Inconceivable

Friday, January 20, 2023

Ten or fifteen years ago, I cut off a chunk of my thumb using a kitchen mandolin without the guard. When I did it, I felt pain, knew I’d cut myself, and grabbed my thumb to keep it from bleeding. Apply pressure! It worked – all the way to the hospital!

That is just some history for you to know (I think you already know that story) before today’s story.

I was having a very happy morning. I successfully picked Alexander up and delivered him to the airport (alright, he drove from his house to the airport. I do not know those roads. He does. He complained about driving wearing not driving boots. I did not care. When he came out of his house, he tried to go to the passenger seat for the whole comfy-delivered-to-the-airport feel, but I was already sitting there. Ha. I am not a brave driver. Everyone knows that. It all goes back to the first day of driver’s ed when the kid broadsided us and totaled the car. I wasn’t even driving. Anyway, neither here nor there. I was having a great morning). I came home and did some laundry before starting to pack. I like all the things clean before I start to pack. I was going to pack earlier in the week, but I felt crummy and thought my brain would work better later in the week. Then I thought what if I get worse – I should pack. I pulled 6 hangers of shirts out of the closet and held them for a little bit. If I folded it up so long before the trip, the things would be creased when we get there. I put the hangers back.

I was going to pack last night, but I was wayyyy too tired. So, laundry first! Then I played cards on the computer because I am an excellent time waster. Then I put the laundry away. Then it was time to make lunch. I put water on to boil pasta and started cutting an onion.

I got Keith a new knife for Christmas, because he has been complaining about how dull our knives are and that they don’t even sharpen up anymore. Also, it was something to get him! When Benjamin saw the new knife, he told the daddy about a sharpener dealie that they have that is awesome and then a few days later, the delivery man dropped one at our house. Apparently now all of our knives are super sharp. Keith has excellent knife skills. He is in charge of cutting stuff up. He actually really likes to do it, so it is not like I am just making him work.

Today at lunchtime, though, was not a Keith kitchen prep time. It was a working time. I was listening to a WONDERFUL interview with Tom Hanks (watch the video below. It’s about a half an hour long. I really enjoyed it.) Tom Hanks seems like such a great guy – and he collects typewriters. I don’t know why, but that really increases his great-guy status in my book. So, this interview is an absolute delight. He is eating what would be his last meal with a guy from some show about eating your last meal and they are just talking away about Tom and his movies and the food and it’s like going to dinner with friends. I’m joyfully listening – actually thinking HOW GREAT IS THIS? I’M COOKING. I’M GOING ON A TRIP TOMORROW. I’M GOING OUT TONIGHT. EVERYTHING IS JUST SO GREAT…..OW! I CUT MYSELF. OW! APPLY PRESSURE!

It felt like a knick. But the knives are now sharp. Maybe I had severed my finger. I didn’t know I had cut off a chunk of thumb when that happened. There was no blood at all. I was holding my left middle finger firmly with my right hand. I must have yelped loudly because Keith called down about my overall being, then came downstairs. I think I weakly responded, “I’m fine,” because I wasn’t fine. (Please remember the story about the thumb at this point. I was definitely having flashbacks at this moment. It sounds reasonable, but I was really wobbled. I told Keith and he agreed – he was thinking the same things.) Keith immediately said, “Let me see it.” He doesn’t know about applying pressure (apparently). I said, “no.” I picked my least favorite dish cloth out of the drawer and seamlessly slid it in to be part of the pressure application. There was no blood. Keith looked for finger. There was no finger on the counter. That was very relieving. He jumped in and finished cutting the onion. I determined that the cut was on the side of the pad of my middle finger and called upon my left thumb to apply pressure. I deftly cooked a lovely cream sauce with my right hand.

