Words you don't want to hear...

It has been pretty uneventful around here, not that I'm complaining, mind you. But there are events that happen which make one appreciate ordinary-ness. Such as the one that happened this afternoon. I'm standing in the kitchen working on dinner, when D comes in from outside screaming that he has something in his eye. I'm elbow-deep in dough, so I send B in to help D wash whatever it is out. I continue making dinner until I hear, "I can't see! It hurts! I can't see!" being screamed from the bathroom. I knew that great quantities of blood make me drop what I'm doing and run, but now I know that potential blindness also fits into that category. D still had an intact eyeball, so I was able to calm my initial panic. While I was flushing D's eye with water, I sent B out to get his father. In B's typical under-reacting way, B told his father that I wanted him inside because D couldn't see, in a tone of voice that one would use for a statement such as, "I'm going to go play at a friend's house." J, as he ran inside, couldn't decide whether he should be grabbing the car keys to rush to the ER, or to send D a message to just open his eye lid. In the meantime, the flushing had done it's job, and sight had been restored. D was still complaining that it hurt and we were a bit mystified, because we couldn't see anything in the eye. We were mystified that is, until A walked in and informed us that D had been playing with some ornmental hot peppers; opening them up and lining all the seeds along his fingers and hands. I can only imagine how much that stung to wipe all that hot pepper oil into his eye. And what's the moral of the story? That ornamental peppers look great in a pot on the porch, but don't forget to give all members of the family warnings about breaking them open and inserting them into one's eye.