So, this post has been inspired by a number of things.
First, I have had a hard time thinking of a worthwhile New Year's resolution this year. Last year, I resolved to get out of debt. And I did. I'm having a hard time following that. But I never write anymore, so I decided to go with some simple resolutions: write more often, and take my violin out and tinker with it occasionally. These are both intentionally vague.
Second, I've been talking to Will O'Neill more than usual lately via Facebook, and he's been asking why I don't post anymore, and pointing out things that might be worth writing about in my responses. For the most part I disagree, but to each their own. Other people have also been bugging me about writing, so there is no other conclusion to come to other than "my public needs me."
Third, a dear friend is leaving Toronto for reals tomorrow, to pursue bigger and better things. I am so excited for him, and so sad for me. He has threatened to start reading this thing more often, which is behavior that really ought to be rewarded. Plus, the more time I spend writing, the less time I spend missing him.
Fourth, I made truffle mac and cheese tonight and opened a rather nice bottle of pinot as a farewell to my nutritionally unredeemable ways for a while.
Fifth, Fearless Leader has informed me that he has stopped checking in here. I believe I have that ridiculously boring and self-indulgent post a couple of months back to thank for the fact that he now feels a little weird about reading things so personal.
Finally, I've been spending my free time crocheting lately. One of my Pennsic friends taught me, and then I re-taught myself so that I can make baby gifts for my cousin's first-born, who is due in about a month. In order to practice, I have been trying to find projects cool enough to keep my interest. Which brings me to this little guy:
(Am now considering a second career as a hand model.)
So, in his honor, I feel it is appropriate to finally tell a story that, at the time, was not at all amusing. With a little luck, it will make all of the aforementioned people sorely regret all of the above. With the exception of Fearless Leader - he is, I'm sure, glad he's missing this one. I present to you now...a true Horror Story.
You may recall that I now have a Boyfriend. Sometime, back around late August or early September, we started having sleepovers, and snoring, and breakfast-making, and all of the accompanying couple-ness that results from that kind of behavior. So, once I realized that I would have to try to deal with the snoring and might, in fact, be having sleepovers on a semi-regular basis, I figured a bikini wax was in order.
Now, I have a serious problem with paying someone else for wax. Especially when it involves being near my lady-parts. I can take care of that perfectly well myself, thankyouverymuch. What I lack in training, I make up for in cosmopolitans. Not that I would advise waxing while intoxicated, but being under the influence of one, maybe two drinks significantly expediates the process.
So I pop a couple of Advil, have a tasty beverage while I wait for those to kick in, and start heating my wax. This is a product that I am familiar with - used to use it all the time. The package directions are pretty loaded with overprotective warnings about how to heat the wax...all geared towards heating slowly in small increments in the microwave. But I've used the stuff before - I know the first time you heat a new jar, it's much easier if you just overheat it so the wax is very fluid, then stir it up and let it cool and set up to the right temperature to work with.
Have I mentioned that I've done this MANY times before?
So I'm following the package directions, and the wax, while warming up at the bottom of the jar, is still hard as a rock at the top. So I put it in for a longer interval, in order to liquify at least part of the top so I can actually stir it up.
It's still solid. Even though I can feel it is getting quite hot at the bottom. Hot enough that I don't want to heat it anymore until the mixture's a little more homogeneous. So I take the popsicle stick they include to stir the stuff and start poking at the solid top layer.
Wow, it's REALLY solid. Like, impermeable.
Until I manage to permeate it. My poking finds the one weak spot, and pokes through the unmelted layer with more force than necessary, because I've been poking at rock-solid wax.
The popsicle stick goes through. The superheated wax beneath now has an escape tunnel to the surface.
Everything goes into slow motion. In a split second, I imagine rather than actually see a stream of white-hot wax arcing through the air, but I don't have time to actually locate it in space or project where it will land.
Until it does land.
On the back of my left hand. My reflexes are simply not fast enough to recoil enough to avoid it.
As highly evolved as we like to think we are, it's funny how much of life comes down to split-second decisions and pure survival/self preservation instinct. You splatter hot oil or boiling water on yourself, the instinctual thought process goes, "Hot stuff is on my skin. Heat causes damage. The longer hot stuff is on my skin, the more damage it will cause. GET HOT STUFF OFF OF SKIN IMMEDIATELY."
Unfortunately, this is not, in fact, hot oil or water. It is wax. So, while I am screaming at volume levels I previously thought unattainable, "GODDAMIT! MOTHERFUCKER!" I am attempting to brush the hot wax off of the back of my hand.
And taking an entire layer of blistered skin off with it.
Well, not really "off." I am now looking at parts of my body that are really not meant for public disclosure. Imagine half of the skin that is supposed to be covering the back of your hand has now been plowed to one side, with a green wax covering the mounds of relocated flesh.
My next instinct is...cold. I need cold. Cold will take away the heat, and keep this from becoming the World's Most Idiotic Third-Degree Burn.
