So @#$%&^! Stupid

I always knew I was a ditz, but I proved to myself this week that I'm a lot stupider than I've been giving myself credit for.

Bree had a fever and was puking, so we were having some down time indoors. Good time to get going on preserving the tomatoes I'd been putting off.
I still haven't bought a canner, so I thought I would can them the same way I did my jam- in my deep pot. I figured it was the same thing, just longer boiling time, right? 40 minutes, great! Just enough time to get my laundry folded.

So half the people reading this already know what happened now, right?

40 minutes later I smell something burning. I tell the gal on the phone to hang on while I check the stove. There is NO water left. The stove is making it's freaky "click click-I'm getting-hotter-and-hotter" sound. I remember something similar to this happening to my mom growing up, but we were told to get out of the kitchen quick! Why didn't I inherit the common sense gene? So I'm not sure what went through my head at this point, for some reason I thought it wouldn't be safe to leave that on the stove. So I put it on the sink and thought I'd keep it from getting any hotter. I kind of remembered it wouldn't be safe to get it cool fast, so I got some hot water and poured it on the outside. But that was enough. A little stream leaked over the top as I went around the back of the pot, and the second it hit the bottom of the jars, two of them exploded.

I'll just pause here to tell you I'm fine, and it could have been way worse.

So I was pretty surprised at this point. I sat down hard and ripped my shirt off because it was burning me. After I got it off I noticed my hand was on a big chunk of jar. Zach was an hour away for his family practice rotation, and I didn't know how bad the cut and burns were so all I could think was 911.

Unfortunately, I'd left the caller waiting on the line, so I had to go upstairs to hang up. When I walked in the room, Mia screamed at my bleeding hand and my red face, and I tried to tell her I just needed a bandaid, but I needed to call to get one. She bought that for about five seconds, and then ran into my closet with the twins. Which was fine with me, because I wasn't able to keep my cool much longer. I blubbered to the person on the emergency line and asked them to come get me. She said to put a damp cloth on the burn, and I was like- "It's all over- can't I just splash water on myself? Is that bad?" Finally they hung up and I called my friend Maury and asked if she could come.

She arrived at the same time as the paramedics. I walked out with a towel for a shirt, telling poor Maury the kids hadn't eaten yet, and Bree's last Ibuprofin dose. Thank goodness her husband had just gotten home and she was able to come take care of them. She cleaned up the entire expolsion. I didn't see it, but from the looks of the one spot she missed about 10 feet away, it was really bad. Glass all over the floor, tomatoes everywhere. It's amazing I didn't get more than one cut.

In the ambulance they put wet cloths on me and got me an IV full of morphine. The morphine was worthless, the saline was bliss. ;) OSU emergency is a pretty crappy place- I don't recommend it. I was on my own most of the time- for a while with the water out of my reach, so I sat and burned and called until someone decided they'd condescend to enter my room and push it closer. Other than that, I had a very entertaining crazy nurse, a nice doctor who gave me eight stitches, and Zach got there an hour later and helped me change the sheets from hot to cool every two minutes. My sweet hometeacher brought me some clothes and picked up my pain prescription and aloe so I wouldn't burn in the car on the way home. (We ended up taking a wet sheet with us, though.. gotta get that back.)

This was Tuesday afternoon. Zach took Wednesday off. Luckily, that was the day Anya entered the vomiting phase of the virus. He was gone all day Thursday and Friday- Thursday was Mia's vomiting day. It was kind of okay, though, because we all just sat around and watched TV. No one had an appetite, really- so my hardest task was getting the dang child-proof caps off the Ibuprofin and Tylenol (or in my case, Vicodin- yeehaw!) every three hours.

The burning never hurt that bad after that first evening. I've got lots of blisters on my arm, and my face has been peeling. Could have been so much worse. Which is the part that keeps me cringing. How &*^%$#@!-ing stupid!

The girls seem to have taken it okay.

I'll put it small here for those of you like me who would rather not see it. For those of you like Zach, go ahead and double-click.