The Healing Hands of Mama Earth

I'll admit something to you right now: I've read all the Twilight books.

I was an "early adopter" of Twilight -- a friend's daughter was into them before they went all mainstream. Say what you will about Stephanie Meyer's writing (I'm sure I've said it all myself, and I'm certainly not immune to criticism; someone needs to say a few words about my excessive use of parentheses), but Ms.Steph had a few clever ideas. 

One of those ideas is that when you become a vampire in the Twi-verse, your human qualities become heightened. So empathy becomes the ability to influence others' emotions; ability to "read" people becomes mind reading. 

SPOILER AHEAD... damn the internet tyranny that makes me declare a spoiler that should be common knowledge even to people who live under rocks.

I'm about to step on your toes, Edward.

Bella, the heroine of Twilight, is incredibly clumsy in life. She's always almost getting hit by cars, dropping things, and crashing motorcycles. So when she became a vampire, SHOULDN'T SHE ACQUIRE SUPER-CLUMSINESS AS HER POWER?

But no, she's a quick-moving, light-on-her-feet huntress. Blergh. That's totally boring, and doesn't make sense given the rules of vampirism in the Twi-verse. (BT-dubs, OMG DID YOU HEAR about what K-Stew did to R-Pattz? SCANDAL!!!)

Why am I telling you this? Because my super-power is super-klutziness -- I'm like that vampire with heightened power of clumsiness, the one that Stephanie Meyer should have created. If it can be tripped over, dropped, spilled or dribbled, I will do it.

So the other night, my super power was at full strength. I was taking a pot of pasta off the stove. I have a gas stove in my new house, and I'm not used to the uneven surface. The pot started to slide, and I steadied it. Yay! I thought. Disaster averted. At which point I lost hold of the pot and spilled boiling water all over my hand.

I sort of tossed the pot away from me, trying to keep it upright - which I did surprisingly well, as only a little pasta landed on the floor. But I had burned my hand.

I was pretty bummed, because I knew that I needed some burn gel to treat my hand, but it was Sunday night and I just didn't feel like leaving the house, even to jaunt the five minutes to my friend Kelly's house. Just the other week she was touting the brand of burn gel she had, so I knew that she had some.

As the pain grew, I was beginning to resign myself to the idea that I was going to have to hop in the car (yes, I'm lazy AND klutzy). Then I remembered that when I'd moved in, one of my friends had pointed out an aloe plant in the front yard.

I ran outside and pulled off a leaf, squeezing out some of nature's burn gel. I put the rest of the leaf in the fridge.

I knew that aloe would help a sunburn, but I was incredibly impressed by the way that it took care of the pain immediately. The next day I applied it two or three more times, but I was totally fine by the end of the day. 

Hooray for nature.