The Start To My Day

I guess the title of this post should be Do As I Say, Not As I Do.  Because of a bonehead move I made, I had a rather interesting morning.  And by interesting, I mean painful, time-consuming and frantic.  Yesterday was our day for Minookas annual unlimited trash week.  Before you go making fun of me for making a big deal about a trash pick-up, let me tell you that one can only put out what fits in the trash bin.  Beyond that, you need to pay for additional bags or items.  The items we put out yesterday would have costs us about $100 to throw out any other week of the year, so excuse me if I make a big deal about trash.  But I digress...

I wanted to get everything out as early as possible to make sure we didn't miss the truck.  Since we did not have time to get it out the night before, I started hauling stuff to the curb when the kids woke up around 6:30.  Oh, yes, and I was wearing flip-flops, which would normally be fine except that I was carrying large, heavy items and big pieces of wood.  If I saw Hans or the boys doing this, I would have quickly made them change into sneakers.  Evidently I felt invincible.  That won't happen again.  I stared carrying a big piece of plywood with some 2x4s screwed into it to the curb.  The whole piece was probably 4'x5'.  It was bulky enough that I couldn't pick it up, so I kinda did a half carry/half scoot.  During one of my scoot moves, one of the splintering boards and my foot had a bit of a collision.  Upon further inspection, I saw a piece of wood sticking out of my foot.  I quickly removed that piece and proceeded to the curb.  (Do you see how insane I am?  100 dollars people.  I'm not money motivated when it comes to working, but saving is another story.)

It didn't take long for the pain to set in and for me to realize that there was still a piece of wood in my foot.  Hans tried to get the piece out, but that only caused me to scream unkind things to him.  And about him.  We decided a trip to urgent care was the way to go.  Trying not to drip blood all over my house, I patiently and painfully waited for John to get on the bus for his last day of school and then we loaded up the other two boys and headed to the doctor.

The doctor felt around a bit and then said, "Okay, what I am going to do is numb the foot, get a scalpel and start searching."  He had me at "numb the foot."  He came back into the room with a slew of tools and the digging began.  And continued.  And continued.  After about 5 minutes he said there must not have been anything in there.  He couldn't find anything but he wanted to be sure so he cut a little deeper and the tip of the scalpel hit something hard.  After feeling completely deflated when he thought there wasn't anything in the wound, and mad that I not only didn't wear the proper shoes but I also just wasted $200 at the doctor, I was glad to hear that there was something there.  Glad really isn't the word.  Not sure what word I should use to describe my emotion.  Now came the hard part.  After more cutting and searching and cutting, he couldn't get the piece out.  He was just about to bandage me up and send me to a podiatrist when he made one last ditch effort.  One more cut and search later and out came a nice little piece of wood.

After all was said and done I had 4 stitches, a heavy antibiotic, heavy painkillers, a tetanus shot, a sore foot, and a piece of wood in a specimen jar.  Yes, I kept the piece of wood.  That little bugger cost a fortune!