Every morning, as I limp down the hallway from the bedroom to the kitchen, no matter how stiff I am with arthritis, no matter how poorly I’ve slept, as soon as I get to the kitchen, my heart becomes lighter.
“Good morning, fur children,” I chirp. They woof and growl and gambol and pant. They know it’s cookie time for the canine contingent, but coffee time for me.
I make a brief detour to turn on the coffee pot. Priorities.
There’s no more time to waste. Eager faces surround me as I approach the huge dog biscuit container on the table in the corner. It’s shaped like a giant dog biscuit — lest I forget. The dogs , with their acute senses of smell, are more than aware of where to find the biscuits. Eyes not required.
They know my hands are the true source of all biscuits, so they watch me with their eyes. Excitement mounts.
Bishop is an Australian Shepherd. Lacking sheep, he stares at me, with the apparent objective of engendering guilt. It works pretty well. He is also Bonnie’s love slave.
Then there’s Nan, the Norwich Terrier. Nan stares, but adds sound effects. Grunts and agonized moans. She’s starving she says. She hasn’t eaten in … minutes. She will repeat this performance whether she is still chewing the biscuit she just got or it’s been a whole night since her last treat.
And last, but not at all least, there’s Bonnie. She bounces up and down, bounds around the kitchen like a mad thing, twirling and spinning, yapping and prancing. She’s young and full of joie de vivre. Shortly, she will be full of biscuits.
They all believe if they don’t remind me, I will forget them and their cookies. These dogs have never missed a treat or a meal in their lives but you’d never guess it.
The sun streaks in through the windows, the smell of coffee fills the room. Joyous gurgling and crunching from the furry ones and I’m off to the office to check my email and see what surprises the night has brought. Another day is begun.
I watch too many shows about murders and forensics. NCIS, Law & Order, Criminal Minds, CSI, Body of Evidence and so many more. I’ve seen an awful lot of people convicted on blood evidence. I know how incriminating traces of a victim’s blood can make someone look.
This evening, while making dinner, I nicked myself with a paring knife. This isn’t an unusual event. I am not nearly careful enough in the kitchen. I have a bad habit of slicing off the tips of fingers, stabbing myself, then bleeding all over the place. I used to joke that the blood of the cook was mixed in the food, but it wasn’t entirely untrue. My son and my husband both have been known to pull knives out of my hands and chop the veggies themselves because watching me using a knife made them unbearably nervous.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t bleed so much, but I do. This is ironic indeed because when I go for tests at the hospital, they can never find a vein or get any blood out of me. I have suggested I just bring a paring knives, slice open a finger and they can have more blood than they’ll know what to do with, but for some reason, they don’t find this suggestion nearly as funny as I do.
Anyway, I nicked myself cutting up the chicken sausages. It wasn’t a bad cut as these things go and if I hadn’t been in the middle of preparing dinner while simultaneously fighting with the cable company on the telephone, I might have put a band-aid onto my finger faster. Then there wouldn’t have been drops of my blood all over the kitchen. It wasn’t a gusher. Merely a dribbler. Drip. Drip. Drip. Damn, not on my sweater. Blood is so hard to get out of clothing.
After I finally got the food going. I put the knife down, ended the phone call, still snarling at Charter Cable. I really hate those bastards. I made my way to the cupboard, managed to get the blood flow stopped. That was the moment when I realized my blood is all over the kitchen.
It’s from this little nick and all the other cuts, nicks and stabs when I was slicing, dicing, mincing or paring. CSI would have a field day in our kitchen.
If anything ever happens to me and my poor guiltless husband is accused of a crime, they’ll find my blood everywhere. The poor dear will look guilty as hell and all he’s ever done is try to protect me from myself. This is probably the right time point out many of my self stabbings take place while fighting an endless battles with shrink-wrap and other torturous types of packaging. Have you ever tried to get a couple of blister-packed pills out of their containers in the middle of the night? It said “press here” and you do, but all it does is stretch, the urgently needed medication still out of reach.
I have found myself using hemostats (I use them for stringing dolls; I am not a doctor for living people, only plastic ones) to pull cotton out of pill bottles, stabbing blister packs with tweezers (the only pointy things in my bathroom), using a steak knife to cut the plastic seals on a spray bottle, attacking packing tape with a hunting knife. I have two knives — a 4″ folding knife with a turquoise handle and a 5″ sheath knife with a deer antler handle. Nobody has taken them away from me yet, but that’s possibly because I hide them.
I cut myself regularly, but I also damage the contents of packages in my frenzied attempt to actually extract whatever is in there with any tools I have at hand. My favorite tool is a box cutter which I have used for things like prying the back off my Blackberry to get at the battery. It isn’t supposed to require special tools, but my Blackberry Torch was hermetically sealed against owner interference. Unfortunately, taking the back off and removing the battery is the only way to reboot the phone. I gave up and got an iPhone, not because I like the iPhone better. I don’t. I just couldn’t battle my way into the battery compartment one more time.
I do not set out to do myself injury, but in the contest of me against packaging, packaging is clearly winning.
Thus you can find traces of my blood everywhere I’ve ever opened a package and everywhere in my kitchen. You’ll find blood evidence on my computer keys, my mouse, my knives, tweezers and especially my beloved box cutter. I hide my box cutter, always afraid someone will take it from me in a pointless (sorry about the pun) attempt to save me from myself.
If CSI comes here, just show them this post. Maybe they won’t send anyone up for life on my behalf.
How come I never notice that my glass is empty until I’ve gone and gotten my medications and settled down in front of the television?
Why don’t I realize I have to go to the bathroom until after I settle into the sofa with the dogs? For that matter, how come you don’t notice you have to go until you’ve just passed the last rest stop for the next 40 miles?
Why doesn’t the GPS work in the middle of town or in mall parking lots where you really need it most?
Why don’t I realize I forgot something I want to take on vacation until we are just far enough away from home to make it really inconvenient to go back and get it?
Why don’t I remember why I’m standing in the kitchen at all?
How come the dogs need to sing the hallelujah chorus on the only morning all week I can sleep late?
Why can I only think of a good witticism the day after the party?
Why don’t I check to make sure I have enough eggs before I mix the rest of the cake batter? Why didn’t my granddaughter mention she’d used all the eggs? And most of the milk? And the sugar?
With camera in hand, exploring European lands, cultures, food, and drink...mostly with a plan, but sometimes enjoying the adventure of just getting lost.
