Well, I am typing this entry very slowly, because if I type with my right thumb the bandaid will fall off. So all spaces are being typed with my left thumb. Possible squicking ahead, by the way.

I didn’t pay attention to the texture of the new paddle shaft. It’s woven, and I had gotten a couple of miles away when I realized…oh shit, it’s destroying my thumb! I ripped off the shredded bit of skin and put my bike gloves on and painfully paddled the two miles back to the dock. My old aluminum shaft paddle was smooth, so I didn’t think to put on the gloves when I set out with the new paddle. But oh my god I can’t describe how much it hurt to rip that skin off and paddle back. All I wanted to do was dip my hand into the cool water and make it feel better, but - well, the Potomac isn’t a Superfund site like the Anacostia, but it ain’t clean neither. The bike gloves were a bit rough rubbing on the very exposed blister, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I had to hold the paddle weird to keep from rubbing my thumb more, so I didn’t have much power getting back to the dock. It was excruciating. I had to grimace and growl the whole way back just to keep pushing myself to do it.

It hurt the whole way home, and then I submitted myself to A for patching up. She first tried to spray it with something that was supposed to be numbing but instead made me howl, so she put some lidocaine on it and that numbed it right up so she could wash it and put ointment on it. She ended up using a huge bandaid that I know isn’t going to last, but hopefully it’ll be on long enough for it to start healing. Lesson learned: put the gloves on before setting out.