One New Development and a Lovely Story for You to Enjoy...

No, this new development is not anything ground-breaking or even particularly upsetting. The new development is simply this: I'm taking down the comment moderation setting on my blog. It's a bit of a hassle, and I'd rather not deal with it anymore. So...Yay, Laziness! (I guess...)

Now for the story...

The other night, Friday, to be exact, the chiddlers were already in bed. Ty was doing something on his laptop, and we were watching a show on Netflix. (I think it was "Greek", but I wasn't really paying attention...) Anyhoo, I decided that I wanted to have a snack, and enjoy a lovely glass of milk along with it.

Once I'd finished the snack, I--being a good and responsible person--wanted to transport my small plate and my glass to the kitchen for cleaning. I stood up, walked across the room, and started climbing the stairs to get to the kitchen level. (We're in what's called a "California Split" style home, in case you wanted to picture this a little better.)

As I climbed up the stairs, my hands filled with dishes, I suddenly felt one of my big, fat, toes getting caught inside the hem of one of the over-sized pant legs of my sweats. As soon as I realized what had happened, I tried to disentangle myself, but it was too late. Far, far too late.

I fell. I fell hard. I'm not quite sure of exactly how it all happened, but I must have thrown my hands out to catch myself. Natural reaction, right? Well, unfortunately, as you might remember, my hands were rather full at the time. With GLASS.

The next thing I knew, there was a deafening crash as my glass and plate went smashing down onto the kitchen tile and I just knelt there, half on the stairs, my now empty hands laid flat on the tile. I was too stunned to move for a few seconds.

Ty, who had heard this catastrophe taking place, called out: "Are you okay?" I said: "Yeah, I think so" as I checked my hands for injuries. They seemed fine at first, I hadn't felt anything cutting through my skin, anyway. But then my right index finger suddenly seemed to bloom with bright red blood. It dripped onto the tile, and I couldn't even see the cut at all. I cupped my left hand underneath the oozing wound and ran up to our bathroom to wash it off and see if I could figure out how bad the damage really was. Running water over my finger, I could see that the cut--though deeper than your average paper cut--had not gone deep enough to require stitches (in my personal opinion, though I verified my theory with Ty before making a final decision, as I am not a doctor and figured a second opinion would be a good idea...)

I asked Ty to get me a towel or a washcloth or something that I could use to put pressure on the cut and try to stop the bleeding. He brought me one, and I just sat down and wrapped my finger with the towel, squeezing as hard as I dared and wincing every time my finger throbbed.

Since the door was open, I could hear clattering and scraping in the kitchen as Ty cleaned up all the broken glass shards and wiped up the blood. (Poor guy, it's a good thing he isn't squeamish about those things...) I continued to try and get the cut to stop bleeding, but every time I opened the towel to check on its progress, it just kept right on bleeding as badly as ever. As I sat there, wondering what I could possibly be doing wrong, something finally clunked into place.

I had kept both of my hands clasped tightly...in my lap. For a nasty bleeding wound, it's usually a good idea whenever possible to ELEVATE it. I would have kicked myself, but I think under the circumstances that would have been a bad idea. I would probably have fallen down again and ended up with a head wound and a concussion as well...

Within moments of elevating the injury and continuously applying pressure, my finger finally stopped bleeding. And just a few moments after that, Ty brought up some Neosporin and bandages and I was all patched up.

I learned some very important lessons that night.

Lesson One: If you have a pair of sweatpants whose hems you notoriously get your big toes stuck in as you walk up the stairs, either find a way to shorten them or give them away to an enemy.

Lesson Two: If you are going to try carrying dishes up and down the stairs, make sure they're made out of plastic.

Lesson Three: Elevate a bleeding wound.

Lesson Four: Always have a good husband on hand, who understands--and has long since accepted--your propensity for clumsiness, to bring you towels and bandages and clean up your glass-shardy, bloody mess.

Lesson Five: Always make sure that you have a fifth lesson in mind if you intend to start a list of lessons that contains more than four items.

Lesson Six: The "Oozing Wounds" would be a great name for a rock band.

Have a great day/week, everybody!