By the time the sauce was done and it was time to slice a few slices of bread of the baguette, I gently removed the pressure and VOILA! no blood. Keith helped gently apply a band-aid and the emergency was over. I sliced four circles of bread and THEN THERE WAS BLOOD. At first, I hilariously did not know what the red spatters on the counter were. I looked down and saw the band-aid was soaked through and blood was really pretty much dripping off the end of my finger. I grabbed it and applied pressure (APPLY PRESSURE!). I hurried to the sink, looking for my least favorite dish cloth to begin bleeding on. It was lost. Pressure, pressure, pressure. Keith was trying to take the band-aid off and I was sincerely hilariously whimpering, “Where is my dish cloth? I need it for bleeding.” Keith had no idea what I was talking about, because the dish cloth had been out of the picture for minutes, and that is the range of his memory. He finally figured it out and retrieved the cloth from the counter where he’d randomly set it (to be clear, had I had it last, I would also have randomly set it somewhere. We are random setter-downers in this house).

Keith finished lunch. We ate while watching The Chase. I applied pressure. After an hour, it stopped bleeding. It is a little cut about 1/4 of an inch long. Keith glued it shut with super glue. It took a really long time for the super glue to dry, so I just walked around, holding my hand in a weird way, so as not to glue myself to anything.

Eventually, I covered the super glue with a band-aid and went to the library to return and also read a book (still holding my hand in kinda a weird way, because I imagined how very much I would hate it if it just started squirting blood all over. I did not bring my dish cloth. It probably would have made me more secure to have taken it. But it was soaking in cold water. I don’t really have a second least favorite dish cloth to bleed on). I requested a children’s book that I really wanted to read and it was in. At first I couldn’t find it on the requests shelf. Because it wasn’t just a book – it included an audio CD of the story. Huh. I sat down at a table and read it (I didn’t utilize the CD). Then re-read it. It was very good. The drawings pleased me very much. It is about a hat. A stolen hat. I can’t tell you more, because it is only about 11 pages long and much more would definitely have spoilers. Then I wondered what to do with it. I went up to the library desk and asked the man. He said he would be happy to check it out to me. I reiterated that I am an adult who really wanted to read a children’s book, and that I had read it, and was now done with it – without needing to take it home. He literally stared at me for about 20 seconds. Then he just beamed at me. “You just wanted to read it yourself. You don’t need to take it home.” (Yep. Said it twice.) “No, problem. We can send it back for you.” (It came from a different library in the system.) The whole time I was holding my hand weird – kinda up, looking like I might wave at any second. That guy has every right to think I am odd.

Tonight, we went to see The Princess Bride: An Inconceivable Evening with Cary Elwes. They first showed the movie, then Cary Elwes (Westley) came out to talk about making the film. We got three tickets – for Keith and I and Alexander – then forgot to tell Alexander until after he planned his trip to Atlanta. Whoops. (He will actually be finding out about the ticket when he reads this. Nobody ever tells him anything.) We invited our friend, Daniel, a known tPB fan, and he was in until his trip to San Diego got rescheduled (he is probably eating at In-and-Out even as I type this). We pondered who else might be a big enough fan for us to want to take along and found the perfect companion in Mike, Keith’s friend who runs the After Hours Big Band. It was fun seeing the movie with a theater full of fans. We were invited in the intro to talk along with our favorite lines, and people certainly took advantage of that invitation. Since it is a movie full of nearly nothing but quotable lines, I am pretty sure there wasn’t anyone there who couldn’t just have talked along with the entire movie. I found the people who blurted out the line before it happened in the movie odd – did they not understand that we ALL knew the next line and that by yelling out it early you were only proving you didn’t have the timing right, not that you were terribly clever? Curious.

Cary said the movie’s original run in the theater was very short – not exactly a flop, but it only lasted about a week and it was gone. I did not know that. We saw it the weekend it came out, so I bet we were in the very small minority at the show tonight. It’s 35 years old, and LOTS of the audience were not even 35 years old. He told great stories about Andre the Giant riding on his ATV (the only one in all of UK in 1987) and of Billy Crystal doing three hours of stand-up as Miracle Max. An 11-year-old girl asked Cary a great question – what was your favorite line you got to say in the movie. He said of course it was “as you wish”, but other than that….he had to legitimately think. He vamped a bit while he thought, then he said, “It was ‘Fezzik, the portcullis!’ “, because he improvised that line, so it was all his. I liked that reference, because while watching tonight when he said that line, I thought I think that was when I learned what a portcullis is.

It was just a delightful time (and my finger did not start bleeding even though I clapped a lot).