Puncture Wound

2:30 p.m.

Justin started his baseball internship Saturday. I was alone with a houseful of...the dog. The cats couldn't be bothered to come inside. However, Michele's man is out of country right now, so we had some quality time sitting on the couch, watching What Not to Wear, and eating.

It's nice having a truly good girl friend again. It's been nearly three years since I've had one. You know, the kind you can call up and say, "Come watch tv with me, I promise I'll put on a bra if you come over." I'm glad I've met nice women here, and I truly feel lucky and blessed she's around.

I might have confessed this to her after one (1) glass of wine Sunday afternoon.

Shut up.

Where was I going with this?

Right.

So it was a beautiful weekend, windy and warm and sunny. I've been dreading Justin's internship, but this first weekend was made much nicer by gardening and Michele's presence. I spent a lot of time weeding and realized I have a bazillion poppies coming up. (I also realized I pulled up an entire flower bed of poppies a few weeks ago, because I thought they were just ugly little weeds. I don't have a future in the opium business, clearly.) I planted forget-me-nots, some wildflower seeds, and more poppies. Michele and I did two of my favorite things Sunday afternoon--sat in the afternoon sunlight in the airy living room and talked. I cooked. It was lovely.

After she left Sunday evening, I sat on the deck with my second glass of wine, barefoot and sleepy and sun burnt and content. Coltrane sat two steps below me, purring loudly. I listened to the wind rustling the leaves of our trees, I lazily watched a bumblebee hum near the birdbath. I could smell grass and my wine, I let the tips of my fingers touch Coltrane's head. The sun was warm, the breeze was cool. The trees' leaves and clouds seemed tense and perfect, razor-thin edges sharp enough to cut their way through the background of sky, where they would fall somewhere black and silent. I thought about Justin, I thought about my sister. I thought about poppies and lilacs, I thought I'd like to try roses someday. Very peaceful. Very happy.

Eventually I stood, stretched, and started to go inside, but stopped, because it was so beautiful. "Not yet," I chirped to Coltrane, and descended a few steps.

This is, of course, when I stepped on a huge splinter of deck. And essentially got a thick pointed stick stuck nearly an inch into the bottom of my foot.

Thank goodness for that wine. Because I tugged on that thing as hard as I could, and it would not budge. After fruitlessly yanking and a few minutes of just staring at it in apathetic confusion, I hobbled inside to find a needle/scalpel/sword to dig the thing out.

Again. The wine? A lifesaver. I have a feeling that without it, I would have been FREAKING OUT COMPLETELY. Probably hyperventilating. But...I didn't. And I lived. After I sort of cut the thing out, I did call Michele to see if I was supposed to worry about, I don't know, tetanus or flesh-eating bacteria or anything, but we decided it was probably fine.

Just a puncture wound, no big deal! Just an injury from the filthy dirty deck that our three disgusting pets roll around on constantly!

Puncture wounds totally don't even look cool after the fact, do they? Just...a hole. I didn't even have the desire to peel off the My Little Pony band aid when Justin got home, to show him.

Lame.

Love,

black sheep