store to get any. That's what Dad prescribed, and Daddy's always right, isn't he?

This has been a growing experience for me, for lack of a silver lining anywhere else. My darling friend Sue offered to bring dinner to me the day after it happened. At first I declined--I was sure Elvira could throw something together. But then I realized that I really did need help, and she was there in a flash. I grossly overestimated my recovery time, so Lisa brought dinner over last Monday out of the blue. It was amazing, and with 5 children of her own she still took care of the five of us. My coworkers have been so kind to me and completely accepted the little I can do at this point. My amazing mom, who has her own stresses in life, has called and texted me every single day. All of my sisters and my brother have called too, multiple times. Sweet ladies, one of whom I've never even met, played the piano for me in church so I could stay home.

When I heard about Stephanie's plane crash, I of course felt such sorrow for her. How painful in every way possible to suffer burns over 85% of your body. But I had no idea at all, and fortunately I still don't. What's the surface area of the top of my left foot? (I'm not really counting my hand anymore--it is healing up very well) About 1% of my body? And yet that alone has completely debilitated me! I'm on serious drugs for the pain, and can still barely walk nearly two weeks after. And yet she experiences it daily, at 85 times the amount I do. Amazing, so I can't really complain--it could be and is worse for so many other people.

So thank you to you all, you who have sent kind words and done kind things for our family. You are all angels.

Healing

I've always known I was impatient and competitive. It can be a strength in some situations, but a weakness in others for sure. I make a terrible patient when I'm sick or otherwise physically impaired. I never take it as easy as I should and think I'm ready for "normal" way before my injury does.

So yesterday I went back to work. I knew that morning it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. I still can't wear a shoe on my left foot, so I threw on a big sock and limped in to work. Even with the least amount of movement possible during the day (a slug would have been victorious over my pace) I was still hurting pretty badly. I came home, peeled off all the bandages, and didn't like what I saw.

Sunburns peel in an icky but harmless manner. 3rd degree burns peel in a scary and infection-attracting manner. I'm not going into details here, but I swear I was down to raw flesh on my finger. Sorry, I guess that was detailed enough. Enough to scare the bejesus out of me, to be quite honest. My foot looks horrible, and I have no idea how long it's going to take to heal up. The doctor said 7-10 days, and this is the one week mark. Way more than 10, I'm thinking.

So I'm playing hooky today. I'll prop my foot up on a chair, finish doing my taxes online, take copious amounts of ibuprofen, and really hope that all this doesn't get worse.

Why Cooking With Oil Is Bad For Your Health

I'm not entirely stupid--I've read lots of nutrition articles and watched loads of Food Network shows. I know as well as the next guy that cooking with oil is not the wisest nutritional choice. But I completely disregarded this knowledge two days ago when I decided to make my kids scones for breakfast. Scones! What a perfect Spring Break treat!

Mormon scones aren't like the baked scones that the rest of the world enjoys. Ours are really just deep-fried roll dough, served with honey butter. Mmmmm--so tasty. I'd never made them before, just tasted them, but on a lazy spring day with a chill still in the air, there was no time like the present.

Now I'm no expert in cooking with oil. I've made egg rolls a few times and done corn tortillas for enchiladas, but I don't even do fried chicken. I've never owned a deep fryer and bake french fries in the oven. Oil scares me a bit--so unpredictable, flammable, and painful. But what's the worst that could happen? I'm always careful in the kitchen.

Apparently, not careful enough. I made a few scones, and they turned out great. At some point I must have hit the pan handle with my elbow or something. Oil splashed on my right hand, and as I jumped back it somehow ended up soaking the sock on my left foot. The pan didn't fall off the stove, and I did manage to turn off the gas burner before we all blew up, but I'm still not sure what actually happened there. I poured cold water over my hand, but the sock was still burning into my foot. I managed to rip the sock off, and had Kitty Boy drench a dish towel in cold water that I could put on my foot. I was screaming hysterically while simultaneously teaching Kitty Boy a whole new vocabulary. Well, he says I was--I'm sure he's heard it all before in middle school. Elvira said all she could hear was "Oh God!!! The pain!!!!" combined with incoherent animal sounds. I remember thinking, "Oh poor Joan of Arc!!! What a horrible way to go!!!"

Tinkerbell handed me a paper bag because I was hyperventilating, and one of the kids called Sweetie. I had the car, so his secretary ran him home even faster than I usually drive. We headed up to Instacare where they treated my many 2nd and 3rd degree burns. Wrapped up like a mummy, I headed home with pain pills and a sheepish expression.

What a moron. I know the difference between a healthy breakfast and a non-healthy one, yet I chose the latter and lived to regret it. I'm through with oil. Enchiladas will be made with plain tortillas, not cooked in oil. Egg rolls are right out. Scones--well, they're still yummy but so not worth it.

I've unwrapped my hand, and while it looks a bit scary I needed to let my fingers bend. Hopefully there won't be any scarring. My foot might have a bit of nerve damage, but thankfully it's just on the top and not the bottom. Probably a little scarring on it as well, but I'm more of a running shoe girl as opposed to sandals so who really cares? In the end, I think I got very lucky, and just as importantly I've learned a valuable lesson.

