Drinking & Sewing.

I cut my finger pretty good last night. I was drinking and sewing, so you are forbidden to have any sympathy for me. It’s okay.

I don’t drink much alcohol these days. I’m just not into it. I realized awhile ago that the increasingly obligatory evening glass of wine was suddenly two obligatory evening glasses of wine and about the time that it became that, I stopped getting a good night’s sleep. I would wake up at 3am and if there’s one thing I do not do, it’s toss and turn. So I’d wake up and read books and try to attack my day — and by noon I was a shell of a woman. When I didn’t drink wine in the evenings, this did not happen. Eureka!

But last night I decided to enjoy a vodka tonic. It’s been months since I indulged in a little evening refreshment and it just sounded nice. A little Tito’s, a little diet Schweppe’s, a little ice. Clink, clink, ahhh. And then, because I am brilliant, I picked up my rotary cutter, which is essentially a razor blade on a wheel. The rotary cutter is to a quilter as the hammer is to the carpenter: an indispensable tool used constantly that can really mess up a finger.

I was slicing around my fan template, zipping to and fro, enjoying some tunes. Sip. Zip. Zip. Sip. “La-la-la,” I sang, and I was so excited about the vodka and the scrap quilt forming on my design wall that I zipped my way right across my index finger and pam! a great flap of skin was now dangling off of me, ruby red blood welling up in astonishing quantity.

“Ah!” I exclaimed and jumped back. I raised my hand over my head and grabbed the first thing I saw to wrap around my wound. What do you suppose I grabbed? Fabric, of course! You see, quilters are very smart. We have bandages at the ready at all times. Carpenters can’t say that (though you could argue they can make a splint pretty quick — or a stretcher.) I hopped up and down and whistled; this thing could be bad, I thought, and I stole a peek. Oh yes! Pretty bad. But there was no tingle, no numbness, so I don’t think I hit a nerve.

The lesson: do not drink and sew. I am not the first to do it, certainly not the first to advise against it, and I know for a fact that I’m not the first to do it anyway and then injure myself. But “the fool who persists in his folly will become wise,” said William Blake, and he actually died while singing, so we should listen to him.

Can I get anyone a drink?