Jalepeno Disaster

It has been two weeks since we moved into our beautiful American Fork home and things are really falling into place. We had our fridge brought up by my wonderful inlaws on Saturday morning and I was SO excited to fill it and start cooking up a storm as I have not been able to do much of that without a way to keep things cold.

Well this last Sunday I was called to be the Beehive advisor in our ward and am LOVING the callig so far. After church on Sunday there was a girl (I'll call her Amy) in the class that expressed a need for help with her Personal Progress so we decided that she would come over on Tuesday night at 7pm... So last night I got home from work at 6:30 and decided that it would be a good idea to put our dinner together before Amy got there so that when Michael got home we would be all ready to eat. In preparation for the throwing together of corn chowder I chopped celery and onions, threw in the corn and creamed corn, milk, etc. The very last thing I did before the doorbell rang was to mince two jalepeno peppers to give the soup a little kick. I finished just in time, threw them in the pot and hurried downstairs to greet little Amy.

We sat and chatted about Personal Progress, scrapbooking, horses, and everything else you could imagine before she started really pouring her heart out about things that were very important and special to her. While she was talking I felt something tickle my eye and reached up to wipe it away, not thinking twice about the jalepeno left over on my unwashed fingers. It took only a second before my eye felt like it was on FIRE and began watering like crazy! I tried to tough it out but the burning kept getting worse and the tears (which I couldn't wipe in fear of adding to the problem) were then POURING down my cheeks. I closed my eyes to attempt a natural flush and said a VERY fervent prayer but the burning began to take over. Knowing that I wasn't going to be able to make my resolution discrete I decided to get up to grab a paper towel off of the counter to get my face wiped off... This is when things got really bad.

I tried to open my praying eye when I realized that it was actually now SWOLLEN SHUT!! I got up out of my chair and felt my way over to where we normally keep the paper towels and realized that I had used the last one that morning. By this time my left eye was swollen shut and both eyes had started their water shows! I felt my way around the kitchen to my paper product cupboard and grabbed some left over Little Caesar's napkins from the move. Gratefully I began to wipe my face and left eye to try to get the burning to subside. I made my way over to the sink and got the napkin wet so that I could help flush the eye. In the meantime my right eye had joined in the fun and was now pouring tears just for the heck of it. With the intention of cleaning up my right eye I wiped it with a folded napkin which I didn't realize had been contaminated by my jalepeno fingers and the whole process started over again on eye #2!!! At this point I knew that I had to wash my hands before I could do any more clean up so I scrubbed them twice with Dawn dish soap and pretended like my eyes weren't both swollen shut now. It is probably also very important to note that little Amy handled the situation beautifully. She had no idea what was going on but she just kept talking and talking like absolutely nothing had happened. While I thought this was hillarious it was the best thing she could've possibly done. It would've been really awkward to have her sit there and stare at me for the 7 minutes the process took when I couldn't see her.

After washing my hands I wet another napkin and started wiping. After every wipe I would put the napkin down and get a new one, having no idea where I was setting the used napkins. After things had calmed down and I was finally able to open my eyes again I realized that I probably looked a tiny bit different from when Amy first arrived to my house. Taking a quick moment to think about what my own Beehive advisor would have done in this situation I laughed, gave a quick explanation of what had happened, and continued our conversation. I understood her quizzical expression when I went to go get my scriptures a couple of minutes later and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The only makeup I had on was between my eyebrow and crease, smeared like crazy, and my eyes were HUGELY swollen. It was quite the sight. I took a quick second to wipe off the old makeup, contemplated replacing it, decided not to, and went back out to sweet chatty Amy. The evening went so well with her and ended with big hugs. It wasn't until my sweet husband got home (with flowers for our 18 month anniversary) that I got a genuine reaction. "WOW! You're face looks a little... PUFFY!!", I told him the story, we both laughed, and then I smelled my beautiful flowers. Nothing like a little jalepeno in the eye to lighten the mood! AAHh!!