Saturday I fell off my bicycle and landed hard in the grass. In fact, I heard a sickening CRUNCH as I landed. Then, I felt the excruciating pain in my right ankle. I just knew I had broken my leg. When Del came over to help me get up, I told him I thought I had just broken my leg, so he ran in and grabbed a bag of flour from the freezer and propped my ankle on it. I tried to sit up, but the pain in my right arm wouldn’t let me, so I removed my helmet and laid down on my left arm. I cried like a baby for a few minutes.

If you’ve never broken a bone, it’s a pain like no other. I can’t describe it, but if you’ve done it once, you tend to remember the exact pain if it happens again.

Del took the kids to his mom’s house and drove me to the hospital. By the time we got to the hospital, it had been an hour since I fell. I was registered an hour after our arrival to the ER and taken to X-ray half an hour after registration. Talked to the doctor and he said the break in my ankle was on the non-weight bearing bone, so that was good for healing purposes. When I saw the X-ray, it looked like the bone had been sheared off at the ankle. My elbow wouldn’t move like it should when we were trying to do X-rays, and the picture showed a minor fracture in the radial head. I should find out more when I see the ortho doctor Tuesday. My ankle and my elbow were splinted in plaster splints and I was sent home with a prescription for percocet and a wheelchair. Kinda hard to use crutches when you have an arm injury on the same side as a leg injury. Total time at the hospital was 4 hours. Good thing Del headed out to get some food before I saw the doctor, because he had me take percoset and ibuprofen–both meds that require food in the stomach.

I took my arm splint off today to start exercising my elbow and wrist. This is as per my instructions so the joints don’t get stiff. I’m still in an ace bandage and my sling. My arm is feeling much better and doesn’t need the percocet for pain any more. Just the ibuprofen. Yay! My ankle still hurts a lot, though, so I’m keeping the splint on until my appointment on Tuesday.

The kids have been taking over the house work since I can’t walk yet, and they’ve been doing a great job. Del does the laundry and the boys do the dishes and some cooking. Sami has to run errands during the day and take herself to the bathroom. They’ve all been troopers in all this. Needless to say, I haven’t been able to hold knitting needles or a crochet hook, so no crafts are getting done right now. Oh, well. I’m getting acquainted with some new books!

Cassie had an overnight hospital stay Monday. I was supposed to take her in for her spay surgery, but since I incapacitated myself on Saturday, Del took her to the vet. I called like a good Mommy and checked on her Monday afternoon. Her surgery went well and she was still groggy. Tuesday morning, Cassie was ready to go home. The vet assistant said Cassie was really happy to have her small bed at the vet’s office. I think it helped calm her while she was away from home.

Cassie is pitiful right now. She holds her ears back because her belly hurts if she moves the wrong way. She doesn’t jump like she did–it hurts too much. She’ll climb up on the couch with me to cuddle. She seems to know that I need her in my hurt state. She’s such a sweetie! Monday morning she came and gave me her best puppy hug before leaving for the vet and Tuesday she came over to see me when she got home. I love my little girl!

That’s basically what I cooked as a side dish last night. Blood potatoes. How does one make blood potatoes, you may ask. Just follow the method below and you’ll have them in no time flat. I warn you, this is not for the faint of heart. And it hurts like hell. You have been warned.

1. Count out the number of potatoes your household will eat. You can do more if you want to use the extra potatoes for salad.
2. Grab the absolute sharpest veggie peeler you own. If you don’t own a veggie/potato peeler, a very sharp straight blade knife will work as well.
3. Start peeling potatoes quickly over the trash can, placing the peeled potatoes into a cooking pot as you go. You should peel at least 1 potato completely before proceeding.
4. Have one of your children distract you by asking you irrelevant questions. If you’re childless, an SO or a pet can distract you instead. Just make sure you have a random distraction lined up.
5. While distracted by child/SO/pet, continue peeling potatoes, not minding where your fingers are in relation to your very sharp blade.
6. Continue peeling potatoes, paying more attention at this point to the distraction than the task at hand. Forget that you are holding a sharp blade.
7. While slicing the peel off your potato, slice through the skin at the top of one of your fingers. I did my pinky on my left hand, but any finger will do. Make sure the sliced off skin chunk lands in the trash can.
8. Calmly put the partially peeled potato and sharp blade down in the pot in which you plan to cook your potatoes. You don’t want any additional injuries.
9. Yell as loudly as you want as you realize your cut finger is pumping blood with every heart beat.
10. Stick the cut finger into your mouth in hopes of slowing the bleeding.
11. Repeat Step 10 once or twice. Your choice.
12. Once you realize the bleeding hasn’t slowed, run the cut finger under cold tap water. The colder the better. We have well water, so ours is like ice.
13. Yell and curse loudly because the icy cold water makes the cut sting worse than the potato acid and your saliva.
14. Repeat Step 10 while you search for a suitable bandage.
15. Once you secure a bandage (fingertip style works well) over the cut, continue peeling your potatoes until they are all peeled.
16. Wash your potatoes under running water.
17. Change your bandage because a) it got wet and b) you’ve already soaked the pad with blood.
18. Cut potatoes to desired size on a cutting board.
19. Fill cooking pot with water, add salt if desired and place over medium-high heat.
20. Change bandage again.

After the fourth bandage change, I realized that my finger was still bleeding profusely. Del found the neosporin and I put a small amount in the fresh bandage. That slowed the bleeding considerably and allowed the cut to begin to heal. You can omit the multiple bandage changes if you use the neosporin with the second bandage. I also went through a lot of tissues while getting the bandages ready.

