Early Warning Systems

Every now and then, right before I do something very stupid (and most often, though not always, painful) I have a flash of insight and I literally hear myself say in my head, "I need to be careful because I don't want to do x." This is usually followed by about a zillionth of a second and then whatever stupid thing x happens to be.

Today, for example, as I was getting up from my desk to go help someone (more on that in another post), I put my iPod earphones down. They slipped, so I grabbed them again and tried to curl them gently into a little loop to keep them from falling on the floor and accidentally getting run over by my chair wheels or (realistically) just getting so ooky I didn't want to put them back in my ears. Well, the ear bud part flipped and tinged against my new cup of hot tea and then they slipped back onto the floor. So I tried the circle thing again, thinking to myself:

"I need to be careful, I don't want to flop the ear buds into my tea."

Followed almost immediately by *sploosh*.

On the positive side, they seem to still be working fine as I quickly grabbed them, and with no other recourse immediately to hand, sucked the tea out of them. Then, not thinking about gross factor, plugged them into my ears to see if they still worked.

Anyone ever given themself a wet willie? Bleh.

The time before that was actually Christmas day. I was peeling potatoes. Felt the peeler slipping on the peels and thought to myself:

"I should be careful, I don't want to peel my finger."

Followed by the peeler shooting off the potato and peeling a big slice off my left index finger. Followed by me saying "Ow. Oops." Followed by my sister looking at me like I was nuts and saying, "Ooops? I don't want to hear oops." Followed by me trying to sneak by to go take care of my gushing fingertip.

My left index finger actually seems to get the short end of the majority of these moments that stick in my mind. On Thanksgiving I had another of these moments right before I sliced open my left index finger (this time with the chef knife). And actually, same thing at Labor Day. And a couple years ago when trying to hack up dog treats. (That was, "Hm, I should be careful, I don't want to lose a finger." And they actually ended up just cutting that little piece the rest of the way off cause it was too little to try and reattach.) And previously also shortly after Tim and I were married and he brought me flowers and I nearly decapitated my left index finger with the kitchen shears while trimming stems.

Maybe my left hand should start being worried that it doesn't know what the right is doing!