The Cut (WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES)

I cut my finger today while I was doing dishes. I dropped a glass vase in the sink. Since I have the reflexes of an awesome ninja-catwoman hybrid, I am usually able to catch things that fell, but today, when I tried, I was just a millisecond too late and my hand and the vase became one!
As a kid, you wonder how you'll know if a cut needs stitches--it turns out you just know. There was a lot of blood. Blood on the sink, blood on the vase, blood on the floor. I grabbed a paper towel and put pressure on it. Some very kind friends (including our G.P.) were willing to help us out so I went into my doctor's office instead of having to go to the E.R. I had to keep pressure on the cut and have it elevated. I did so for about an hour--but the bleeding still didn't stop!

My Cut. You can see the hanging flap at the bottom. My doc cut away that flap and used scissors to even out the jagged edges so that my skin would close more smoothly.

Next, he washed it out with a lot of saline solution. It stung a little. Also there was a ton of blood running down the back of my hand--so much that I thought I maybe had another cut I didn't notice before.

All clean? It had been washed thoroughly--even rubbed down with alcohol--but it would NOT stop bleeding.

At this point, the depth of the cut became apparent. At the top of the cut you can see that the subcutaneous fat is sticking out--there was some at the bottom of the cut, too. There was a medical student who was helping. He didn't get the chance to do much except switch out my super bloody paper towels.

Now it got serious. The doc told me that the next part would hurt a lot and that I needed to hold my finger really still for the Lidocaine. Surprisingly up until this point, it really didn't hurt that much. It felt like a cut, but even though it looks horrific I wasn't in agony or anything.

He wasn't kidding when he said it would hurt. He stuck the needle in like a quarter inch (which is pretty deep for a finger) and started to fill it up with Lidocaine. The pain was intense for the first second or two of the shot and then there was just the very uncomfortable sensation of your finger being inflated. To fully numb the site he gave me about five of these shots--some of which he stuck in a half inch or so. The worst part was feeling the skin on my knuckle expand as my finger got fatter and fatter. I was more agitated by that than by the pain from the shot.

It's me and my doctor. The ickiest part of this experience for me was just before this, when he cut off pieces of my skin around the cut. Right now he's starting stitches. He started with a big one in the middle of the cut that he tied off four times. Then he made a stitch on either side. My cut was still bleeding the whole time.

Even with three stitches in, I was still bleeding. Your finger has two little arteries that go up the sides and I swear it was like a teeny, oozing arterial spurt. I could see it coming out with my pulse.

This is what I look like when I'm carefully listening to instructions. No boot camp til Monday. Check. If it starts heavily bleeding or really hurts, call the office because that's a sign of infection. Check. Brandon should take you to brunch. Check. You'll notice I'm applying pressure still, even after being all bandaged up because it STILL hasn't stopped bleeding.

Anyway, I definitely learned my lesson and will not be doing dishes again for a long, long time. Brandon and I went to the Inn on Coventry for an awesome brunch (I specifically asked my doc to recommend it to Brandon as part of my medical treatment).

The bleeding finally stopped (it started again just a tiny bit when I hugged Greta too enthusiastically). In the hour or two after my stitches, the lidocaine wore off and it started to feel like my skin had been cut, washed, poked with needles, cut again and had four nylon threads tied through it, but I imagine that's only to be expected. I took some ibuprofen (I know, bleeding risk, but if I hadn't bled to death out of the cut by then, a few more drops couldn't hurt) and felt fine. Now it generally only hurts if I flex my finger too much.

Special thanks to my very kind, patient doctor and his sweet wife and as always, to my wonderful supporter/dynamite cameraman Brandon. And to med student Nick who tried to clean off my bloodstained hands with an alcohol wipe and was mostly unsuccessful. I mocked him until I tried to do it myself later--suddenly I understand where Lady Macbeth was coming from. BAM! Surgery and Shakespeare all in one day!

Audio Games for the Blind

Brandon's been working hard on creating video games, sometimes with excellent support from me, and sometimes with zero patience from the old ball and chain.

This weekend was a no patience kind of time. I've been working to death on my first ever summary judgment motion, which I finally turned in on Friday. It was 33 pages long (written  entirely by me, with some snippets from cases and laws thrown in), accompanied by two affidavits, six affidavit exhibits, 55 pictures and 2 hours of video footage that all had to be analyzed, collated, numbered, duplicated, proofread, and finally shipped off by yours truly. So I wanted a weekend to party down with my Bran muffin, play video games, eat a ton of pizza, and go to sample day with my buddy.

Brandon wrenched this all away from me by making plans (well in advance and which I was well aware of) to participate in a group "game jam" this weekend with his Cleveland video game designer group.

My big accomplishment this weekend was thus making a super snug nap cave.