I can’t play the piano right now, and typing hurts a little, but I can still knit and crochet! I made sure to bandage my finger so that the first knuckle can still bend enough to secure my yarn. In fact, I have no loss in the range of motion. Just a little pain when direct pressure is applied. I’ll have a funky looking finger when it heals. There’s no use in going to the doctor; it can’t be stitched and I don’t want a laser pointed at my finger to cauterize it. It hurts enough now, thank you very much.

I did take a break from sock knitting last night to give my finger some time to rest. I’m sure it would have bled longer if I had continued with my sock. It still hurts this morning, but not nearly as bad as it did last night.

Moral of this story: Don’t get distracted while using sharp instruments in the kitchen. Especially if you’re squeamish about blood.

Damn it. I wish Aunt Flo would leave for good. It seems my body has decided on a 3-month schedule without the help of Seasonale. Yay. I’ve been wiped out all day (first day) and I took two multi-vitamins. One at lunch with Midol and one with my evening meds.

Cassie is freaked out thinking I’m sick or dying or something and won’t come near me. I had to coerce her to get her close enough to me so I could remove her harness. I’m not sure what to do there. I can’t change what’s freaking her out, even with a good shower. Hopefully, after a couple of days Cassie will be over her freak-out and will want to play with me again.

I have had no energy all day. Del had to bring me a Powerade to get me out of bed. I had laid down with Sami at her nap time and didn’t have the energy to get moving again. I did get my Home Blessing Hour taken care of this morning, with the help of the kids. That took about everything I had for the day. If the double vitamin doesn’t help, I think I may call my GYN and talk to her about my energy crisis. I shouldn’t feel this bad just with my menstrual cycle. Del is worried about me and probably thinks I should call my GYN anyway. I may call Monday just to go talk to her and get this down in my charts. I’m not sure I want to go to the Vampire Shop though; my GYN seems to favor their services when anything seems out of whack.

I have slightly more energy at the moment, but I’ve had two vitamins and a dose of Max. Strength Midol in my system for a while now. I’m still going to bed at a decent time so I can get up for Mass in the morning. We’re going at 8, so I have to get everyone up at 6:30 so we can all get showered and dressed. Breakfast after Mass will be bacon and eggs. Yum!

My puppy Cassie made a mess of my brand new Sockotta that I was going to knit into Jaywalkers. (I didn’t give it to her; she pilfered it.) Now, I’m fighting the knots she managed to chew into the yarn. Luckily, all her adult teeth are in and there’s no real damage to the yarn. Just a bit of guilty shame from Cassie when she sees me trying to get the knots out.

I’m glad she didn’t swallow any of the yarn. That would have constituted a vet emergency. I’m also glad she didn’t swallow the small box of stitch markers I had in the ball label. While I was initially upset about the yarn mess, I was more relieved that Cassie didn’t get hurt. But damn, she made a mess of the yarn!

My purple Jaywalkers are just going to have to wait until I can get the yarn untangled. Could be a while.

I sat down with Lisette, my ball winder and a box fan last night and started winding yarn out of the shawl. I wound 3 entire balls of yarn before I got to the mistake. *sigh* Lots of work to re-do.

Okay. I am officially pissed at myself. I have spent feverish hours trying to finish my Lisette Sweater Shawl by Carolyn Christmas Savage in time to wear it tonight to the kids’ Fall Festival at school. It ain’t happening.

I was working on round 12 (of 15) on the pineapple border and found a MAJOR goof that absolutely has to be fixed before I can finish my sweater shawl. It seems that in my hurry to get it done for International Crochet Day (today!), I missed three stitches when starting one of my pineapples.

I’ve already put 8 or 9 balls of Lana Grossa Lambswool (mine is purple) into this shawl, not to mention all the hours in the last two weeks. I’m going to have to get out my ball winder to fix this because I’m going to have to frog an entire ball of yarn to fix this goof. If it was a minor goof, I’d leave it, but this is major and has to be fixed.

Don’t get me wrong; I absolutely LOVE the pattern and how fast it works up, but I’m sickened at how much I’m going to have to frog to get it right. I’m planning on making at least one more when I can find the right yarn. It’s so comfortable! I want several in different colors and textures to really dress up my wardrobe. We have enough cool weather up here in northern New York that it’s reasonable for me to have an entire closet full of these.

This is what it looked like last week when I was at Round 17 of the body. My lovely assistant is William. He’s asked me to kindly keep my shawl off him now. :p

This is an ongoing little project for Jimbo. He whittled a hook, and a group of us are using it to make him a freeform wall hanging for the cabin on the crick. I received the hook about a week ago and it is absolutely stunning! I can’t go into detail here because it’s supposed to be a surprise for the participants of the project.

Likewise, I can’t show my freeform piece here because the bits and the final piece are to be a surprise for Jimbo. I will say that I used two different yarns in two different colors and weights and the result is wonderful. The bulky weight yarn is a wool/alpaca blend and the sport weight is 100% lambswool. Awesome yarn combination and the hook handled both beautifully.
Suffice it to say, I LOVED working with this hook and want to get another Jimbo hook for my collection. They are wonderful pieces of art to work with and glide through the yarn just right. And, if you custom order, Jimbo will make sure your hook fits your hand and your grip.

Of course, you can always check out the hooks Jimbo has for auction! Variety in color, shape and size. All gorgeous and all worth the money.