Burn baby or skin seared but not the cookies

Sometimes (maybe often) I am so not the sharpest tool in the shed. I am quite willing to admit what an idiot I am capable of being which is either also a really stupid thing or a kinda good thing about me.

Anyhoo, my high tolerance for pain and my act first think after (often as in, oh I bet that will leave a mark) recently showed itself when I did something of a human branding moment.

'Round about the 14th of December, while cooking dinner, very shortly after firing up the electric oven, I dropped something into the well of the oven.

Like the total moron that I am really quite capable of being, I reached for it and, in the process, touched the heating element. This is arguably as bad as the drop canvas bag with glass bottles, hear the glass break and still put hand into bag and pull back a hand/paw that needs stitches and has blood spewing every freaking where. That was also the time the blood overwhelmed the butterfly I finally bought and it all got reinforced with self-applied SuperGlue.

Actually, I think the broken glass was worse since with the heating element there was a chance that it wasn't heated enough to do the damage it did. No, no really, I didn't touch palm to a glowing red heating element.

There was an "oh that hurts" moment before pulling my hand back revealed a 1" long branding burn in the middle of the base of my right palm.

Looking back, it may have been a 2nd or 3rd degree burn that might have suggested physician intervention but given the method of burn, I didn't see the point.

Seeing a doctor might mean that I would have less scarring later but it's the palm of my hand which is a fairly thick bit of skin to begin with, it doesn't have a of nerve issues ad I just missed involving any underlying veins so cosmetically scarring's not a huge issue.

One of the life gifts one gets from growing up with parents who either didn't handle injuries well (mother) or had pretty much a walk it off attitude (father & grandmother) is the ability to self treat, self assess and treat your own injuries.

I've been watching the seared scar ever since wondering how much healing/scarring is going to happen. Yes, I know that sort of lack of emotional involvement with injured body parts is not exactly normal but it isn't like it hurt or otherwise had any real impact on my life until recently.

It started out looking a bit like a paramecium shaped bit of seared skin. Within a day or so, some of the skin at the less impacted upper bit was already healed and happy with the rest just being sort of weird looking.

The next phase was a fair bit of itching (good sign) and shedding that I thought was the end of it.

I was really thinking that I'd be sporting a palm paramecium to mark the duh moment.

Then one morning, just before Christmas, the paramecium came a bit undone with a thick shedding that didn't really match up with the surrounding skin growth.

That last bit is shorthand for "oh, now this hurts at the perimeter where it's bleeding a bit".

And that perimeter was dry, really dry, so not keeping it moist and bandaged/protected was no longer really an option. Still, it's a a remarkably inconvenient body part to protect and the itching from the healing did not make things easier.

Suddenly I'm sporting a bandage and apparently some people have noted the placement and suggested that I was an inept suicide -- yeah, I'm right handed and it's my right hand. It's my palm, not my wrist. Others are absolutely shocked that I didn't see a doctor and that is looks remarkably healthy considering.

The bandaging only lasted a couple of days but it mostly did the trick and kept the perimeter of the burn from drying, splitting and bleeding.

It looked a lot uglier when the thicker layers of skin pulled away.

Right now as the underlying burned tissue goes about the business of repairing itself it looks a tad obscene but not as scary as it did.

So what's with the cookies? Baking, baking, baking. No skin was seared in the making of these cookies.

Yesterday afternoon, I roused self out to the shops with my must have list for the great baking experiment. I actually hadn't made these cookies in all the years I've lived in this apartment so I wasn't hugely shocked when they didn't quite come out as they should.

I sacrificed my don't eat sugar credo just to make sure they tasted right even if they didn't rise quite as much as I'd like.

Probably a result of not double/triple sifting the flour but then again, it could be an evil oven.

I've cause to rethink my comment about being easier to schlep a couple dozen cookies than alternatives since the recipe makes about five dozen cookies.

Since my breaking the no sugar rule gave me a wave of childhood nostalgia goodness, clearly these babies all have to find new homes and taste buds to tempt but the transport is a bit of a bother.

A shout out to the lovely Linda got me a "oh please don't bring them all to Knit@Nite" which will make the folks at work happier and heavier as a result so I've divided them up into two lots. Now I just have to make sure I don't eat any of the temptations in residence between now and delivery.

In other delivery news, the FedEx fairy has come and gone leaving me textbooks and other need for school stuff. UPS is still somewhere in San Diego with another recommended but not required text.

Found my router today, just not the CD that came with it, Since the CD is for Windows, I 'spect that its MIA status isn't a big deal if throwing a router into the network ends up being a good way to get from point A to point where I want to be.

Concrete Blonde cranked up and while Blogger was complaining the UPS dude came and went leaving me the other text book -- so it's time to turn into a people and think about making for the JCC.