Have I mentioned that I'm accident prone?

I'm somewhere between Mia Thermopolis and any number of accident-prone characters played by Sandra Bullock. If there is a way to injury myself, I will find it. Or perhaps it finds me.

--When I was in 9th grade, I was running in from outside, my dear little pup Annie (who died this year after sticking with me until she was 15) cut across my path, I tripped, severely broke my ankle (growth plate fractured and rotated 180 degrees) and needed to have surgery.

--I trip going up stairs. I trip going downstairs. I trip over curbs. Once I did a complete flip in the high school parking lot. Awesome.

--I was riding a bike down a steep incline (equivalent to treadmill level 47), the brakes failed, and I crashed into the gravel front yard of a neighbor a mere inches from smashing my little head on a boulder.

Those are just examples. I've got stories.

So my most recent tale of injury starts in the kitchen. We were baking pumpkin and squash for Little's baby food. When baking pumpkin (for those who haven't done it), you place it halved, quartered, etc. in a pan of water. Hot water=steam. That's information important to the story that I didn't realize until after the fact. I opened the oven door to check on everything and a huge cloud of steam poured out. It wasn't flames or something so I ignored the pain I felt on my arm and instead noticed that the water in the pans had evaporated. I quickly refilled them, but while doing this, my right forearm really started to hurt. I grumbled about my carelessness, grabbed an ice pack and sat back down with Little on her playmats.

I knew something wasn't right when I lifted the ice pack away and all the skin on the bottom side of my arm was bright red, but had more and more spots that were white and crunched like snow when I pressed on them, like the ice pack had frozen them. I'd probably have a similar reaction if my arm was just dangling there--"Eh, that's not good." The Hubs returned from Costco at this point and I told him what happened. At this point, my skin was bubbled in a few areas. I should mention that the Hubs has an arsenal of medical knowledge on speed dial--Phone-A-Friend lifelines, if you will. He called his fire captain brother first and promptly took the ice pack away. He also ran out to Walgreens to get burn spray and proceeded to call some of the nurses he works with. The entire time, my arm felt like it was literally on fire, the skin felt super tight, and I just wanted to pretend it wasn't there. (So I talked to Kaelyn and watched Carrie get left at the altar in SATC's premiere on USA.)

The Hubs returned with non-stick gauze wrap, pads, lidocaine burn spray, and something called silver cream. We tried the spray first. He said it would hurt a lot so he just did one spray to start. This would have been the ideal moment to scream and freak him out, only to say "Just kidding, it's fine," but I sensed he wouldn't appreciate the humor at that moment. The spray didn't hurt even once he covered my forearm with it, but it didn't do much either. The pain subsided for approximately 30 seconds and that was it.

After telling the Hubs I didn't want to go the Urgent Care as he had suggested and I'd rather just try the cream the nurses recommended, he proceeded to wrap my arm, which made it feel better simply because my arm no longer stuck to surfaces, which did. not. feel. good. I took some Acetaminophen and didn't do anything the rest of the night.

Well, my arm still sits wrapped up with a dull ache. I have no idea what it looks like, if it's blistered now, which I do have experience with (muffler burn from a mo-ped on my inner shin) or what. The part that's not wrapped looks like a really bad sunburn (and feels like one too). The concern the nurses have is if the skin opens, I can get an infection since it's likely a 2nd degree burn and a bad infection could land my booty in a hospital bed. As much fun as room service is, I'd rather avoid that scenario, thanks.

At one point, the Hubs said that if it's not treated correctly, I could wind up with scars. My immediate thought was much like an 8 year old boy: "Really?!" as though I have equally juvenile buddies I can go to and show off my scars. Maybe if it were, say, a shark bite or something. Steam burn from an oven doesn't exactly win me any cool points. Nor does making a reference to the existence of "cool points." Oh well. Here's the excellent wrapping done by the Hubs (and a very strange look on my face.)

 Appropriately after being bandaged, there was an informercial for the Ove Glove (basically a kitchen mitt), but we decided that I needed a sleeve-length one.