Why chefs wear long sleeves

My eighth grade homemaking teacher would be so disappointed.

Thursday evening I was steaming some very nice green beans from the farmers market for my dinner. They were lovely and green and crunchy, very fresh. I put them on to steam and I checked them periodically to see what kind of progress they were making.  These beans were really insistent about spending as much time in the steam as possible - Which I understand, steam baths are really good for your complexion and great for sweating out toxins. I want as many toxins as possible sweat-ed out of my food prior to consumption and if my meal can have a bright, clean complexions, mores the better. I like a pretty bean.

So. I'm going back and forth to the stove watching TV and talking on the phone and I think you can see where this is going... I picked up the lid of the steamer  again and didn't think about where my arm was and where I was aiming the escaping steam.

F!@#&!!!

Aim the steam AWAY from your flesh! AWAY! If you're a little scattered and pulled too many directions and just not as focused as you should be and you're hungry... I suggest eating out.  The pain got me focused in a hurry and I was suddenly a lot more single minded than I was. I got off the phone and everything.

And it is an owie. It is more of an owie now than it was then and that confuses me. Day 1 it was just kind of reddish brown and once I smeared it with some aloe based sunburn treatment, it didn't even really hurt. Ta da.

Well. time passed. Friday it was a little more red and a little more sore but it was okay as long as I didn't brush it against anything.  It looked like a big bruise more than a burn. I did notice the topography was changing a bit by Friday night but I didn't think much of it because, well, it just looked a little bumpy and what do I know about burns. I thought minor burns were like sunburn. A little pain, a little discoloration and then it goes away. By Saturday morning I had blisters, "had" being operative, I broke one before I even got out of bed and then I popped the larger one getting out of the car. Brilliant and now my little owie was a big pain. And much  redder. And drippy. And it really hurt.

I had been going to the drug store to get some benadryl for some minor itchiness that the vet found on Dogger,  then I decided that I needed to take care of me more than she needed  off brand sleeping pills. Much to my joy I discovered you can get some really effective treatments for minor burns OTC, clearly I am not the only person to get distracted while cooking. Yay.

I ended up with some mesh tubes to keep  my burn pads in place and also to keep me from my compulsion to take them out of place. The burn aids don't stick the the wound or your skin  and they are wet and cooling and wonderful, I lurve them. I just didn't buy enough of them so  Sunday I had to go back to the store to get more supplies. I was shocked that grocery stores do not carry the same stock as drugstores and I could not get more of my little cooling little friends The best I could find were really big band aids that stick to both the wound and my skin. Not cool.

Monday I came into work and asked one of the nurses about my little owie and she takes one look at it and advises me to call my doctor.