Must Haves And Other Ideas
Recently I revisited the children’s classic book, The Trumpet Of The Swan by E. B. White. Actually I didn’t read the book but listened to it on audio from my phone. I don’t like to carry a lot of things around with me as I work around the farm. But my phone is on my person 99.9% of the time so I can listen to great literature, send goofy remarks to my sis, or to look up answers to the myriad of questions I have each day.
This fact about my phone also brought to mind the E. B. White book for it is about a trumpeter swan that had no voice and was given a trumpet to use instead. The bird hung the trumpet around his neck by a string. As he gained more possessions, he added to the things around his neck until it became too cumbersome and nearly too heavy to allow flight. I try to keep my possessions as compact and lightweight as possible. One back pocket of my jeans holds my gloves. The other back pocket holds my tiny camera in a protective pouch. My phone, in its case, sits at my hip with just enough room behind the phone for a pair of earplugs and a tiny packet with antihistamine. That is usually all the possessions that I need no matter what chore I end up doing for the day.
The antihistamine came in real handy a couple of weeks ago when, out of the blue, I got a bee sting. I wasn’t by a hive or anything, just walking behind the main herd to move them to another pasture and whapp, a quick sting on the bicep. It happened so fast I didn’t even get a glimpse of the bee but as I started to swell, I was certain I knew what happened. I popped the antihistamine and swallowed without water. It was enough to take the edge off until I could get to the house for some ibuprofen and numbing salve. I have found that Orajel, the stuff you can rub on your gums when you have a toothache, works great for this job. Now at the fourteenth day, the sting is no longer hot and swelled and I can only barely see the red dot where the sting was. With this warm, dry weather we are having, the bees have really begun to ramp up.
And since we are talking about first aid, I found a real doozy of a repair that worked well. Mike had tried to slice off the top of one of his finger joints when he was slicing apples. Trying to get a bandage to stay on a finger joint while it heals is nearly impossible. Throw in the fact that Mike tends to have his hands in greasy tools, or slipping in and out of gloves when running a chain saw, or around some messiness left after a cow, and those bandages have their work cut out for them.
My Mom had used little silicone sleeves when her toes had issues like crowding the neighbor toe or when a corn was acting up. Those little sleeves have one side soft silicone and the other a flexible bandage-like coating. That sleeve worked great to hold a bandage in place during several days until the skin was healed up so it would not break back open. The sleeves expanded wide enough to get Mike’s bear paw sized fingers into it without cutting off his circulation.
I had to look quite a few places but found the miracle sleeves at the local Walgreen’s store in the foot care section by Dr. Scholls. Just wanted to pass that little hint along so you can have some in your first aid kit.
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