Tastes like burning

Yesterday, I went to make thai chicken in the crockpot for dinner. I've made this recipe numerous times in the past, and it calls for two jalapeno peppers. Unfortunately, when I went grocery shopping the other day, I couldn't find jalapenos so I just picked up two of the only kind of hot peppers they had.

So yesterday I threw all the ingredients into the crockpot, gave my hands a quick rinse, and since I was feeling pretty tired I went to lie down for an hour while the kids watched a DVD. I noticed that the blankets felt unusually rough and scratchy on my face but I ignored it and dozed off. An hour later, I needed to get up to prepare for a dental appointment and again I noticed an unpleasant feeling on my lower face, around my mouth. I wondered if it was time to put on some lip balm, so I did that but the sensation didn't go away. I checked the mirror to see if I was developing some kind of weird allergic reaction to the blanket, but everything looked okay. At one point I needed to blow my nose and then noticed that my nose had the same kind of inflamed, rashy feeling as my mouth and chin, but STILL I didn't clue in. A few minutes later I went in to the bathroom to floss and brush before my visit with the dentist, and wow! that rashy, unpleasant feeling was on my tongue too. In fact, it seemed like each time I put my hands back into my mouth to floss another tooth, the feeling would intensify.

Picture the realization finally kicking in here.

"...hey, wait a second... did I ever wash my hands after I cut up those hot peppers?"

"...Oops."

I threw out the floss, and frantically washed my hands and face with soap. I rinsed my mouth out as best I could. I just couldn't seem to get the hot pepper juice off my fingers, though! I carried on flossing and tried to ignore my burning tongue. The next few minutes were a flurry of getting kids ready and getting out into the car. As I pulled out of the garage I found that I had an eyelash on my left eye. And can you believe I reached up and rubbed my eye with the exact same fingers that had burned my tongue not five minutes beforehand? AAiiiieeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

The moral of the story: not all hot peppers are alike. (hah! and here you thought it was going to be something obvious like, "wash your hands or wear gloves if you cut up hot peppers" or "don't touch your face so much")

And by the way, not surprisingly the thai chicken turned out to be WAY spicier than usual.