I've got to stop looking up, particularly when my hands are injured

I don't know why it is but spiders always come for me at the most inopportune of moments.
Yesterday a horrific creature as large as a saucer quite ruined my pot pie. Then, today, there I was, in the shower....
I was trying futilely to detangle my hair with my wrecked fingers when I looked up at the ceiling and saw a spot. I generally look up at the ceiling about every 30-45 seconds when I shower in the grey bathroom due to an unfortunate incident that took place a few months ago that ended with me shrieking and dripping all over the hallway.
Anyhow, I saw the spot that I always see in there. However, to the North of the spot, was another one, so small I had to stare at it for a full 2 minutes before I was sure it was moving. I started thinking fast, what could I do. I thought about screaming for help, until I realized how fruitless that would be (as everyone was out at the wedding in the yard). I thought about jumping out of the shower before my exit was cut off, but my hair was such a mess I knew I had to finish what I'd started. So, I pushed on. This was made rather difficult by my damaged digits.

Today, I have managed to cut my three middle fingers on both hands all across both joints, as well as rubbing the skin off the tops. I'm completely mystified as to what happened to cause blisters to rise on the tops of several fingers as well, but even more mystified by my stupidity over this whole chair washing affair. In retrospect, I really should have used a sponge, and not my fingers, to scrub all of the pool chairs. In my defense, the rinse water was cold enough to numb my hands so completely that I did not notice the damage until much too late. All in all, I'm left with oozing fingers that cannot straighten out two days before I backpack through Europe-a bit of a predicament.

If I thought finger combing was difficult with my injured hands, shaving was worse. Between the stinging from holding the razor and the pure fear the spider was inspiring in me, I was shaking so bad I cut myself worse than I have in decades. Eventually I gave up, as I needed legs to get out of the shower and away from the predator. So I hopped out, wildly grabbing my towel and personal affects, running crazily though the hall and just praying that no one was taking a self-guided tour of the house. I slammed into my room, dripping some serious blood down my legs, my towel held askew by my little pained paws, only to give quite a fright to anyone looking in the windows (as the line for the wedding was drifting slowly past my view). Well, I obviously did not find much solace there. I next moved on to apply my medicated lotion (for very dry skin). This turned out to be the worst idea yet. I poured it into my palm and then rubbed both hands together. Talk about literally rubbing salt into the wound (though I think the active ingredient is some sort of alcohol, and not at all sodium chloride), that was some extraordinary stinging, worse than the day I rubbed stinging nettle all over my hands (which was rather unintelligent). In fact, it quite took me back to last summer, when I so macho-ly decided to chop 5 pounds of jalapenos without gloves on. That was a huge mistake.

In that situation, the pain did not come until about 30 min after chopping. At said time I was riding in the car. A fire slowly started burning deep in my fingers. As it moved from uncomfortable to unbearable, I started pouring water out of my water bottle onto my hands and holding them out the car window to catch a cooling breeze (which of course resulted in water all over me and my seat but, in the moment, I did not mind a bit). This worked well enough, until we stopped to wait in a parking lot to pick up M. Quite quickly the fire was so intense my mom had to rush over to McDonald's to order cups of ice to put my hands in. For future reference, capsaicin, the compound that causes the "discomfort" is not water soluble, therefore, washing with water will do nothing. Following one of life's principles, 'like dissolves like', rinse your hands with alcohol or oil.

Well, I'm now covered in bandaids and best be off to spread Neosporin over any skin still exposed, I suppose I'll have to sleep with my mitts in socks tonight.

I'm finally getting the Firework show pics so I'll be posting them soon!