Day 17: 'Accidents in the Boondocks'



I have mentioned a time or two that I’m accident prone, right?  In fact, it has gotten to be such a joke in the family that I literally had to start a file folder on my computer called “Monica Injuries” that has photos of each of my more major mishaps.  Well, as of today, I have a new photo to add to the folder.  Here is how this one happened.

Since Rick doesn’t want to ruin the peacefulness of the area for other campers, we only run the generator for about 30 minutes in the morning, to get Beamer warm enough so he will do his business and then eat his breakfast.  After the generator was turned off, Rick figured we could kill two birds with one stone by making some hard boiled eggs and then giving me the hot water to use, to reheat the water in the shower pan.  This way, Beamer could then soak in the hot water and get even warmer. 

I got Beamer all situated in the shower but he wasn’t cooperating because the water was still cold.  I then slowly starting adding in boiling hot water a little at a time but it wasn’t fast enough and Beamer had finally had enough of it.  He forced his way out of the shower and in my mad scramble to keep from getting bitten and keep him from landing in the pot of boiling hot water that was sitting just outside of the shower, the inevitable happened.  The pan overturned right onto my feet.  I think I shrieked loud enough to scare the cows and proceeded to rip my soaking wet and boiling hot socks off my feet.  

However, the damage had been done and there are now 2nd degree burns across the tops of BOTH my feet. 

Somehow, even after all my careful planning and packing, including a very robust first aid kit, I had neglected to put any burn remedies inside of it, so off we went to the nearest town to find either an aloe vera plant or gel or burn pads.  Now mind you, we are way out in the boonies and the nearest town is 30 miles away, but after Rick ran into two stores, he finally found a bottle of aloe vera and we headed back to the campsite.


I had just barely started stringing more than two words together in a coherent sentence (as the pain had subsided into a dull sting at the point) when we were almost to our campsite.  An RV was blocking the extremely narrow road and both Rick and I did a double take when we saw that the RV was exactly like ours!  Sure enough, it was the same folks from the Patagonia Lake State Park that we had been parked right next to! We had a nice but quick visit with them, as I wanted to get back to our RV as I had forgotten that lavender oil is excellent on burns.  

Once I put on the lavender oil, the stinging and burning became extremely tolerable.  To the point that I was able to put on my shoes and traipse amongst the herd of cows that were all laying down near the trailer, chewing their cud.  Some of the photographs that I took might just make it into frames and onto the walls of either the RV or our home.






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