We watch a lot of shows about murder. Between courtroom battles and watching Ducky dismember a corpse (NCIS), I’ve seen it all. People get convicted on blood evidence, even if they didn’t really do anything. I know how incriminating mere traces of a victim’s blood can make anyone look. Which is why I worry about packaging.

These days, Amazon offers you (sometimes, on some items) special packaging that you can open without a pneumatic drill and hacksaw. Unfortunately, this trend has yet to pass down to the people who made those little hanging blister packages. You know, the stuff you pull of racks in stores? Then spend half a day mutilating in an attempt to release whatever has been secured in it?

This evening, while making dinner, I nicked myself with a paring knife. 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 too nervous to watch.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t bleed so much. 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 nearly as funny as I do.

Anyway, I nicked myself cutting up some turkey sausages. It wasn’t a bad cut and if I hadn’t been in a hurry to get dinner fixed while simultaneously fighting with the cable company on the telephone, I might have put a band-aid onto my finger sooner. There would a lot less of my blood all throughout the kitchen. Not a gusher, mind you. Just a mere dribbler.

After I finally got the food cooking, I put the knife down and ended the phone call, still snarling at Charter. That was the moment when I realized my blood was everywhere I looked. One little nick and CSI would have a field day in our kitchen, proving conclusively that my dear husband is a murderer. Of course, someone else would have had to murder me, but from what we’ve seen on television, that shouldn’t be a problem. There are some towns in England where they have to bring new victims in by bus because so many get killed each week on TV serials.

If anything ever happens to me, they’ll find my blood everywhere. Garry will look guilty as hell.

Have you ever tried to get a couple of blister-packed pills out of their containers in the middle of the night? It says “press here” and you do, but all it does is stretch. The medication still out of reach and if you are unlucky, you have also successfully crushed it to powder in its  blister.

The hacking and hewing means I cut myself regularly, but I also damage the contents of packages in my frenzied attempts to extract whatever is in there. I used to use my box cutter to pry the back off my Blackberry to get to the battery. Taking the back off and removing the battery was the only way to reboot the phone, so I gave up and got an iPhone. I didn’t like the iPhone better, but at least I could stop prying the phone apart with a knife blade. Now I have another smart phone and you can’t open it at all, which is fine with me. At least I won’t need to battle my way into a battery compartment again.

I do not set out to do myself injury, but in the contest of me against packaging, packaging is  winning.

My blood everywhere I’ve ever opened a package. You’ll find blood on my computer, mouse, knives, tweezers and especially my beloved box cutter.

I keep my box cutter hidden lest someone try to take it away. You’ll never get my box cutter. Never!