I haven't been able to type very well for the last couple of days due to the fact that I am a clumsy idiot.  While on the telephone, I was slicing up a cantaloupe for my daughter.  I was down to splitting the last section into two manageable wedges when I was too distracted (or whatever is wrong with me when I do stuff like this, which is quite often) to realize I was past the point where I could safely continue to cut the melon flesh-side down.  Too wobbly.  Time to flip it rind-side down for stability's sake.
    Well, I'm sure you know exactly where this is going:  the giant serrated knife I favor for this particular task slipped.  It connected with my left index finger, just between the last knuckle and the fingernail.  I have actually never seen anything bleed so fast in my life-- it reminded me of fake movie blood based on volume and flow rate.  I managed to not swear in front of my kids, mostly because I was going to be getting off the phone soon and didn't want to admit to the friend I was playing catchup with that we needed to speed things up because I might need to go get stitches.  I finished the phone call wrapping paper towels around my finger and holding it above my head.  When I got off the phone, my four-year-old came in the kitchen and turned white when she saw my finger bleeding like it had been hacked off with a chainsaw.  By that time I was probably the same ghostly color she was.  I was a bit dizzy, but I oddly chose to use this event as a teaching opportunity.  "See..." I said in my best teacher-saying-I-told-you-so tone, "That's why Mommy always tells you to never mess with knives.  You could cut yourself."  She stared at me with a 'lesson-learned' face.  "Does it hurt?"  She asked, knowing the answer already.  "Yes, Baby Duck.  It hurts very much.  That's why Mommy doesn't' want it to happen to you."  "Yeah, I don't want to cut myself."  I really appreciated that she didn't comment on the irony of the blood leaking past the paper towel down my arm.  I think she was too focused on the lesson at hand to realize how silly it was of me to tell her to be careful just then.  
    I didn't really like looking at it, so I did what anyone would do:  I put a Band-Aid on it,  I started cooking dinner and I called another friend of mine who was going through a tough time so I could focus on helping her and not deal with my hand.  After all, it was just my left hand.  I could still cook Hamburger Helper (for some reason I wasn't really in the mood to cook anything that involved cutting fresh ingredients).  
    When my husband got home, I finally sat down to change the bright red bandage.  E thought I should go get stitches.  If you have read any of my recent posts, you will know that I WOULD RATHER DUCT TAPE THE END OF MY FINGER BACK ON THAN SPEND ANOTHER SECOND AT THE HOSPITAL!  So I opted to stick with the Band-Aid.
    The biggest humiliation comes from the fact that a hand wound doesn't go over too well with restaurant work.  The first thing I did when I got to work the next morning was go to the first-aid kit in the office to procure a lovely device called a "finger cot".  It is designed to fully cover the length of the finger to both keep the bandage and/or blood far away from food and keep the bandage dry with all the hand washing that goes on.  Let's be frank:  it looks like a condom.  And this one was bright blue.  That meant that every single table I delivered food to asked me what I did to my finger.  I am not a natural liar, so I confessed my stupidity to everyone who asked about it.  By the end of the day I felt like the dumbest person on the planet.  I feel sorry now for the Puritans who had to suffer through "The Scarlet Letter", although I do feel like maybe adultery is a little bit less of an accident than what I did.  But the whole "mistakes on display for all to mock':  I get it.  No fun.

    I hope someday soon to write about something besides accidents/illness.  I feel like I'm in a bit of a rut here.

CL