Hot Danger II: Jermaine

When I told people I'd "burned my foot" they again naturally assumed it to be the fault of that cute little kerosene device which has so many safety features, I'd be hard-put to injure myself if that were my intent. (It even turns itself off after three hours, just for good measure)

But no, something much more innocuous-looking was the culprit this time. And I consider this instance to be more severe because injury was done to my person.

Don't I just look like I would burn a bitch?

I have a hot water bottle, because as I may have mentioned, we don't have central heating, I don't want to fall asleep with my kerosene heater on (CO poisoning), blah blah blah. Long story short, to prevent my feet from getting frostbite overnight (exaggeration), I fill this cute little sheep with scalding water and stick it under the blanket.

There is a little warning label that comes attached when you buy one of these things. I can't read, but the picture of a little girl with pain zig-zags coming out of her head and a bright red foot was unmistakable. The instructions were, put this thing in the blankets to warm up the blankets, then don't leave it by your feet overnight.

Bah! Who ever heard of such waste of warmth? Certainly not I. And so, night after night I left that cute little thing in the sheets, and I never suffered the worse.

Until...

Last Friday I attended a certain Alice-in-Wonderland party (as Tweedledum, no less). After imbibing, I biked home to sleep. As usual, I filled the water bottle and went to bed. When I woke up, my foot hurt, and I couldn't remember harming myself at the birthday party (goodness, was I really like that..?). And the more I considered it, the more I was convinced I would have noticed the scrape or burn or whatever when I crammed my feet into shoes for the bike ride home.

No no, what happened was much more sinister. Overnight, while my foot rested against yutanpo for eight hours, it slowly cooked my skin.

Gross.

I went to the store and bought burn cream and bandages large enough to accommodate the freaking thing, which was too wide for band-aids. I bundled it up Saturday evening and spent Sunday running errands. When I took off the bandage at the end of the day, the creepy burn had turned into the biggest blister I have ever seen.

I'll spare you the pictures, although I did take some, just because I was fascinated with horror at the whole thing. The blister is now named Jermaine because it is too large and has been with me too long; it has almost taken on a life of its own as it proceeded to alter mine all week.

For one thing, it's about a half centimeter tall. Not long, not wide. Tall. Which made wearing shoes (at least correctly) out of the question. I went to work on Monday hoping to show our school nurse, but she was out that day. I was at this point a bit nervous because a friend mentioned having to have a burn 'drained' to prevent 'infection.'

Noooo, infection! No! But I also couldn't bring myself to do it myself. And I wanted someone who knew their stuff to look at it and tell me what to do with it.

On Tuesday, still wearing my regular tennis shoes and tromping all over the back of the right one, I went to the middle school after elementary time and showed it to her. She took one look at it and said "Oh! Keep! Keep!" and then explained to me in Japanese (which I am proud to have gotten) that new skin is growing underneath so I should basically keep the bubble as long as I can.

I promptly went to Jusco and bought backless shoes. I've been wearing the guest slippers at work all week (except that one day I brought my Jelly Belly slippers instead), which only made me feel strange in front of the kids' parents on Thursday. Otherwise I really wanted the kids to ask me why I was wearing them so I could tell them the story of my BADASS blister experience.

But by Tuesday night, the novelty had worn off; I haven't been able to really go for a walk or jog (or swim, either) all week, and now I'm sitting here, contemplating Jermaine's murder so I can wear real shoes tomorrow for my Kobe expedition.