I just realized my nose ring isn’t in my nose.

How can a piece of metal that had been previously shoved through a part of my body  leap off my very own face without my knowing it?  It doesn’t make any sense.  It’s 11:00, and I just finished making some salsa for an office party tomorrow.  I sat down at the computer, absentmindedly reached up to my nose, and realized that it was gone.

In a frantic sense of WTF, I started searching my face for the nose ring.  Was my nose pierced on the right side or the left side? I couldn’t remember.  So I felt the insides and outsides of my right and left nostrils in a very fast-paced sort of a way, in a similar way that someone would pat themselves down if they realized they didn’t have their keys in their hands like they thought they did.

That’s when I realized I did not have a nose ring magically hidden in my left sinus cavity.  As if my nose ring had sprung off my of my face and made a bee-line for the nasal concha?  Instead, as a result of searching for said nose ring in my sinus cavity soon after having chopped up several jalapeno peppers, I had a left sinus cavity that was ON FIRE.  Or, ENFLAMBADA*.  How many times to I have to shove my Jalapeno Juice Flavored Fingers up my nose before I realize that it HURTS? EVERY TIME?

Because it’s 11:00 at night, and because I have no idea how long my nose ring has been gone, and because I am not ready to part with my beloved facial piercings just yet, I did what any capable woman would do.  I used a hammer, some wire cutters and two pairs of pliers to re-invent one of my not-so-fantastic 2004 model earrings into a make-shift nose ring.  I’ve never loved my toolbox more than I love it right now.

*this is not a real Spanish word, insofar as I can tell.

**I was correct in my assumption that ENFLAMBADA was not an actual spanish word.  EMFLAMADA seems to be a word in several Latin-based languages that are not Spanish, but even then, it seems to mean ‘swollen’, not ‘OH MY GOD MY NOSE IS ON FIRE BECAUSE I AM AN IDIOT.’