Black Toe

My parents got divorced sometime after I had finished college.  My mom started dating this guy who lived a few hours away, outside of Nashville.  I found out about him when she came out to visit me in California (where I lived at the time) when I was 9 months pregnant with Taylor.  And I got to meet him when I was almost 41 weeks pregnant with Taylor.  That story is best saved for another day, but the reason I bring it up is because whenever my brother and I would refer to him in conversation, we called him “Black Tooth.”  Because, well, his oral hygiene left something to be desired.

Thankfully, I never saw him again.  They eventually broke up.  But the legend of Black Tooth remains.

After my 16 mile run on Sunday, my toes were a little bit sore, particularly by big toes.  On Monday, they were doing the equivalent of screaming.  They were red, but not horrible looking.  I ran on the treadmill on Tuesday, even though they still hurt and were starting to turn purplish.

And that was the day we started referring to ME as “Black Toe.”

After doing some research, and lamenting about it on Facebook, and being in excruciating pain for a few days while the blisters swelled up under my toenails (and no, I didn’t stop my training; that would’ve made too much sense), it was time to make it all go away.  In case you were wondering, here’s how to treat black toenails from running:  Fire up the candle, put the end of a paperclip into the flame, put the searing hot paperclip on your toenail.  It smells like burnt hair and makes some smoke, but I promise you won’t feel a thing.  I may have given birth four times, one of those times without an epidural, but I’m not all about self-inflicting pain, so I was pretty ginger with the paperclip and only tapped it into the hole I was making until I saw a tiny bit of smoke and then backed off.  Because of that, it took awhile to get all the way through, but when I did, all of the blister business drained out.

Aaaaaaaaah.  Relieve that pressure!

I cleaned everything up with hydrogen peroxide and then glopped on Bacitracin and a band-aid.  And man, do they feel good.  One of my smaller toes is also officially purple, but burning through my toenails totally creeps me out, and it’s not nearly as painful as the big toes were.  So I’m planning to just let that one heal itself.

We also went shopping last night for shoes that were even bigger than the already big ones that I had.  Apparently my feet like to swell on super long runs, and I’d prefer to prevent my alter ego, Black Toe, from returning.  So now my size 9 feet are running around in size 11 shoes.  I broke them in with three miles last night and will take them out for 16 miles tomorrow.

In related news, we knocked out mile 5 of 100 Miles for Mercy Project.  Our new dog, Dobby, had an appointment at the vet on Thursday, so we took him to the local dog park to burn off some energy before getting some shots.

I was originally planning to let the kids do their mile on one of the trails, but Dobby isn’t the greatest at walking on a leash, so I strapped my Garmin Forerunner to Taylor and let them run laps with Dobby around the small dog area.  There were a couple of big dogs on the other side of the dog park, but we were alone on the small dog side.

Ellie slept through this one. Dobby wanted her to play with us, but she was perfectly content to nap instead.

 

 

Mile 5 complete!  We’re now up to over $800 in pledges!  Join in on Facebook or make a one-time tax-deductible donation.

 

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