Important Safety Tips

This is a very unflattering picture of me with poison ivy. I got it while running on trails through Forest Park, close to where my husband and I live. My running and hiking on trails had led to a handful of very nasty bouts of poison oak and ivy over the years. All I have to do is get within a few yards of the stuff for me to break out in seeping blisters. I had poison oak on my upper lip when I met Julia Child at a book signing. I was mortified about it, but good old unflappable Julia didn’t bat an eye. What a woman.

The poison ivy presented problems for me at the Dogmatic cart. The mother lode of sores on my arm are, as you can see, utterly repulsive, and not anything you’d want to spot on the exposed flesh of anyone preparing you food. But poison ivy heals faster when it’s not bandaged. My solution was to cover the big-ass sore up with band-aids, medical tape, and gauze right before the beginning of my shift. By the time I was riding the subway home after work, I’d be scratching away at those scabs like mad. Ick.

That’s all over with now, thank god. But as the poison ivy started to clear up, I got a 24-hour flu that got me sent home in the middle of a shift. I felt fine that morning, but as the day progressed I couldn’t stand up for more than two minutes without getting dizzy. I slept for two days straight and am in nearly tip-top shape now. I figure the poison ivy weakened my usually impenetrable immune system and made a gateway for flu germs on the subway or at some other germ-ridden spot one so often comes into contact with in this city.

So my safety tips are to stay away from trails, and to wash your hands at every opportunity. I myself will completely ignore the former (no way will I stop my much-needed nature infusions) and rigidly adhere to the latter (I wash my hands so many times a day it’s crazy, and I even count to twenty).

And here’s another, possibly more important safety tip: when lighting pilot lights, make sure all of the burners are OFF. My valiant co-worker Michael was kissed in the face by a fireball because one of the cart’s burners was still ON when he was lighting the pilot lights. It singed his eyebrows and gave his entire face what appears to be a severe sunburn. Michael is an actor, and his immediate concern was the state of his face—his vehicle, as it were. Don’t fret, he and his visage are fine. I was not there to witness it, but I don’t wish a similar episode on anyone. It taught me to always wear my little white Dogmatic baseball cap when lighting the pilots just in case a fireball comes a-callin’—if you can’t save your face, save your scalp.