Get over it. . .

Maybe this will help me get over it. . . the feeling that somehow, I've got to post something meaningful- or by that, do I just mean something painfully self-conscious that still meets my self-imposed writing standards? It's been a year since I posted anything, and I don't think anyone's going to read it anyhow.

It's Friday evening, 2215. Got to take a shower and go to bed. Just finished a 22 oz. Stone IPA and some munchies. Tried straightening up the house a little, it's just not working. Cleaned up my loft workroom, finished wiring up the light and the sewing machine on the new table. Eric the Ducati mechanic is coming tomorrow at 1100 to do something with one of my wife's bikes, I'm not really sure what, but I'm definitely being resentful at having to get up early on a Saturday to hump a dozen motorcycles around in the barn so that this bike is where he can work on it.

My face is still red where the skin has peeled away from the frostbite where the propane hit me last Sunday after the gas ran out in the barn and M. appeared in the loft all cranked because the barn was cooling off and how was she supposed to get her race bike finished. . . I pulled the big rusty old propane tank out from under the deck and slid it across the snow with a nylon strap around the valve. I stopped to rest and something about the valve didn't look right and when I reached out to touch it, it blew open and the 200-something-below-zero gas hit me full in the face and knocked me flat on the snow. Damn good thing I had my glasses on. I got it shut off, but when I reached up to touch my face, it felt like dry sandstone and hurt pretty bad. What was I supposed to do? I've never known that. I went to the chicken coop and got a shovel and dug a place for the tank next to the empty one, and went and got M. from the barn. I kind of told her what happened, but not really. We got the tank onto position, and I managed to get the tank hooked up and got the pilot lit, with my face jangling like crazy. It took about 12 hours for it to quiet down, and by that time I knew I was going to lose a lot of skin. It was the worst-looking about Wednesday, just before it peeled. . . the patients didn't quite know what to say, but as long as they're getting their medication, most of them don't say anything anyway. My head hurt and my eyes wouldn't focus, but as I tell the LNAs, if you're relying on your eyes to take sutures out, you're just going to make a mess.

Shower time. I'm going to post this. . . if only to lower my standards a bit.