The Black Family Weblog

slice & dice

Yet…it happened again.

Another knife incidient in the Black household.

So I was doing some bread baking, and right now I am experimenting with pre-ferment dough, and cutting off some dough to store in the fridge I had to go dig in our knife drawer for the sharpie pen (get it?  we keep the sharpie pen in our knife drawer…).  Well the day before I left a knife in the drawer unproperly stored and just sitting in there loose.  It has a small seraded-end, but it is really used for jams and butter.

Wouldn’t you know it, but while haphazardly digging around in the drawer, not really looking what I was doing, I sliced my right middle-finger open on that haphazardly stored knife!

Thankfully it was’t a deep cut, but I keep opening it up because its my right hand!  It is even the hand that I use on the motion-pad of the laptop.  grrr.

What did I learn?  Properly store away your utensils.  Re-think storing anything other than knives in the knife drawer.  Keep telling enough people about my minor and serious cuts in the kitchen to help me be more careful and hopefully they will too.

extreme pain...sometimes

In a mad dash to get breakfast before church on Sunday I decided to finish off one of our loaves of bread we fixed for Christmas.  I grabbed one of our cutco knives, the bread cutting kind, and went to work.  I even stopped half-way through to wax poetic with Jess about our pipe dream of opening a bakery one day.  Ahhh…somehow I don’t think the bakers did what soon followed.  Nearing the end of the loaf, I sawed right into the tip of my thumb.  Searing pain.  The other hand went to pinch tightly the thumb.  I so seriously didn’t need to see any blood.  I didn’t.  Much anyway.

Jess asked if I was ok.  I sat down to prevent my legs from giving out on me.  I told her to grab the first aid kit from upstairs, while I proceeded to run cold water over the cut.  It was numb.  She came downstairs with a bandaid and some first-aid tape.  God love her effort.  I told her that I think it would be best to get the kids ready for a trip.  She proceeded to get everyone rounded up.

I let go just so slightly of the thumb.  More numbing pain.  I clamped back down while gnashing teeth.  We left soon thereafter.

Jess made a call for someone to cover for her at church.  Will was excited to be on an adventure.

Briefly, at the urgent care center, they did quick and efficient work.  They let me lie down and really the worst part was letting go of my thumb.  I was reluctant to do so.  But did.  Another bad time was when they shot my thumb up to numb it.  That was painful to a certain extent.  I’m finding out more and more that pain comes at certain levels.  What I’ve experienced today was lots worse than the shot.

So now I have four stitches on the end of my thumb.  The pain comes and goes.  You ought to see me change a diaper one handed.  Pretty darn comical.

Yes, the pain comes and goes.  It mainly comes when Rachel thinks it is a thumb puppet and attempts to grab it.  She is successful most of the time.

Fire ants in December??

Arriving home from a busy morning…well, playing 18 holes of par 3 golf…I noticed the rope, that was providing some modest support for our tree, was digging into our front yard tree.  Just knowing that it can prevent further growth and hurt our tree, I went inside and retrieved the pocket knife.

William followed me out in his socks and started to walk across our front yard.  I told him to stand back and not to walkin the grass or he would get his feet wet.  Then I started cutting the rope that was for tree support.  I looked over once and noticed William was inching his way across the yard checking to see if the grass was wet (it wasn’t).  So he bounded over and stood in the mulch being curious and watching me cut into the rope.  He was wondering why I had a pocket knife just like my dad’s.

We finished and came inside, to which he walked across the dining room to his mom, then started yelling, “buggies!  buggies! buggies!” in a high-pitched four year old scream.  Jess took him outside and saw many, many ants all over his socks.  So she peeled them off and his pants, and threw them outside.  Knocked a few more ants off his legs, and started checking him all over.  Meanwhile, I was squishing ants with a paper towel, and singing the pink panther theme song…deadant…deadant…deadantdeadantdeadant….over and over again.

It wasn’t long before I felt a few crawling around on me from being outside, so I dusted them off and squished them.  One bit me…ouch!  squish!

Then Jess got a few on her that bit, and before you knew it, we realized that these little suckers were fire ants!!!!  We went all out on a fire ant squishing party.  We were fortunate that most of them were outside on William’s socks and not wandering around inside on the carpet.  We are also fortunate to report that no ants got on William or bit him.  Ray was up in her crib sound asleep.

We now have a new rule about being outside and something about inspection before coming inside.  You’ll have to ask Jess for more specifics.

chicken on a cold day

Today for lunch I am planning on making chicken-in-a-pot and will be posting images and directions on our flickr page.  Should happen in about half-an-hour.  Enjoy!

Menu plan:

Chicken in a pot, brussel sprouts, and potatoes

Update: The chicken, well, wasn’t sooo fresh.  I chunked it in the trash and made chick pea soup instead.  We’re saving the brussels for Thanksgiving though.