What this post needs is a really great opening line. It could also use a tight outline, a thesis statement and at least one coherent idea to hold the whole thing together. Then there would be a killer last line that would leave you all asking for more.
I don’t have any of those today. Makes you wonder why I should write a post at all today.
What I do have is a slightly smashed right pinky finger that is sensitive to hot water and from time to time makes typing the letter ‘p’ or quote marks a somewhat interesting experience since sometimes I hit the little tiny bruise just right to cause just enough pain to say, “I did something to that finger.”
Of course that means that my brain is spinning out reasons to use quotes, ‘p’s in large numbers. I have noticed something odd just now about typing – I don’t use my pinky finger to hit the backspace key. Nope, I use my right hand ring finger. I’m sure that’s not the one your supposed to use, but seems I do.
Guess you can call it muscle memory. I’ve been noticing that a lot more lately – you know, you do things with your hands that you don’t really give conscious thought to.
Quick, which hand do you use to turn on the water tap? Which direction is on? Right or left? Up or down?
The other weird typing thing today is that I have a bandaid on my right thumb and I can’t really feel the space bar when I hit it. I see spaces appearing on the screen but don’t actually feel my thumb doing it. Weird.
That’s another thing my muscles just do on their own. I think “space” and one appears. There is no conscious, “move right thumb.” It just happens.
Kind of like why I have a bandaid on my thumb. You see, earlier today I was moving some lumber around when I felt a stabbing pain and looked down to see a rather large splinter sticking out. Next thing I’m pulling out and not trying to bleed on anything important. It wasn’t really a big deal, but I’ll always remember my first workshop boss and his wise words to me when I was just 20 years old, “Don’t bleed on the equipment.”
Since then I’ve done my best to watch where I bleed.
Now I am proud to say that when I smashed my pinky finger yesterday that it didn’t bleed at all. I do have an impressive bruise there which gets back to why I’m doing so many quotes and ‘p’s in this post.
Okay, I’d better answer this before you all ask in the comments. You see I was in the backyard digging out this very large Russian Sage bush with roots that are only slightly softer than concrete. I started with a shovel, then moved to a pickaxe and finally thought a crowbar might help lift that one pesky root far enough away from the rock wall it was up against to get a good swing at it with the axe part of the pickaxe.
Note that by this point I’d used both pick and axe parts and wasn’t afraid to give that bush what for.
Sadly for my pinky finger, my hand slipped off the crowbar and my finger rapidly jammed itself between the end of the bar and a rather hard rock. Then to make sure I didn’t fall forward into the hole, I leaned backwards, fell on my butt, crowbar went flying and I became alarmed that I might have broken my figure or worse started to bleed.
After all, I was wearing a nearly new pair of gloves and was really close to tools.
Much to my relief, it wasn’t that bad just a smash and a slowly building awareness that I’d just done something rather stupid. Looking at the situation, I knew that I shouldn’t have tried that maneuver, but it was too late. Personally, I blame muscle memory for encouraging me to get the crowbar.
So with all that I don’t really have a post to share this week.
Maybe next week my muscle memory will have something better to say.
Andrew's View of the Week 