The ironic thing is that I've been watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution for the past few weeks, and really shouldn't have been thinking of feeding that to my children anyway. Lesson learned. Onward and upward.

Another Reason To Love Knitting

I was on the Mason-Dixon knitting blog today and found the coolest videos. The first is a Belgian natural gas commercial, and the second is how they made it. Knitting is freaking cool, I'm telling you!

The Appeal Of Knitting

I first learned to knit when I was about 11. Back in the day, my church's weekday religious program for children divided the girls from the boys when we turned 10 so we could have a class that was more relevant for our own interests, or something like that. No idea what the boys did, but we did a lot of crafty things. I learned to embroider, knit, crochet, and babysit. Surprisingly, all of these things came in very handy for me (you were expecting me to say something snarky, weren't you?). I took to the needlework like a duck to water, and never looked back. Over the years, I've added cross-stitch, smocking, needlepoint, needle tatting, hardanger, Swedish lace net darning, Swedish huck embroidery, rug hooking, sewing, quilting, and beadwork to the original three skills, as well as a little jewelry casting, leatherwork, and woodcarving. Each has its allure, but I think I love to knit the most.

When I was growing up, my mother always had some kind of project going. She did a lot of needlepoint and introduced me to most of the needlework forms I acquired over the years, but no matter what she was working on, she always had a knitting project. I can still hear the "click click" of her metal needles as she sat in our big brown chair making a sweater for Emily or a pillow for my bed. Both my grandmothers knit and crocheted, and I always had one-of-a-kind sweaters, slippers, hats, and mittens. Since we usually lived so far from my grandparents, wearing something they made connected me to them, and them to me I hope.

I hadn't knit in years, but after 9/11 I picked it back up again. I was horribly stressed at the time, and essentially I just wanted my mommy. After mastering a few dishcloths, I started a sweater for Elvira. It turned out pretty well--at least both the sleeves were the same length, albeit a bit short. I have knit while learning how to shoot Elvira up with insulin in the hospital, while waiting for my husband to come out of major eye surgery, waiting for Tinkerbell to wake up from a medical coma, listening to doctor after doctor go over our family's health histories and say, "Wow, that's really unusual! How interesting... Hey Joe, come take a look at this file! Would you consider being part of a study?" I've also knit while waiting for concerts to start, kids getting their braces off, waiting in line for all the "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" movies, watching baseball games, and yes, even in church.

But my favorite knitting memory was just over a year ago when I was home in St. Louis. Emily, Suzy, Mom and I were all watching "Mamma Mia"--and knitting. One of the best things in life is watching my mom watch a movie. Her face is so beautifully expressive, and she has the most wonderful laugh. Whether she's watching "Tom and Jerry" with Tinkerbell, "Mamma Mia" with us girls, or "Muppets Take Manhattan" with all of us, I would rather watch her than the movie anyday. I adore my mother, if you can't tell. There we were, me working on a sweater for a friend's baby, Emily working on a sweater for Elvira, Suzy just learning to knit, and Mom working on a sweater for herself. Click, click, click, the occasional curse word, and singing Abba songs. Then Dad got out of bed, shook his head at us, and asked us to keep it down. A happy, happy memory.

Tinkerbell had a Destination Imagination competition in Salt Lake on Saturday. When we were done, we headed over to Blazing Needles, which is the loveliest yarn store I've ever visited. Last summer I mentioned a moleskine project I was embarking on, and I was finally able to meet Laurie, the talented and versatile woman who is upline from me in the exchange. She was teaching a class there that afternoon. The store was filled with people, some in Laurie's class, a couple of women just hanging out knitting with a dog at their feet, Chris winding customer's skeins of yarns on the amazing swift they have, Cynthia popping around to show me things, an expectant couple looking at yarn for baby sweaters. The sun was coming in through the windows, lighting up the yarn in the bins. The yarn! Wool, silk, cotton, cashmere--handspun, hand-dyed, hand-painted, you name it. So many pretty little scarf pins, lavender sachets, books, leather project bags, just more than I could ever list.

But it was the feeling in the store, more than the goods, that made the biggest impression. There is such a comaraderie and sisterhood in knitting. The two women at the table were friends, though maybe they met through the store. One is an advanced knitter and the other just a beginner. They wanted to see what I picked out, and hear about a book I recommended. I looked at their projects and pet the sweet labradoodle that was recovering from peritonitis. Laurie and I had a big hug, Tinkerbell made herself at home picking out a project for herself, and there was a faint smell of tea from the mugs a few people were sipping from. I hated to leave.

My friend Pat, who currently lives in London, and I have talked about opening a yarn (or wool, as she says it) shop someday. We also want to write a book together. How lovely would that be? Surrounded by gorgeous fibers, creative customers/friends, the scent of lavender, and warm tea. I don't think we'd have to worry about writer's block at all.