July 12, 2008 | Mama Smith

foiled

Brighton really didn’t want to dress up as a cow and ruin his reputation as the cool kid at Chick-fil-A, per yesterday’s post. So much so, he decided to blend my finger in the handheld immersion blender, just so I’d have to spend the lunch hour sitting in a waiting room with a bloody kitchen towel wrapped around my lacerated finger.

No, we did not make it to Cow Appreciation Day.

10:30am Brighton and I are whipping up a batch of pie crust with my immersion blender. Bad idea, yes, I know. One should always use a food processor to chop that annoying cold butter, but I was lazy. As the butter clumped itself all up in that inefficient blade, I reached in to scoop it out with my innocent and unknowing pointer finger. While Brighton reached out to grab the immersion blender to “help me”. He helped me by pressing the engage button which launched a fierce attack of blade vs. poor helpless finger.

Images of a nubby, stump-of-a-finger flashed through my head as I screamed, grabbed the blender from Brighton and threw my hand on a nearby kitchen towel.

Must sit down before fainting and leaving children helpless and alone with passed out Mom on floor.

I slouched down next to the blood splattered floor scared to see what damage had been done…while Brighton quickly sized up this scene to be boring and scampered off to finish watching his trains dvd. Oh caring child.

When I couldn’t get the bleeding to stop long enough to see how deep the cut had gone, I called Matthew to come home and survey the damage and help me figure out the game plan for whether a doctor’s visit was necessary.

I tried to pry Brighton away from the tv to dig my cell phone out of my purse. With no luck. “Look Mom, the circus came to town!” he excitedly exclaimed pointing to the movie. Great son, you keep enjoying that while I lay here in the pool of my own blood.

I was just happy to see an entire finger – although gory as it was – completely intact and not abandoned in the bowl of buttery dough.

Two hours later after my aunt had come to watch the boys and Matthew had driven me to the doctor, I returned with a hefty bandage and tetanus shot. Thank the Lord, no stitches.

Although the kind nurse did leave me with a wonderful horrific image swimming through my head, making me more nauseated than I already was, by proceeding to tell me a gruesome story of a 2 year old child getting his hand mangled by a Cuisinart when she worked the ER in Chattanooga. Thanks lady, I really needed that picker-upper this morning.

Note to self: Never leave blender plugged in while fingers are anywhere near blade. Never let children anywhere near a contraption with a blade. Never rely on children under 3 in an emergency, they just don’t get it.

Warning: Not pictures for the faint of heart…Dad…or Matthew, who left the room while I got my tetanus shot (no, he would never be caught dead taking the boys to their immunization appointments)

That whole flap of skin from cut to cut was flopped over on my fingernail. I managed to smooth it back down before heading to the doctor. Mmm, yummy, I know.

No, that’s not a thumb, just a nasty swollen finger. Still looks a WHOLE lot better than yesterday. That’s when I should have taken the picture. With all that extra carefree time I had while waiting for Matthew to get home.