An unexpected torture

Funny thing about going about your business. We get so caught up in doing the ordinary that the obvious escapes our notice.

Late last night, I loaded the dishwasher, wearing my handy dandy, long, pretty pink rubber gloves. The children had already gone to sleep, and I wanted to make sure everybody had clean breakfast bowls in the morning.Finished with my loading I did what I do every time. I ran the water and flipped the switch for the garbage disposal.

But something was wrong. The disposal made a loud crumbling noise at me. I instantly worried that my daughter had dropped a peach pit inside it, not knowing they weren't supposed to go down disposals.  I turned the angry monster back off. With a double check glance at the switch to make sure the disposal was a really, really, really off, I reached my gloved hand inside to feel around for that peach pit.

Can you guess what's going to happen next? I sure didn't.

I had left the water on. The scalding, burning water. As I wrangled my arm down the disposal, the mouth of my glove shifted beneath the flow of the hot water. It poured down my glove and surrounded my fingers. I yanked my hand up out of the disposal to try and rip the glove of finger by finger. That doesn't work very well when the inside of the glove has suction due to water replacing the air around my hand. It does, however, empty all the hot water out of my glove, by pouring it down my arm. Oh goodie.

Eventually, I got the glove off and held my scalded arm beneath a nice cool stream of water. Three applications of aloe vera later, the burning calmed down enough to let me sleep.

There is an upside, though. For some reason, I reached down that disposal with my right hand. And I'm left handed. So I'm not completely stymied today. Typing isn't fun, though. Every time my fingers bend, they sting. So I'm using voice recognition.

I've been under rather a lot of stress lately. I guess this just shows how distracted I'm getting. But, onward and upward. I have so much to do, it would be a real shame to flip out now.