Boo/Yay!

Well, I got to use my mini first aid kit this weekend!  YAY!

I mean... I've had it for a few years, it's just thrown into my backpack whenever I go somewhere and, well, I've never actually used it.  Thankfully, I suppose.  It's not much of a kit, really, more of a bandaid container kind of thing (I have another small kit for actual first aid and actual kits for... for serious, but this is a mini hard shell one that I totally forgot what was in it but usually have on me when I head anywhere that needs a pack.)

So the story is, Jason and I went out to a beach on the weekend (Friday I think?) to get out of the heat and away from the smoke.  We headed out of town a bit to where the smoke was a little less and set up on the beach.

I pulled out the "shade shelter" thing I'd bought but not used and we placed it behind a lot.  I looked at the log and thought "wow, that's a LOT of barnacles on that log!" and I'm sure I also thought "I should be careful of all those barnacles!" but things happened and my leg scraped against the log as I was stepping over it and ow.

And right now anyone who's ever encountered barnacles in this way is cringing.  Because, yeah.  They're nasty little things when they're dead and dry like these were.

And deceptive.  Because the initial scratch doesn't really hurt.  And you look down and it's just like, oh, ok, I have gotten several long scratches, but no big deal.

Which is what I thought.  "Oh, I have gotten several scratches, but they don't hurt, oops!"

And then it hurt.  And then the blood started.  Way more than I would have thought or ever remember from my childhood at beaches with barnacles...

"Ow." I said, wisely.

But I was happy I had that first aid kit, finally!!!

Ironically, I wasn't able to open it, so I had to ask Jason for help (stupid child safety latch thing, boo).

And I was SUPER thankful when I opened it to find out I had put in some antiseptic spray (spray spray spray down leg holy cow why is there so much blood from these little scrapes???) and a wipe (wipe, wipe, wipe, yep, that particular cut is weirdly deep... huh...) and then there was even a little pack of antibiotic ointment, yay!

I globbed that on and it soaked up and stopped the bleeding (not deep cuts really but at least one of them was larger than you'd think possible.)

I let myself be a little whiny in my head about it for a while (OW!  OW OW OW! ) and then I was just happy I had stuff with me to deal with it yay!

The frustrating part came later when I stepped over the damn log and scraped the other side of the same leg (ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW) and somehow that one hurt even more and yeah, I might have kicked the log at that point.

So yeah, I scraped up my leg on some barnacles.  (Twice!)  But thankfully I had a little first aid kit with me and thank thank thankfully it had all the things in it I needed!  I'm refilling what I used ASAP (just need to order some more ointment, the rest is refilled already).  

So good job past me for getting and carrying around that mini first aid kit for years.  Glad it was there to use, I'm sure it has helped my scrapes not be any nastier, yay!