I love my Aloe Vera plant.

Here's my story. Let me tell you it.

Last night, I was making French Onion Soup for the Commander. One of the steps was to put the pot with the onions in the oven for a while to brown up the onions. I had to keep the lid on it and cracked just a little.

This pot has never, EVER, been in the oven. I don't even know if it knew the oven existed. As a matter of fact, I had to go to the website that sells this pot to see if it could even go into the oven. (Yes, up to 400 degrees.)

When the time came to remove the pot back onto the stove, I had no problem what-so-ever.

Then, disaster struck.

Since I am use to the pot normally holding boiling potatoes or spaghetti noodles, my head didn't quite wrap around the fact that THIS POT JUST CAME OUT OF A 400 DEGREE OVEN AND THE HANDLES COULD POSSIBLY BE VERY, VERY HOT.

I had to take the lid off and give the onions a little scrape. I removed the lid without an oven mitt/potholder. Needless to say, I didn't stay attached to the lid for very long.

The very hot, very glass, lid hit the top of the stove, bounced around and headed for the edge of the counter. I stuck out my foot (Which has saved a small child's head from hitting the floor once. So I know the procedure.) and the lid bounced off my leopard print house shoe. It landed on the floor upside down, bounced upright and did the little spinny thing for a bit. No breakage! Yippee.

But, man, my fingers were hot.

I kept working on the soup (and managed to grab the hot handle of the pot a couple of more times with the other hand) and notice the fingers on my right hand weren't getting any cooler. And they were hurting.

I went downstairs to the Aloe Vera pot, broke off a leaf and applied the slimy goodness. This morning? No red. No blisters.

(I also had another cooking episode years ago where I removed a glass casserole from the oven with two hands, but only one oven mitt. Aloe Vera came to the rescue then as well.)

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Tomorrow night I'm going to be sleeping in a mall with a bunch of Cub Scouts. I don't know if there will be much sleeping because of 1) Cub Scouts and 2) The floor of the mall is not cushy.