Monday, July 14, 2008

Anxiously awaiting my super powers

OK, so on Saturday I was overwhelmed by gardner guilt (the strong feeling that by simply putting seeds to dirt you sentenced some perfectly innocent flowers to a slow and terrible death) and went out in the God Awful Heat! (or GAH! As it shall be known henceforth) to dead-head my nasturtiums. This is my first act of tender gardening love to my flower bed since the flowers bloomed forth, and as such there were something like 11 flowers left and the rest of the greenery gave the impression that Nasturtiums are fruit-bearing plants, so plentiful (plantiful?) were the seeds on every single stalk. I drooped my head as I set to work, to best show my chagrin.

I’d grabbed my super-awesome gardening gloves (they’re so cool, and they’re probably the only reason that I keep trying to garden is to give me excuses to wear them) from the shelf in the shed and shoved my hands into the leafy but sadly flowerless expanse. And after a few seconds something poked me! Poked me at the base of my pinky and friend-to-pinky fingers, kind of between them. I assumed I had something pokey in my glove and lifted my hand out of the greens to check inside. Then I got pretty distracted by the spider that was hanging off of my glove. Distracted in that classic “Woah! Spider! On the hand! gittoffgittoffgittoffgittoffGITT OFF! (shake, shake, shake)” way which takes all of about .2 seconds.

I turned the glove inside and there was just nothing in there that could have poked me. Also, the spot where I was poked was already looking red and maybe a teeny bit puffy. And my Mom says “bee sting”, which would be very plausible except for the complete and total lack of bees in the area. (remember, the whole area was pretty much all seeds and no flowers, so nothing much to attract the buzzy ones.) And I just keep thinking about that spider. It was on my hand at some point, and maybe even inside the glove? Except how would I possibly have not felt it wiggling out around my fingers… But I still really think I was munched on by that spider.

Since Charlotte ran off the hand has done many fascinating things. I put the gloves back on (because the way of me is to go “Oh heck, I’m sure it will be fine…” and then ignore it for 2 hours) and when they came off hours later I couldn’t touch the two fingers together from all the puffiness. Also there was much stinging. And you’d think “hey, put some ice on it!” but you’d be wrong, unless you were thinking that the amazing pain from the application of ice might be somehow theraputic. Which it wasn’t. So you were still wrong.

Then the next day it was less generally puffy, but now there’s this big lump. And the pain has mostly gone away, but there is NON STOP itching. Not like a mosquito bite, but more like after bad, muscular, inside harm. The kind of itching where the second that you scratch it the spot stings and stings. (not that I’ve been scratching. I wouldn’t do that, because I know that’s bad. I’m just theorizing about the stinging that hypothetical scratching might hypothetically cause.)

OK, so I’m scratching! I can’t help it! And I figure that with each scratch one of two things are happening: either I’m pushing the special, magic, super-human, radioactive spider juices more and more into my blood stream, thereby speeding me toward my future career as a super-powered crime-fighter, righting wrongs and keeping the streets of Hippyville SAFE for my fellow geeks and youngbloods!

OR

I’m speeding the internal decay and destruction of my hand, fed by evil, vicious spider poisons that will rot my flesh and leave me deciding between “Lefty” or “The One-Armed Man” for a new nickname. It’s exciting times we live in, my people!

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