I may not have been the first one in the family with this idea. Oddly enough, the Diet Dr. Pepper has no effect on Greta's ability to sleep 20-22 hours a day.

Unfortunately, the pads are too small to stretch your legs out all the way and you wake up feeling totally horrible, but something about it also induces huge, happy naps that last for hours. 

Anyway, so Brandon came home every once in a while and I'd try to entrap him into staying. He did go to lunch with me on Saturday, but for the rest of the time, kept his eye on the prize, much to my horror.

It occurs to me that it might be nice for Brandon to have a patient, loving and unconditionally supportive wife. Maybe if the IVF kills me, he'll be luckier the next time around.

So...the theme for the games that all these groups were getting together to work on was the sound of a beating heart. Creep.y.

My one supportive act this weekend was to suggest a theme based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Telltale Heart aka a poem that has permanently made me uncomfortable with the sound of a beating heart--even if it's my own.

My suggestion was to have it be something along the lines of whack a mole, but with the murderer having all these hearts pop up from underground and he has to kill them before they make him go crazy. (It's not my fault that everything I imagine is horrible.)

Brandon actually liked my idea, and took it one step further to create a game that was designed specifically for the visually impaired. He commissioned one of the team artists to create floating "insanity" pictures that had nothing to do with the game, so a non-visually impaired player wouldn't be totally unstimulated, but then the artist flaked so when you play it, you see a pulsating red and black screen and nothing more. He made the sound so it interacts with a stereo speaker system (it works with headphones and to some degree with computer speakers as long as they have a stereo type output.) You hear the heartbeat and touch (or click) the part of the screen that it's coming from. You can play it here.

I have it on good authority that if you play it and give it a good rating, you will get a cookie from Brandon.

I'm so proud of Brandon for his hard work and for always working to learn new code languages and for putting in hours and hours working toward his goals.

Hey--retroactive support is better than none :)

Winter Wreath

One of my fun projects this year is going to be finding discount  and clearance flowers and ribbons and creating a monthly wreath out of the fake evergreen wreath Brando bought me for Christmas.

This is my first one!!!

 I'm trying to use my Canon Elph more but I'm not very good at deciding flash or not flash so here's one of each!

Brandon liked it a lot. He said he would pay $100 for it. (He shortly thereafter clarified that if he were selling it he would charge $100 for it and expect someone else to gladly pay it.) 

Anyway, Happy January!! 

Rad Christmas Gifts and a New Resolution!!

This Christmas, I made some new friends!

I just got released from primary, (I wish I felt more ambivalent about this, but I'm really just glad--it's a really hard job!) and I wanted to do something awesome for Christmas! Unfortunately, I got a little overwhelmed so I didn't get them done in time for Christmas. I did, however, manage to get them done for our last class last week. 

2 weeks ago, I had my class members (all 6 years old) draw self-portraits. Then I made clay ornaments out of their self-portraits! 

It was hard work, but a lot of fun. I hope they don't look crappy. The very hardest part were their hands. Almost all of the kids drew themselves with arms flung wide and fingers spread apart. I didn't want to sacrifice structural integrity (every doll has a metal wire skeleton for support) and put on tiny fingers that would just snap off. I finally ended up making balls on the ends of their arms, smashing them and cutting them apart into fingers. (I still think the dolls without fingers look a lot better.)

This was my masterpiece. The girl who drew this obviously has a more abstract sense. To me the picture looks almost melancholy, but years of art history and art appreciation have obviously impaired my ability to see that sometimes a stick figure is just a stick figure. A lonely figure with bowed head muses in unhappy solitude while the color and life of the rest of the world pass her by. 

This is the only one I drew with a background, since  the self-portrait itself didn't have a ton of detail. My favorite part: I made little clay versions of the butterfly shapes that are on the drawing. My least favorite part: the butterflies are almost completely covered by the girl. 

I was worried about having the names on here, but that's the only detail I'll provide. This is the first one I made. I love her hair. I think this clay doll looks more like the actual kid than any of the others. (I do want to note that the actual girl has genuine facial features, rather than a smilie face). 

One of two boys in the class--and the first doll with the fingers that I talked about before. Sorry it's sideways--I can't figure out how to rotate it!! With all the ornaments, I tried to make the features look just like they were drawn, so the smile is a little cockeyed on my clay version, too!

*sigh* another sideways picture. This girl put so much detail into her drawing, and I wanted her ornament to reflect that, too. I tried to make clay freckles, but it didn't work! They looked horrific and I couldn't make them big enough to look intentional but small enough to be distinguishable as freckles and not weird face holes or something. I meant to draw the freckles on with a pen later...but then I forgot :(
Also, she's the only one with eyes with pupils, so I layered the clay in smaller and smaller circles on top of each other.

