Barefoot and pregnant: be careful

I knew this would happen.

I do a lot of canning. I don't know if it saves any money when you factor in the peripheral expenses (jars, lids, garden costs, and ingredients I have to purchase), but it makes me feel like I'm helping.

Canning is hot work and all husbands like a barefoot wife in the kitchen, so I've been going about it for three summers without benefit of shoes. And it wasn't even the canning that got me in the end, but it could just as easily have been.

On the day in question I received one (1) phone call. I answered the phone and the person on the other end said, "Peanut butter rolls." Then he hung up. This was the only adult to whom I spoke that day.

Now, some people might find this insulting. Especially pregnant people who had spent the morning loading the dehydrator with a million bananas acquired free the day before and the afternoon canning jelly in a very zone 6 kitchen in August while still looking forward to making the buns for supper. But the caller had the callee's own gluttony going for him. So she counted not the heat and the fatigue and the completely unseasonable and arguably terse request, finished her jelly, and moved on to the unscheduled rolls. She even altered her course mid-prep when the Dad/Baby Caucus decided they'd rather have caramel than peanut butter.

Everything was going fine until it was time to turn the rolls out onto the plate. Then the uncoordinated barefoot pregnant lady in the kitchen spilled boiling caramel on her foot. Her bare foot.

It was sad.

What's a girl to do? Cooking barefoot just isn't safe, especially when the project involves lots of hot liquid transfers. But being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen is a confessional statement not to be cast off in the face of mere personal injury. Fear of blistered feet didn't get anyone onto the sanctoral calendar.

Then I remembered another project I'm supposed to have in the works: Dad's boot scent pads. He told me it would be cheaper for me to make them but I see now that they are quite inexpensive, and considering how much it's going to cost to get my sewing machine fixed so I can do this project (elastic, you know), maybe we'll have another talk about it.

Anyway, it seems to me that these scent pads could easily be adapted to ensure both foot safety and essential barefootism in the kitchen. Simply slide a protective layer under the pad, adjust to a comfortable tension, and the top of your foot will be covered while the bottom remains bare as Bilbo's (and probably as crusty after a few years). Obviously asbestos is the ideal option (that's why they call it asBESTos), but with all these dang hippies taking over the government and outlawing my favorite deadly household products that actually WORK, we'll just have to improvise with what we can find around the house. Probably a disposable diaper full of cutaneously toxic chemicals would do pretty well. Sizes NB-2 should cover most sizes of feminine feet.

Mockup with immediately available materials: conventional rubber band and size 4 cutaneously toxic disposable diaper. The rubber band is too loose and the diaper is too big. Even the cat disrespects it. Please follow above directions for a more reliable model.

Girls, you know we want you barefoot, pregnant, and sweating to death in the kitchen. But please, be careful.