A question! [treatment of burns]

You know how sometimes when people post about their ailments, they stress that they are not looking for advice? Well, not me. I think I need it.

It's quite ironic, I guess, that I have just written almost an entire novel about burns treatment, and still don't know what to do; but there is a mighty leap from fiction to the other thing, and I am not a doctor. However efficiently I pretend.

So. I burned myself on Tuesday night: which, taking a transatlantic timeshift into account, is something more than four days ago. To be precise, I fried my finger in hot oil. (I was frying cheesy sandwiches at the time, and was a little careless in laying them into the pan. I may have been talking to someone at the time. Also possibly drinking.)

Anyway. Ouchie, and much cold water run across it, and a big blister overnight. Which burst in the shower in the morning. So I slathered it with neosporin (as my fingers are very prone to infection from the most minor wounds) and put a plaster on it for protection against knocks and general public decency. Which I have replaced as needed, except that since yesterday I've been leaving the plaster off to let the air at it.

Point being, the wound site (the size of a small coin) is still raw and weepy and sore, and I don't know what path I should pursue now. Let it dry in air, or plaster it up again? Or seek other treatments from a pharmacy? Or what? I should prefer it if my finger didn't fall off, really. By and large.

Mounting up for the hellride

This is actually almost exactly where I didn't want to be: one day short of deadline, with half the copy-edit still to work my way through. Also, jetlagged to the nines (last night was the epic Night of Not Sleeping: I have listened over and over to the same bombs fall, the same voices yell defiance, bullet after bullet, bullet-point after bullet-point, bulletin after bulletin). Also, wounded. Really I just want to slump in front of a DVD with cats on me, but no. Desdaemona has to go back tomorrow.

So. Batsmen build big innings little by little, twenty runs by twenty runs. I can do this too; twenty pages is not so much, but twenty pages again and again and again will get me there in the end. Also I have coffee, also wine. Also curries. (I have apparently come home with a Total Spice Craving: last night I made chicken curry and chickpea curry, and tonight I shall add potato curry and mushroom curry, and eat muchly. Also, noodles for lunch.) (Which reminds me: *runs downstairs to rescue the bacon from the shopping bag*)

It's half past seven, and I'm hungry

I have much curry, but no snacks; and I'm not stopping until this copy-edit is done. Fifty pages to go. I am peckish; I want to peck. I could throw together a quick chapati or two, maybe, and munch chickpea curry as I type...?

Om nom nom

I seem to be liveblogging my appetite. But yup, I was right: chapatis and chickpea curry, just exactly what the occasion called for. And wine, obviously.

I haven't made chapatis in an age, but apparently this is one of those bicycle-riding tricks, you don't forget. For reference, the trick is to take them off the griddle once they're toasted, take the griddle away and toss the chapati onto the live flame beneath, just until it swells up like a frog.

Word of the day

Properispomenon: a word with the circumflex accent on the penultimate syllable. Of course the Greeks had a word for it. And I am sure that in Greek, the word would indeed have a circumflex accent on the penultimate syllable. Why miss the opportunity?

And yes, I am working, thank you. I was looking up propeller, just to confirm that I had indeed been spelling it wrong all these years.

And now I need want another of these delicious chapatis.

-30-

...And it's gone, the copy-edit. Now I finish this bottle, and eat. And try not to worry about the morning.