For this girl, the hair was an issue. She drew it as brown, but in real life, it is pretty blonde. I wanted to be as true to the drawing as possible, but as someone who is mortally offended whenever anyone insinuates at all that my hair isn't blonde, I couldn't resist mixing in just a little bit of blonde.
I think her fingers turned out the best, but by the time I got it to her, one of them had already fallen off!!

This one was the first one I started on, but the last one I finished. I didn't have a drawing of the girl and so I had to figure out how to make it look like a drawing she might have drawn of herself. The scariest part of this was that I originally didn't intend to make these ornaments, but just regular figurines. So after I made the doll, I decided to shove in the ornament hook. Fortunately, the doll survived this invasive procedure. I love the way that the clay hair has worked out this time--I love the feathered look on this doll. I also tried to do eyelashes. It was sooo hard, and once again, ended up getting covered up anyway!

I didn't have a drawing for the other boy, so I ended up doing the same thing. I thought he looked like the boy from the Phantom Tollbooth, but then I looked at the cover again and I don't think that anymore. He still looks familiar, though!

This is my other project--for my Visiting Teachees. It's a travel kit! Brandon's Grandma had one of these in her car. I memorized it and then made it at home!!  You take an oven mitt, sew on a button to make it a little pouch, and then sew in a whole bunch of little snack bags filled with travel stuff. For my VTs I included stain wipes, breath mints, chapstick, disposable latex gloves, tooth flossers, and a couple extra bags just in case. I also had ibuprophen and lotion but they didn't quite fit. 

Also, there's a tension problem in my sewing machine, that I am apparently unable to resolve. The stitches look okay from the inside, but are loopy on the bottom. That indicates a problem in the lower threading, but I have been unable to solve it yet.

Oh, yeah, there were also bandaids! Once I got all the stuff together, it was surprisingly easy to put together. Again, this is the packet I made for myself and I was out of all the other stuff so the lotion and Ibuprophen fit!! Guess what? I've already saved Brandon's life with this kit!! (or given him an ibuprophen for his headache). 

In this shot, you can see how good the stitches looked from the inside. What happened on the outside?!!

Just a sample of some of the excellent and helpful goodies in my little pack!

Anyway, these gifts were fun and all of them were delivered at least a week after Christmas, which makes them extra special (or something like that). 

NOW, FOR THE RESOLUTION: IN 2013, BRANDON AND I WILL POST 50 EXAMPLES OF AWESOME, NON-FOOD PLACES TO VISIT IN NORTHEASTERN OHIO! (We realized that everywhere we went in Cleveland was a food place.)

Gingerbread House!

Every year, the Cleveland Botanical Gardens holds a gingerbread house contest (well, for the past 9 years). Every year I want to do it. And every year, I never think about it until it's too late. WELL, NOT THIS YEAR!

It took a TON of work, but here it is:

The Best Gate Ever

I'm planning on adding flames along the posts like in Jurassic Park

I built this gate, almost 100% by myself (Brandon and I built the gate part together a couple months ago as part of another project that didn't pan out). I want to create a step-by-step guide (sadly, without pictures) to demonstrate how I created this wicked awesome gate, and how you can too!!

1. Step One (this is a lie--my actual step one was to think about it, worry about it, plan, plan, plan it, and finally, when climbing over the crappy fence that surrounds the chickens, hit my ankle super hard on one of those green supports you can see in the back, and wander around whispering, "you're okay, you're okay, you're okay, you're okay" until the pain subsided enough for me to get angry and actually start building the thing.): Supplies: 

• 2 4x4x8 weather-treated posts ($6.97 each at Lowes)
• 1 80-lb bag of Quickrete Setting Post Concrete Mix (you can get the quick drying stuff, but I've heard bad things about cracking, so just get the regular kind--if you're really serious about putting those posts in FOREVER, you may want to get two bags--I think a bag and a half would be ideal for this job. ($3.65 at Lowes)
• 2 3.5" galvanized hinge sets (this is probably overkill for the job, but at least your gate will never even THINK about sagging) ($4.96 each at Lowes)
• self-closing gate latch (I spent about $5 at Lowes, but online the closest approximation is $10.67).
• 3-inch heavy duty deck nails ($5 at Ace)
• 1.5-inch stainless steel screws ($3 at Lowes)
• 5 2x1x8 boards (mine are not weather treated, so we'll see how they hold up--I'm going to shellac them with outdoor paint)
• plastic or vinyl chicken wire (I shy away from the metal stuff because it tends to rust after use)
• gravel (I had a bunch in my yard already--the project took a couple of shovelfuls so you won't need more than a regular bag from a lawn and garden store)

Tools:

