Soapbox

     My street, despite being named "Cedar Willow" has a dearth of both of those types of trees, but the sidewalks are lined with locust trees, which possess millions of tiny leaves. Usually they turn colors at different speeds but this year, like girls who call ahead to plan what they will wear to school the next day, they seem to have all decided to change at the same time. I came home from work and the late afternoon sun lit up the entire street, as every tree had changed to a warm, bright yellow and seemed to glow.    
     A few days later, after some pleasant drifts of gold here and there, they apparently said "…aaaaand- all drop!" and they all came tumbling down.

   So now the fun begins.
   Those tiny leaves just will not come up when you mow over them, unlike the nice, curled maple leaves. And even a rake with small tines lets half the leaves pass through with each stroke, so you go over and over the same spot. Fortunately, I am not OCD about my yard. I make a good effort and then figure a few leaves left behind just feed the soil, right?
    I used to have a leaf blower/sucker from Black and Decker that I used to suck up the leaves after I raked them into piles, because not only are they tough to rake together but they're tough to pick up. It chewed the leaves up a bit too, which was nice, and helped them compost faster. I think a little stick got stuck in it last year, but at any rate, the motor burned out. Bye bye modern technology.

    Down the street I have a neighbor who has one that certainly blows leaves. Last week as I headed out to walk the dogs, he was in his front yard, determinedly blowing those itty bitty leaves toward the street. It wasn't easy because they don't offer much wind resistance. The dogs and I went a few blocks and when we came back he was still at it. Then I went to the grocery store and when I returned, 2 hours after I walked the dogs, he was still blowing leaves.
     Either the blower was not up to the job, or he was getting every single leaf out from between the blades of his grass, damnit. I thought about how much electricity it must take, not to mention the time and effort. How much easier is 2+ hours of waving that blower around than 20 minutes of raking? Not much, I think.

    The next morning as I was getting in my car to go to work, he was at it again! Well, there are still a few stragglers on the trees, you know. Plus the wind was blowing from my yard toward his, so I was probably contributing. So today I tackled my leaves. I have 2 locust trees to his one, both of which are bigger than his. In an hour my yard was- certainly not immaculate, but tidied. And I got an upper body work-out and saved electricity.
    I don't get leaf blowers. But I really wish I had that machine to suck them up.

    I think the moral of the story is that no good can come of asking a woman to cook.

    I don't cook much these days for a variety of reasons: among them are that I'm lazy, no two people in my family seem to like the same foods any more and I never was a very good cook anyway. But I feel guilty about that, also for a variety of reasons: the added expense of eating out, the questionable nutrition and all those commercials about how your kids will flunk school and end up on drugs if you don't eat dinner together at the table.

    So at the last minute I decided to cook a little something Thursday night. After the meal I was cleaning up the kitchen (oh yeah, that's another reason I don't like to cook) and grabbed a few utensils that I didn't want to put in the dishwasher: two wooden spoons and the knife I had chopped broccoli with. None of them were particularly dirty, so I held them under running water and gave them a quick once-over with the little hand scrubby gizmo.
    A little too quick, and of course the next thing I know I've flung the things into the sink and grabbed a dishtowel, shouting "Ted! Ted! Oh s**t, I cut myself!" Of course it was one of those super sharp ninja-chef knives too, so as I squeezed, hard,  I was relieved to feel that my thumb was, at least, still attached to my hand.

   Ted, who was in the process of changing out of his work clothes, ran out into the hall.
    "How bad is it? DO you think you need to go to the Emergency Room?"
    "I don't know- I"m afraid to look yet!"
     "Well, can it wait until I get some pants on?"  I carefully wiggled the end of the thumb a bit and, deciding that all major ligaments must be intact, nodded.
He hurried back into the bedroom just as Steve's door flew open and he ran into the hall.
    "I have pants!!" he announced. "What would you like me to do?"
I sent him to get bandages and antibiotic ointment and Ted, now fully dressed, led me back to the sink and persuaded me to take off the dishcloth and let him take a look at the damage.

     I held my thumb over the sink and surveyed the wound. A decent sized chunk of skin and flesh looked to have been turned into to a flap.
     "Huh- it's really not bleeding much…" I murmured.
      ….3…2….1…. ghhhussshhhhh!

     After some discussion and wincing observation it was decided not to go to the hospital: as long as I kept squeezing, it really wasn't bleeding that badly. We washed it, wrapped it in gauze and I wrapped a cold pack around it and lay down to watch television.

   "Ted, I"m wounded" I pointed out after a while. "I really need some medicinal chocolate, and I don't think there's any in the house."
   "You have a son, and he has a car" he observed.
    And pants I thought, but still felt loath to send him on an M&M's run at 9 PM just because I was stupid enough to cut my thumb. At the next commercial break I went downstairs and rooted around in the freezer. A minute later I was back.
    "Never under-estimate the ability of an unhappy woman to find chocolate!" I shouted triumphantly and tossed him a mini Twix ice cream bar, one of the last 2 in the house. "Chocolate, and ice cream, and cookie-   in a 90 calorie package!" I gloated.

     I wasn't sure how work would go the next day with my left thumb not exactly opposable, but when I got up and peeled off the bandages, it didn't look too gruesome. I padded and wrapped it up well, to both cushion it and keep it from bending too much and perhaps breaking open again.
   By this time Ted had gone to work and I realized that I was going to have to wear slip-on shoes, because buckles and laces just were not happening with one monster unbendable thumb. (Zippers, by the way- tough with the right hand when the fly opens to the left)
   I got in the car and headed to work. The first sunglasses I came across in the van were the ones with the cute bright red frames that I got for $4 at the thrift store, but (probably because I got them for $4 at the thrift store) they sit kind of crooked on my face. The car was cold but I could only get my fingers partway in my left glove since gloving my thumb was out of the question. So I pulled up to the window at Tim Hortons, smiled at the women through my crooked red glasses and reached for my cup of coffee with my half-on glove with the flappy fingers and giant white thumb sticking up. She just looked at my hand, and looked at the cup. I hitched around and reached out with both hands for the cup.
    "I have grasping issues this morning" I said.
     "Uh…. huh…" she said.

    All things considered, I was very lucky. I was really careless and that knife was really sharp. If it had hit at a slightly different angle and bitten deep instead of sliding mostly under skin, I would have had a lot worse problems than just trying to tie my shoes. I made it through the day without banging it and seeig stars too many times, and was even somewhat productive. On the way home I thought about how sharp the blade is and remembered the way it felt when it sliced my flesh, and honestly I broke out in a cold sweat.

    So hopefully I have learned my lesson: respect the knives, and call out for pizza.