So there I was today, ripping out carpet in the brown parlor, listening to the Robert Earl Keen channel on Pandora, and cussing because the last bit of carpet was stuck to the floor extraordinarily well, all while wearing flip-flops. This is a cautionary tale, folks. (And if you follow me on Twitter, you know what's coming.)
I stepped into the closet to get a better angle for yanking on the carpet. Ow! Ow, ow, OW! What the heck was that?! I fell back against the closet wall and grabbed my right foot. Blood dripped off the side of my $1.50 flip-flop. (That's $1.50 for the pair, not just the one, so you know they're high-quality.) I may or may not have said numerous very bad swears at that point. I'd taken a copper staple to the foot.
As I hopped on one foot to the bathroom, stringing blood through three rooms, I remembered that the night before, several of us had gotten into a discussion on Facebook about when and where it's appropriate to wear flip-flops. How ironic. If I didn't have a hematoma the size of a quarter on the ball of my foot, I might even think that's funny. Right then it just made me mad. At myself, for wearing stupid shoes. In fact, it made me so mad that after the bleeding stopped (apply-direct-pressure-with-a-clean-cloth-don't-lift-it-up-to-look-at-it-if-it-keeps-bleeding-you're-not-pressing-hard-enough) and I'd put on both a Band-Aid and some real shoes, I went back in the parlor, yelled out "Towanda!" (or a profane equivalent), tore out the carpet, and then yanked the staple out of the floor. There's a practical reason for that last bit: I wanted to make sure the staple was intact and part of it wasn't still in my foot.
Tonight, at the direction of my favorite medic, my brother-from-another-mother Kenny, it's rest, elevation, ice, Tylenol if needed, and Vitamin C. ("Vitamin C?" I said. "Sure," Kenny replied, "It helps restore the blood supply. Why do you think they give you oranges when you donate blood?")
Tomorrow, I'll be scraping the glued-down carpet pad off the floor and painting some trim. And wearing proper shoes.