• power drill (the drill bits often come with the screws if they have weird heads--but pay attention to the head type needed--I bought the #2 Philips head for this project, and it was terribly helpful.
• trenching shovel (optional, but it was helpful with the really tough/rocky dirt.
• post-hole digger (it's a worthwhile investment, even just for this project) mine was the very basic scooper kind that was $24 at Lowes
• respirator mask
• eye goggles
• gloves
• wheelbarrow (optional) there is not very much concrete--you just need somewhere to mix it
• level

Step 2: Dig the post holes. Hopefully step 1 wasn't too daunting--it's easier from here on out. Determine how wide apart you want the posts to be--the basic frame for my gate already existed when I started, so I tried to do it around that, but the best way is to dig posts first, make gate second--because as you get going, you may have to change spacing, etc.

As well as you can, decide where you want to position your posts and make sure they're on a straight line with each other. Dig your post holes at least 1/3 the height of your post. Since my posts were 8 feet each, I had to dig 32". Digging was the most labor intensive part of this process and took the course of several days to finish because my soil was so hard and rocky and then sandy so it kept slipping through the post hole shovels. The best way is to slam the post hole digger into the ground repeatedly until it sticks, then wrench the ends apart and pull the dirt out from the hole. 

RAIN TIP: put your posts in the post holes when you're done for the day, and then if it rains they won't fill in on you!

Step 3: Fill up the Post Holes. I put in 5" of gravel, then inserted the posts on top. Now is a good opportunity to ensure your posts are of equal height. Put another couple shovelfuls of gravel around the post in the hole. 

Then mix the concrete: It's easy--for an 80lb bag, you only need 3/4 gallons of water. BE SURE TO WEAR GLOVES AND A MASK AND EYE PROTECTION. The curing process heats the concrete and can cause severe burns on skin contact. The concrete mix also contains silica, which can cause a serious lung condition called silicosis--just wear protection and you'll be okay. (technically, silicosis requires a LOT of exposure so this probably wouldn't be enough, but why take the risk?) All of these warnings make the concrete sound super scary, but it's really not. I tried mixing with shovels, but the concrete even when wetted has the consistency of wet sand and it was easiest to just dig in with my gloved hands. 

Knowing the consistency is helpful because it means you have some time to reposition and pack the posts in their holes to make them even. 

I mixed the concrete in my wheelbarrow and had just enough to make a 6-8" collar about 3 times the width of the posts at the top--make your post holes wider at the top so you get a lot of stability from the cement--the gravel will help hold it in place below and allow for drainage so your posts won't rot as quickly. 

Wash your wheelbarrow and tools off with the hose--you'll have time before it dries--it should take about 24 hours to be solid and will continue curing for at least a week before reaching it's maximum strength. 

Step 4: Make sure the posts are level. Hopefully you've made sure that your holes are straight, that everything looks all right and so forth, but now is the time to really make sure before things are literally set in stone. I used my level to make sure that each post was level front-to-back and side-to-side. I buried the concrete collars about 24 hours after I shoveled them in--I figure that will seal in the moisture and help it become stronger. 

Step 5: Build the gate! This part is really easy compared to the first few steps. Measure the distance between the fence posts, and subtract an inch--this is the width of your gate. The height is up to you, but you should plant to leave a three-inch clearance under your gate so that if the gate does start to sag a bit, you're not up a creek. 

Build your gate frame. You are balancing weight, strength, privacy and durability--a picket gate will weigh more than mine, but it will provide more privacy and be stronger than my chicken wire, lumber model, but since this fence is geared at keeping chickens in their pen, I'm not too worried about strength. In our case, we built the frame by cutting the side pieces at an angle so they dovetailed together. Two people are needed to screw it together. Add cross-braces at intervals along the length of the gate and one long cross-brace diagonally from the bottom of the gate on the hinge side to the top of the gate at the latch side. Spray with polyurethane or other outdoor protective paint, then staple on the plastic/vinyl chicken wire to cover all the openings of the fence. (I literally watched a chicken crawl under 3 layers of rusty chicken wire to escape today so be sure to leave no holes). 

I thought it was easier to attach the hardware to the gate first, then to the posts. Use the 3-inch deck screws to really affix the galvanized hinges to the gate posts--use the shorter ones for the gate itself. 

Step 6: Affix the gate to the gate posts. And wonder why you didn't do this long ago!

Hopefully this is more helpful than boring. :)

Trimato!

Today's exciting garden treasure: a three-bottomed tomato. I know potatoes grow like this when their water supply is too sporadic. In light of this summer's drought& downpour weather, maybe that's what happened!

Also, last night I dreamed that Brandon's parents went to the Mansfield Reformatory with us and we saw tons of ghosts, and even a ghost dog that looked like Greta and led us to hidden treasures!