Today is the two year anniversary of something very painful to remember. But for your entertainment, I’ll tell the story. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and Fred and I decided to make a big breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs, hash browns, biscuits, and gravy. While Fred prepared the gravy, I stirred the scrambled eggs. The eggs were almost to the perfect state of doneness, and Fred was still stirring his boiling gravy-oil, when he said "Oops – watch out!" I turned to him with a questioning look on my face, and an instant later it was brought to my attention that there was a great deal of pain coming from my right (bare) foot. In an instant, I lost my mind, and danced away from the stove, screaming "Ow! Ow! Ow!" Fred bent down and with his bare hand wiped the boiling gravy-oil off my foot, burning his hand badly in the process. He stood up and started running cold water into the kitchen sink. I stood there until he turned and told me to go into the bathroom and run water on my foot.
I went into the bathroom, and when the first spray of water hit my foot, I about lost my mind again. Fred came in to check on me a few minutes later, just as I was realizing that when he’d wiped the gravy-oil off my foot, he’d wiped the skin from the top of my foot off also. I had a big gray hunk of skin hanging down over my toes, and my foot was swelling rapidly. Fred offered to go to K-Mart for burn cream and bandages, until I informed him that there was no way he was getting out of taking me to the emergency room for this.
We hastily got dressed, grabbed the spud, and headed for the emergency room. We sat in the waiting room for three hours, due to a several-car accident that arrived right before us. I sat there, a sneaker on my left foot, my right foot bare except for a big, gray, nasty piece of skin hanging off my foot, rocking back and forth as the pain ebbed and waned. We finally made it back to where the doctors check you out, where we sat for another hour and a half. The doctor came in, checked out my foot, and pronounced that I’d probably live. He checked out Fred’s hand, too, and then went on his merry way. The nurse came in and popped me in the ass with demerol. Once that took effect, she cut all the skin off the burned area of the top of my foot and toes, which really hurt, demerol or no. Then she smeared the burned area with burn cream, wrapped it up in bandages, and we finally went home.
I ended up taking a week and a half off from work, because it was extremely painful to walk on my right foot. I had to clean and re-medicate my foot twice a day, and that hurt, too. The word for that holiday season was "pain." I did all my shopping at 3 am two days before Christmas at Wal-Mart. It’s not an experience I’d want to go through again, lemme tell you that. There’s a scar on the top of my foot, but it’s slowly fading away. What did I learn from the whole experience? 1. Don’t stand next to Fred in bare feet while he’s making gravy, and 2. I’m completely useless in an emergency. I would probably have stood there screaming for five minutes before it occurred to me to go stick my foot under the water. Thank god for Fred!
—–]]>
Isn’t she adorable? Fred thinks she’s ugly, but I think she’s about the cutest thing ever. She’s ten weeks old. We haven’t decided on a name yet, but I think Suzy would be a good name. I will, of course, keep y’all posted.
The Boys are hugely freaked out. Spanky has dealt with us bringing kittens home – Stimpy and Snoopy, to be exact – but neither of them was nearly this little. He won’t go near her, only watches her carefully from a distance. Snoopy is interested in her, and has sniffed her from up close, but he isn’t sure what to make of her. Stimpy thinks she’s the spawn of satan, and hisses every time she gets within two feet of him. This morning, she was in the master bedroom closet using the litter box we put there for her, and he went into the bathroom to watch. She apparently finished and was coming back out through the bathroom, and out came Stimpy, running like the hounds of hell were after him, and hissing to beat the band. It’s hilarious, considering that he’s ten times bigger than she is. Spot isn’t particularly freaked out, but he’s not a big fan, either. He’s been through the new-kitten thing before. He has hissed at her once or twice, but it was kind of half-hearted. For her part, the kitten isn’t particularly interested in the Boys. She’ll glance at them from time to time, but mostly ignores them.
Happy Thanksgiving! Did everyone have a good one? I slept in until 7:30 or so (because I was up several times in the night with the kitten, and even when I did sleep, I had horrid dreams of rolling over and crushing her, or of Snoopy kicking her ass), and then had to run to the store for Tender Vittles and soda and other stuff I can’t recall. When I got home from the store, Fred informed me that we only had dill pickle relish for the devilled eggs, instead of sweet pickle relish. So I went back out and got pickle relish and tin foil.
We ate dinner at noon, and boy did it kick ass. Have I mentioned what a great cook Fred is? He did 99.9% of the meal himself, and only asked me to make a few things. We bought the turkey from a place called Tim’s Cajun Kitchen (a smoked cajun turkey, even), and it wasn’t that great — kinda dry, and the smell of smoke has been following me around since we ate. Everything else rocked, though. We had cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce, summer squash casserole, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, broccoli, corn, and devilled eggs. There are tons of leftovers, so that should carry us through the weekend.
Sorry about all the kitten talk. I’ll try to keep it to myself for the most part — I know it’s boring to those of you who aren’t cat lovers, and probably boring to those of you who are!
—–
]]> 