But my freezer never contains any actual ice. One of my personal idiosyncracies has to do with never refilling my ice trays. The best thing I can come up with is my wine chiller thing. Perfect! It's a sleeve...it is ice cold...I can just slip my hand into it!
...which might have worked nicely, had I not already exposed raw flesh. You know what happens when wet skin touches something ice cold, right?
The bits of skin still clinging to my hand are now frozen to my wine chiller. (The newly exposed underlayers aren't so bad, because they are oozing enough to keep me relatively detached, as it were. Silver linings, right?)
At this point, I am now becoming slightly aware of my surroundings. Things are no longer happening in slow motion. I hear the door to the office open outside my apartment door - Landlady has heard me swearing to high heaven and is understandably concerned.
Did I mention that this is a bikini wax? I am therefore buck naked, crouching in my kitchen, showing even more flesh than should technically be possible. Or at least, I would be showing it if it weren't ATTACHED TO A WINE CHILLER. I try to figure out what my answer will be if I hear the dreaded words, "are you OK?"
I am, in fact, FAR from okay. However, the LAST person I want to know this is Landlady. If I need to go to a burn unit, I will at least put on pants. I think this is a reasonable expectation.
I am literally holding my breath and willing her to go back in her office. Like a character in a sitcom that has been caught in their ex-boyfriend's bedroom trying to retrieve a sex tape. I am, in fact, Waiting to Exhale.
Silence.
The door closes again.
I decide to deal with the consequences of trying to extricate myself from the wine chiller. Just a Band-Aid...quick and painless. I pull it off, and do not yet have the mental fortitude to look inside to see if I have left any of Myself behind. (It later turns out that I have. Remember that the next time you come over and I ask if you'd like a glass of white wine.)
I now am starting to recover some of my (clearly superior) intellect and start to wonder if I actually need to see a doctor. It's starting to swell, as burns do, and the adrenaline is starting to subside, so pain is imminent. So a quick peruse of WebMD...hmm...okay, so based on the fact that I am starting to feel extreme pain, I'm assuming the nerve endings are intact. Blistering? Um, YEAH. So second-degree. Does not require a doctor unless it's more than the size of the palm of your hand - SCORE! Elevation...loose bandages...antibiotics. You can probably buy a burn care kit at your local drugstore, but mine has been closed since 9.
Hmm...bandages...I actually have sterile gauze pads. And antibiotic ointment. But no way to keep it attached to my hand. But, as mentioned above, I am Crafty. I have an entire basket full of miscellaneous crafting supplies.
I now butt-ass naked, save for a gauze pad duct-taped to my hand. I am one classy bitch. This is also about the time that I realize there is wax in my hair.
At least now the damned thing is covered, so I can put my jammies on. Can't go to bed yet - adrenaline has definitely waned, and this shit hurts now. But remember - I took some Advil pre-disaster, so I need to wait a little while before I can take the shitload more I want to and go to bed. So I IM the Boyfriend - let him know there's a chance I won't be able to come out for the weekend like I had planned, because I have had an accident and am in serious pain. He is remarkably understanding for someone with no hair removal experience. I do not, however, tell him HOW I hurt myself - just that it is a serious burn and causing me no little discomfort. Mom is online, and chooses this moment to IM me. To ask why I am up so late on a Thursday night, no less. I tell her the selective truth - that I have burned myself really badly, and am not able to go to bed yet. When she asks how I burned myself, my answer (which will become my stock answer until I heal) is, "in the kitchen. Bad splatter." Judge if you want kids, but when something so stupid hurts that badly, the gory details are NOT TO BE SHARED WITH THE REST OF THE CLASS. She's a good mom, and inquires with good Motherly concern as to how I did this to myself, but I take the opportunity to say that typing is actually quite painful (which is not, in any way, stretching the truth) so I'm going to go elevate my hand now.
So I eventually take more Advil, and it kicks in, and I go to bed with my arm propped up on a couple of pillows to try to keep the swelling down so I can sleep. (There is still a spot of wax on my Matt Damon pillowcase that I haven't bothered to try to melt out yet.) In the morning, I re-wrap my wound with a bandanna and head to the drugstore to buy more appropriate dressings. The only thing more fun than re-wrapping a raw wound is when that wound is, in fact, covered in wax. The gauze pads are pretty good about not sticking to wounds, but they make no such guarantees about wax. My hand is a mess of raw red skin, white dead skin, and green wax. It's the fucking Italian flag, if you made one out of a decaying corpse. A couple of weeks later, enough skin has grown back for me to start taking the bandages off. Boyfriend sees it for the first time, and says, "Wow. That looks REALLY painful!"
Oh, honey. You have no idea.
These days, you can barely see the damaged pride. But, if you look closely (or not that closely if the weather's right), you can see the patch of new skin just behind my knuckles, and the other splatter pattern that follows my thumb bone back to my wrist. And if you are very, very quiet and listen very, very closely, you can still hear the splatters. And a tiny Wahooty, still screaming...
GODDAMIT! MOTHERFUCKER!
