My 4th of July Life Lesson

Sparklers...harmless fun...right? That's also what I thought up until last night. As a child of the 80's I grew up on sparklers - they were staples at every 4th of July family celebration I can remember. Never once in all my preceding 29 years have I had any mishaps with sparklers. In fact I love the things! I'm nothing if not a big kid at heart so when I found out my 13-year-old nephew, Nick would be at our 4th of July party down in Monroe last night I couldn't resist the urge to stop on the way down and pick up some sparklers for us to play with.

It was a good 4th of July celebration, we had a great dinner of shesh kabobs on the grill, walked down to the park to see some pretty good fireworks and then headed back to my sister's house to chat and light up our sparklers. We were having fun, everyone was laughing and talking and then out of nowhere (I don't even really remember it now to tell you the truth) a searing pain shot through my foot. I screamed a vulgar word at the top of my lungs and violently kicked my foot so that my flip-flop flew across the patio. Slightly shocked at my choice of language, my nephew said, "what did you say Melba" and...finally realizing what had happened I said, "I burned my toe." No one, including myself, quite realized how bad it was. I was shaking a little but didn't think much of it.

Ever the cautious one, my husband, Michael had come to the patio prepared with a large jug of cold water "just in case." I used the jug to pour water on my toe and for a fraction of a second I thought it had helped. The searing pain quickly came back though so I poured more water over my foot but by this time it was really hurting. Michael and Nick were still playing and having fun but by this point I couldn't really concentrate and my fun was over. Almost in tears I went in to run my foot under cold water in the tub. Once in the light I could see what had happened and, though fairly small, the burn between my third and forth toe did look pretty nasty. Upon hearing the shakiness in my voice Michael came in after me to have a look. I definitely felt a little lurch in my stomach when he said, "sweetie I think you've given yourself a pretty nasty burn here." He explained that he thought my toe actually looked charred and he thought it was pretty bad. By now everyone else had come in too and we all had a look at my toe. Deciding that there wasn't much we could do for it except keep it cold I got some ice out and held it there for the next hour-and-a-half while we chatted the rest of the night away. It was definitely hurting a lot, throbbing actually, but I didn't mind since the pain at least meant I still had feeling in my foot.

At around 1:00 a.m. we decided to call it a night and head home. I put some burn relief gel on my toe before leaving and then held ice on it all the way back home. Once there I put ointment on my toe, put some thick socks on to shield my feet from the dogs claws and went to bed. At exactly 3:33 a.m. the painful throbbing in my toe woke me up so I decided to take some tylenol for the pain. The medicine seemed to help and morning came peacefully. Once up and about my toe was hurting a bit but it seemed better than last night. Not until I took a shower did I realize I had actually burned both of my toes pretty badly. Though I can't remember what happened my best guess is that a small spark from my sparkler escaped and just happened to land right between my toes. Yikes!! So anyway...it's been about 24 hours now since the incident and though my toes do still hurt a great deal I think they are healing fairly well. I'm keeping ointment on them and letting them get air as much as possible. Beyond that I'll just have to keep an eye on them and hope that my body's healing process works the way it's supposed to. The moral of this story:

SAFETY FIRST!!!

1. NEVER PLAY WITH SPARKLERS WITHOUT SOCKS AND CLOSED-TOED SHOES FIRMLY ATTACHED TO FEET!

2. NEVER ASSUME THAT SPARKLERS ARE HARMLESS AND CAN'T HURT YOU!

3. ALWAYS HAVE AT LEAST ONE OVERLY CAUTIOUS FRIEND OR FAMILY MEMBER NEAR BY!

Remember...this incident - my 4th of July life lesson - was MINOR. If I can get a second-degree burn on my toes in less than 1.4 seconds from a sparkler just think how bad it could have been with more time or if the circumstances had been different. As always...I hate having to learn lessons the hard way but this is one I won't soon forget! Maybe you can learn vicariously through me and save yourself the trouble! :)

Peace,Melba

Today I'm tired...

I went to work at the college photo lab tonight which was strange after being gone from there for over three weeks. One of the weeks was a planned day off, when I was on vacation and the other two were unexpected due to car problems. I'm not sure if I still like working there and if the situation is still mutually beneficial or not. But the paycheck (small though it is) is certainly nice so what do I do?

Byron left nasty notes in the log about people "washing their hands clean" of their duties and neglecting to fulfill their work responsibilities by not finding someone to cover shifts they are unavailable to work. There is also a new policy in effect about the sub list. Apparently we can no longer be trusted to write our own names on the sub list, instead we have to contact a superviser and have them fill it out for us. Now I realize that several employees in a row were unable to work their regularly scheduled shifts and also unable to find substitutes - and I also realize this must have caused some frustration at the lab. All that is fine but one thing I really don't like is when people (usually bosses) issue blanket statements and/or blatantly change rules and policies without really addressing any of the issues at hand. If I had been confronted about my un-covered shifts I would have been able to tell my story which was that I did try to call my fellow co-workers and none of them were able to cover for me...and also that I did attempt to let Byron know about the shceduling conflict only I wasn't able to do that because he wasn't working his regularly scheduled shift. I would have also been able to point out that I did inform the instructor whose class I was supposed to work that I would not be there for my shift, a fact which seems to have been completely overlooked. Whatever - I'm just frustrated and I feel that it's a little disrespectful for him to leave blanket statements regarding these types of things in our community log. I'm sure this too shall pass and I'll be fine soon enough.

I've been very tired all day and am not sure why...maybe it's the weather? Anyway...I'm off for now, just needed to vent a little.

Melba

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How do you bookmark other people's blogs you want to check regularly?

Here I am...

and here I am. I'ts 12:44 a.m. Sunday morning and for some reason I'm stull going strong. It's been a weird day today, very up and down, which is really nothing unexpected.

Michael has been in a crappy mood most of the day - for unexplained reasons. Even though I've tried not to channel his negative energy, I've decided that I'm definitely an "emotional sponge" as my oprah magazine so eloquently put it. I tend to soak up the emotions, both negative and positive of people I'm around. I also think the closer (more connected) I am to a person the more a sponge I become. I wish I could be less of a sponge and more of a duck's back...I think that would make things much easier.

But enough of that for now, I'm tired of it. I'm new to blogger and it looks pretty cool. I've been keeping a blog on lj for over a year now so it's probably time for a fresh new blog spot anyway!

Peace,

Melba