Hearing, Hair-do's, Blood & Mowers

Here's another refrain on an old familiar gripe of mine. How can a man supposedly so intelligent be so completely dense when it comes to interpreting what you can't really hear? Tonight Joe came into the living room, Lola wasn't there.  He asked where she'd gone. I replied, "to the bathroom." He looked at me and asked, "Bob's room?" We don't have a Bob in our family. Now, this isn't the old-age senility. He would have asked this far-gone of a question 10 years ago when he still had a brain that worked - kind of.

I finally forced Mother to go to a hair salon yesterday. I have absolutely no skill fixing hair.  I can cut my own hair, but don't like to anymore. I tried trimming Mom's but didn't do the best job in the world. She used to go get her hair fixed every Friday, but she reached a point when the arguments to get her to get up and go became harder than living with her hair not fixed.

However, to keep her hair from growing long enough to need putting up in a bun, it needs to be cut every now and then. So yesterday, I made her go the beauty shop. Sharon, at Hair Affair, did a fantastic job of the cut and the style. Lola came out looking like Lola.  It was so nice to see her normal.

Yet, today, she has sat around all day in a hair net. I tried 3 different times to get her to take it off. She'd take it off, and the next thing I realized, there it was again, back on so she didn't mess up her hair. I told her once to go in the bathroom and pick out her hair. She came back saying she just couldn't do her hair anymore. Sigh.

Mowing? Well, hallef*glullah, I went to Paducah today and bought Joe a new lawn mower. Uncle, you can come over and pick up the old one. Joe's finally got one that he can start and that will start again if he lets it quit. It's a wonderful machine.

The only problem with this new mower is that it tried to cut my finger off. I did the same thing to a different degree that Uncle Charles did with another of our mowers. The riding mowing tried to skin the back of his arm.

The front wheels needed resetting. Why, oh why, do manufacturers set the front wheels to a setting that is for "level lawns only?" Like, 1 in 20 people have level lawns. So I needed to reset the front wheels, after I attached the back ones. Of course, the wheels had to have the screws put in with hydraulic tighteners, I swear. So normal people, or at least women in their 50's, have to struggle with undoing the bolts to reset the wheels to normal levels.

As usual when working on the underside of a mower, the wrench slipped, and something hit the blade. In Uncle's case, it was above his elbow, and I was useless and begged him to go the doctor's. In my case, it was my middle finger, and I was a big baby.

It put a gash over 1/2" long just below the middle knuckle on my right hand. It hit the bone. I slopped blood all over the place - on the mower, the driveway, the back of my car. I made it across the pink carpet safely (like that's not so old and filthy it would have mattered) with cupped hand under bleeding hand. I dripped blood down the faucet.

Admitting full-fledged panic, I called Sandy, one of our sitters and pleaded for her to drop everything and come help me. Like an angel, she did. By the time she arrived, I'd calmed down a bit. I'd applied pressure, and the bleeding was mostly stopped. My stomach turned every time I tried to assess the damage, but we finally decided I could probably do with a couple of stitches; though the world wouldn't end if I didn't have them.

There were no veins or tendons cut. There were no butterfly bandages in the house; so we made do with a big band-aid. After we put that on as tight as feasible, we whacked off a Popsicle stick and band-aided that to my finger so it wouldn't bend. A few hours later, I redid everything to reposition the popsicle stick, and of course, started a fresh flow of bleeding. But I've gotten everything cleaned up, washed out, drenched in antiseptic and anesthetic, repopsicle-sticked, and am managing to sit here and type without my middle finger.

Why do emergencies always seem to happen on a weekend? It's a little swollen and bruised. If it doesn't get worse by Monday,  I'll have a scar and be okay. If it does, I'll have my butt into the doctor's first thing Monday morning.

But Joe has a mower he can start and that doesn't cost a fortune to mow the grass with. He has something to do to make him feel useful, much less actually be useful. It actually starts when you pull the starter, and doesn't give you blisters trying to start it.