No cats were harmed during the making of this blog...

...but one man got stitches and one bowl was destroyed.

It started out as a normal enough evening. I was washing the dishes while Steve spoke with his parents on the phone. Then, he handed the phone to me to say "hello" while he started putting the dishes away.

Grandma Mo always said it was better to "let God dry the dishes." I always assumed it was laziness on Grandma's part, but last night, I learned the real reason why. Wet ceramic dishes are slippery and (when broken) quite pointy. I had just hung up the phone when I heard a crash, a gasp, and an expletive coming from the sink. I looked up and the first thing that caught my eye was all of the blood. Blood in the sink, on the refrigerator, spattered on the floor (a nearly 7 foot spray), on Steve's pants, and especially all over the hand he held clutched in his other. I couldn't believe that in the split second it took me to look up that much blood could escape any wound made by a shard of a cereal bowl. I immediately jumped up to grab a roll of paper towels. Steve had made it to the sink but the flow was such that I knew that water was a bad idea. I grabbed 4 or 5 towels and told him to keep the pressure on. I then told him to sit down, while I grabbed my stuff in case we had to go to the hospital. After a few seconds he lifted off the already soaking towels and immediately the gush obstructed our view of the wound. It was about 1 to 1-1/2 inches across the first joint of the inside of his thumb. "I think I'd better sit down," he said. "We're going to the hospital, and don't remove that towel again," I said. Man, I can get bossy when it comes to emergencies. I guess I've just spent too much time in hospitals in recent years. Plus, last week was the anniversary of my dad's final hospital visit, so I'm a little touchy about those places.

As the front door was closing behind us, we saw Mesquite inspecting the mess of glass and blood. Steve was worried for her safety, but I figured she'd probably be fine (which she was). The nearest hospital is not the preferred one for our insurance, but the preferred one was 20 minutes away with no traffic and it was 6:30 on a week day. People call it the fancy hospital, but I'd never been. As we pulled into the emergency parking lot, the valet approached the car. That's right. The emergency room valet. By now, Steve was very pale and feeling like he was going to pass out, so I didn't question it. He couldn't stand for a long walk, and I knew I couldn't catch him very easily if he fell, having practiced on my mom a couple of years ago, resulting in a bloody lip. The valet took my keys and gave me a ticket, then we walked in the door.

Immediately, the triage nurse ushered us back to the screening room. Anyone who remembers my emergency room experience from several years back would have been blown away by the expedited service. "Oh shit," I thought, "this place is going to be expensive." They let him lie down on the chairs because his blood pressure was low and they bandaged him temporarily for the wait. We couldn't have been waiting for more than 5 minutes when they brought a wheelchair to take him back to a room. There were 3 beds; two empty, and one with a woman who had broken an arm while on a company sailing retreat from North Carolina. We got an empty one, and Steve lay their for only about 30 minutes before being helped. The entire process took a while because a cut finger doesn't fall high on the list of priorities (as it shouldn't) , but we were very impressed with the service.

The PA, whose name I won't include for her privacy but was very similar to Jane Goodall, was very nice. She numbed and cleaned the thumb and stitched it up. Then, she sent in a nurse to put on a splint, because the wound was on a joint. This splint is gigantic. It stretches halfway up the arm, and is fatter than a cast. It was a long process getting that thing on, and during that time the woman with the broken arm left and two new people joined us in the room. We were behind a curtain but I could hear what was happening with the other patients. One had stepped on some nails. The other had a serious insect or spider bite. The one with the nails in his foot was asked to confirm his name. "Jeffrey," he said, then mumbled his last name. "What was that?" the nurse asked. "Dahmer," the man said then sighed with resignation. Steve, our nurse, and me all looked at each other with big eyes and stretching grins. The poor guy. The exhaustion in his voice when he answered that simple question told volumes. What a name to be stuck with. And, what a strange coincidence that our PA was Jane Goodall (almost).

After we were patched and ready to go, the valet showed me to my car. We had to find a 24-hour pharmacy in the neighborhood because we hadn't had an emergency visit since we had moved last year (surprisingly!). We picked up a pizza and Vicodin, and headed home to clean up the mess. As we sat to eat, pretty tired now because it was 10pm, and watch tv, we both glanced over to the kitchen at about the same time, to find Mesquite lounging in the pile of glass and blood (see pic). "WHY?!?!" Steve and I exclaimed simultaneously. And, we couldn't help but laugh. Why of all places in the house would she lie down there? In the picture, you can see the edge of the spatter that stretched to the other end of the kitchen, the bloody dishtowel, and a piece of the ceramic bowl. Thankfully, she was and is just fine. Although Steve and I are that much closer to heart attacks.

If you care to see the full pics, e-mail me and I'll send them to you. As I was cleaning up the blood, a question occurred to me: who cleans up after really big accidents or crimes? Is there a service that the police provide, or companies that specialize in that sort of thing? It's a morbid thought but if the accident had been more serious and had a worse outcome, who is going to want to come home and clean that up? There are so many things in life that you just don't think about until you need them. I hope I never have a need for that particular one.

We've learned one thing from this whole experience: From now on, we're going to let God dry the dishes.

No one blogs anymore

The public has called, and I'm here to answer...

After much begging, a fair bit of cajoling, and a dash of threatening, I have returned dear readers!

Unfortunately, I've nothing more to say than I ever did, but at least I can continue to say it here for you.

The trouble is: what to say? It's dangerous to talk about work, inadvisable to talk about friends and family, inappropriate to talk about lovers, and trite to talk about oneself. So, where does that leave me? I guess it leaves me to talk about total strangers.

I have been going on regular evening runs with a friend along an OC beach boardwalk. It is amazing to me how many people leave their blinds facing the ocean wide open. The boardwalk is totally public and easily accessible. It has become a guilty pleasure to sneak a slightly blurred peek as I whiz by each sliding glass door. OK, swish by. Ok, slog by.

A few things I've seen surprise me not at all. Lavishly furnished multi-floor townhouses. Tiny, run-down summer rentals. Condos packed with surfer kids sharing overstuffed bedrooms.

However, I see some things that are very interesting to me. First, that almost every place has a TV on, and most of them are flat screen plasma-style. Second, when American Idol is on, EVERY TV is watching it. One can watch the muted show through windows in a bizarre sort of flipbook fashion as you run past. The Nielsen folks don't need to do mail-in surveys or surreptitiously log TiVo selections. All they need to do is send someone on a Segway down the boardwalk during primetime.

In fact, I may have seen just that last week, when I passed a Segway in transit along the boardwalk. Of course, that may also have been someone working on the movie they were filming that night. Only in so Cal can a person have to dodge a film crew and lights as bright as the sun when going for an evening run. We didn't even get a celebrity sighting out of the deal.

Well, I managed to fill up an entry talking about absolutely nothing. Hopefully, I'll come up with something more fun for next time, if I can manage another next time before 6 more months have passed by.