Baking Blueberry Scones Is A Full Contact Sport

1. New blog design: I need your feedback. Should I stick with the redesign?

Pros: a) looks like spilled wine/artsy watercolor, two things I am very familiar with, b) layout provides wider posting space so pictures and video fit better, c) I was wanting a bit of a change.

Cons: a) I can't seem to get a picture in the header that fits/can be centered nicely, b) umm, it's an awful lot of pinkish hues, c) change, though perhaps desired, is haaarrd.

I'm not sold either way, but I am going to give it a couple-of-posts test run (which could last a few months with my serious lack of posting lately) and see how I feel. My guess is I will feel too lazy to change it up too much and leave it more or less, as is. But, if you have a strong feeling either way, I want to know!!

2. The kitchen tried to kill me, specifically the oven: Two weeks ago I had the distinct pleasure of prepping for a day trip to the beach. Yes, that mini-vacation that I have been whining about needing for my sanity for like, ever, was in fact to happen. I was PUMPED and decided that I would bake some scones for the Saturday morning car ride out to the ocean. Yum, right? Well yes, they were tasty as heck, but I practically had to give up my left arm in the process. Everything was going groovy during the mixing/kneading/shaping phases. The counter, the floor and most of my upper torso and face were finely coated with flour and smeared with blueberries so all was as it should be. I popped the suckers in the oven and left them there for about 8 minutes before checking on them. Here is where things went a titch haywire. I opened the oven and reached in with a toothpick to test if they had been baked through yet and as I reached my arm in the oven door decided it was time to seal itself back up. My tender (and extremely pale even after all of summer) forearm of course was smack dab in the oven door's path and I got caught. I screeched like a damn banshee, jerked my arm out, cursed at the oven, and did a little dance reminiscent of the pee-pee dance, but while delicately holding my left forearm with my right hand. However, there was no one to see my sad dance for pity so I stuck my arm under cold water until I couldn't feel it anymore.

For those of you that are concerned about the real issue here, the scones turned out fine. My arm? Not so much. Two red line across my upper forearm formed immediately and initially (and rather tricksterly) looked like they might not be so hideous after all. But that is because it took a full day for the blisters to appear and then rupture as angry, hurty blisters so love to do.

I guess this could all be okay, if it didn't make me look like a cutter/burner at freaking almost 29 years old, and I didn't already have SIB in my past, and the sight of these burns didn't trigger huge feelings of guilt and make me think OMG, everyone is judging me, no one will believe me, I feel 16 again, this sucks. So to cover it up and relieve some of my ridiculous fears I went around with this massive band-aid that I put on everyday, which was still pretty fucking lame, but if there is one thing I can count on it is the white-washing of the band-aid world which is all sorts of fuck-up, but damn if it don't match my skin tone remarkably well. Of course no one seemed to notice AT ALL, even though I went around furtively tugging at my 3/4 length shirts and sweating because even partially long sleeves during a mild Sacramento summer remain ill-advised.

And just to top this all off: After four days of ultra-adhering band-aids, I had to struggle to pull the damn thing off (we are talking grunting and yanking for a good three minutes), taking with it a layer of, up until that point, TOTALLY UNHARMED SKIN. Little sticky bits remained in some places that I could not remove with soap, exfoliating scrub, pumice stone, toothpaste (don't ask) or peanut-butter (really don't ask) and thus I acquired blueish/purple fuzz patches that looked bruisey from only the slightest distance. Essentially I looked like a cutter with leprosy all because of some goddamn blueberry scones.

But the beach was awesome.