Jane's Journal of Idiotic Moves

April 14, 2011
6:10 a.m. and I'm bleeding like a Long-Island liberal into the sink of our first-floor bathroom. A minute earlier, I had been outside, enjoying a morning stretch with Hobbes the Hobo Dog.

Somewhere between the stretch and the bloodbath, I had decided to put a big rock atop our hot tub, anticipating the windy storms of this afternoon and evening. We have three hefty rocks mixed among the river rocks near the patio and I reached for the nearest one, forgetting about the long, dark frame of the hammock.

It was a clumsy, short pole dance, one requiring more of my nose and right eye than my pelvis and legs, though they, too, collapsed temporarily.

I squealed like a penned pig, an odd, high-pitched noise escaping from my lips.

As I splashed cold water on the wound, I sputtered a request to Allison, who was upstairs.

"ALLISON! I, uh, need your help, I think. Can you bring down an old sock and fill it with ice?"

It's a cool-looking wound, as wounds go, surprisingly neat and scalloped-shape. Nothing for a doctor to sew back together, I guess. And my eye's only a bit puffy and red. Like a low pollen-count eyeball day, really. Aside from the gaping nose wound.

Early January, 2009

When it was time to buy a new stove, I discovered they'd made several upgrades since we'd last shopped for one. (This is a regularly-occurring phenomena in the Holt household, where "new" cars are cars that were bought in the current decade and "new" jeans are jeans bought from a store that has only been out of business for 3 years).

The new-fangled stoves are mostly flat-top ones, free from the bulky burners of yore. Makes them much easier to cook on. AND much easier to break with a candle that falls from the cupboard just above the stove. But that's another story.

One other thing you should know about these new-fangled flat-topped stoves is that, when you turn a burner off, the pretty red glow of the burner disappears right away, too.

For us slow, visual learners, who are just old enough and tired enough to need to lean on things, this is not really a good thing.

That night, I was whipping together a little dinner for the fam, as well as for a friend of Allison's, who was spending the night. As I reached to the back burner, I leaned my hand on the front one, looking for support or warmth or comfort. All I got was warmth. One out of three. . . . and the sickest-looking handful of blisters that you have ever laid eyes on.

I spent the rest of the night wincing and icing and levitating and cursing and squeezing and maybe just a wee bit of weeping was thrown in there, as well. I slept with my hand wrapped in an elaborate ice-filled contraption, elevated above my head. I woke the next morning to the world's newest mountain range, and the only one, to date, made of flesh.

Late August 2000
I went through a glycerin-soap phase, buying buckets of the clear, waxy stuff and transforming it into bejeweled, personalized, stunning creations--or so I tell myself. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I actually enjoyed thinking about, making and buying soaps during this time in my life.

One night, I found myself home alone and decided to take a long, soaking bath in our clawfoot tub. I was excited to use the new soap I'd just bought at TJ MAXX, some mango-infused fancy bar from a faraway country. Somehow, it had ended up out of the tub, wedged between one of the tub's legs and the bathroom wall. I reached down to pick it up, immediately noting its exfoliating texture.

I didn't give it another thought until I started to scrub my bum, which felt even more bum after soaping it up. By then, I'd already cleaned most of my body, periodically stopping to consider just what kind of oatmeal additive could make a soap feel so rough and tumble.

I backed off the scrub-a-dub plan a bit, then, and called it good, having addressed the major players, at least.

Our mirror was directly across the tub and it was hard not to notice myself as I emerged from the tub. Hard, not because I'm a looker, but rather because I looked like I'd just endured thirty lashes.

Which kind of explains why I uttered "Good Lord!"

What I had thought was an exceptionally exfoliating soap turned out to be ordinary soap covered in tiny bits of broken glass. Apparently, one of the kids had brought in and broken a glass during a recent bath, and missed a few pieces or twenty. All of which magically ended up on that bar of soap.

From my neck to my ankles, and most places in between, I was covered in long, red scratches.

Even though it was the hot end of summer, I wore long sleeves the next day, unable to face my colleagues and students with what was a most befuddling truth--that I had cut myself repeatedly with a bar of soap.

To help stifle the blows of humiliation, I offered students $10 if they could guess how I incurred such injuries.

"Rabid cat?"
"A fall into thorny bushes?"
"Knife fight with a new gang member?"

Now that I think about it, I should probably bring $10 to school tomorrow, too, because no one's going to believe how I got this gash on my nose.