I’m not posting today

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Yesterday I almost sliced off my finger in a bizarre incident that involved near-unbelievable stupidity on my part.  No, I’m not telling you.  Let’s say if a character of mine did this, I’d get dinged for writing an idiot.

Proving that we all do stupid things when sleep deprived and odder than normal

I’ll be back tomorrow.  I don’t do this often — but once every two months or so I hit a wall where I can’t write a post.

I think I’m going to do some stuff in that zazzle shop I’ve been promising ya’ll.

Feel free to leave me future topics to write about in the comments.  Part of my issue is that, as I concentrate on fiction, those have been running dry.

181 thoughts on “I’m not posting today”

  1. My great-grandmother chopped off her finger making kindling. So I know how something like that will affect you the rest of your life. Hope the finger is okay and you are doing well. At the time they didn’t know about tendons so she made the doctor sew it back on so that she could use it for knitting. She had one frozen finger all the time I knew her ;-). She was a very strong woman.

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    1. It’s just the tip of my left index finger. Even if I’d taken it off, it would have grown back. But I didn’t — I just have multiple cuts across the nail, one of them rather deep. The problem is that from that side it MIGHT have grazed the bone. At least it hurts like a mother at the slightest pressure. I’m becoming trained, despite myself, to type with the ball of my finger on that finger. But this too shall pass. Mainly how it affected me was getting that hand in a position that hurt and woke me up. But I’m okay. Just out of sorts.

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      1. “At least it hurts like a mother at the slightest pressure. ”
        Ummm… is the nail blackened (dark blue?)? If it is, and the entire thickness of the nail has not been punctured, you might wish to drill a small hole in the nail to relieve the pressure (caused by a “leak” beneath the nail. Those hurt like H- E-doublehockeysticks!) In such incidents, the pain is actually caused by the pressure.

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    2. Sweetheart, I cut the end off my thumbnail and took nearly a quarter inch of meat with it while chopping bell peppers. I don’t think you’re going to get much dumber than that, unless you were trying to learn to juggle by starting with knives instead of using something a little more harmless until you at least got the rhythm down.

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      1. Well, THAT’s unusual. Normally, I accidentally put a comment at the end of the comment thread instead of replying to the last comment, but this time I did it backwards. Oh, well: This was a comment directed at Sarah’s post, not Cyn’s great-reandmother. *sigh*

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    3. Interesting, a friend of mine’s wife did that yesterday, well not cut it completely off, but chopped a pretty good gash in it that required stitches, making kindling.

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      1. I have no idea how that link got in my last comment, and it is to some site I have never heard of, so I wouldn’t recommend clicking on it.

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          1. If you’re getting phantom links, it’s time for you to download and run CCleaner, Malwarebytes, Spybot Search & Destroy, SUPERantispyware, and possibly ewido anti-malware and the windows thingie, but I’m not sure what the windows thingie is called.

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            1. I’m not sure what the windows thingie is called.

              You’re probably thinking of Microsoft Security Essentials. Several IT guys I know recommend it to everyone: no annual fees to pay, it’s kept up-to-date by a company that has a major financial interest in having Windows be as virus-free as possible, and its track record so far is pretty good, I hear. (I use Linux myself, so I can’t comment from personal experience).

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            2. I run Intego for Mac, but that’s mostly because I have to venture into the dark side of the ‘Net from time to time. Yeah, .edu sites. More viruses than the CDC storage lab.

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            3. There’s another one that does much of what some of the ones you listed do: Advanced System Care. You can download it (and most of those others) from MajorGeeks.com. A good place to bookmark, anyway. I use the free version, and it takes pretty good care of my computer.

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  2. Future topics?

    For wiritng, perhaps some brainstorming about what we’d have in an ideal future book industry–and how to start building that direction.

    For politics? More thoughts on how to “Build Under.” What bits of society need substructures in place, so they stay up in a collapse, and what parts _need_ to go down with the ship.

    Or, of course, we could just hijack the space and start talking about it, right now.

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  4. In politics, second guessing which countries can be trusted to keep their hands off savings–I’m wondering if starting a bank account in Lithuania is a good idea now–

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  5. Oh, and my son managed to almost cut his own finger off in Afghanistan–it only curls part way now. So I hope no ligaments were nicked in the making of this blog post.

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  7. I was once absolutely convinced that I had three hands. Fortunately the only thing that suffered was the test tube I tried to catch with my middle hand. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity, even in normally intelligent folks.

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      1. I wish I was tired (that’s the excuse I use for using my Leatherman to scrape at a potentially radioactive drip tray). I was on watch, it was early in the shift, and I was running drills. I just forgot for a minute how many limbs mammals have.

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        1. Jeff, you just made me very happy. I thought I was the only person who sometimes forgot that — Honestly, I do. I will try to ‘catch it with your third hand’ :/

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          1. You know, I actually had a conversation with my motor cortex as the test tube was falling:

            “Catch it!”

            “With what?”

            “The middle hand!”

            “Wh- WHAT MIDDLE HAND!?!”

            “Oh.”

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            1. Over-sympathizing with the Moties has been known to lead people to talk as though a person had three hands, does this mean that it extends to actions, as well?

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              1. If I referred to it as the gripping hand, you might have a point. I maintained bilateral symmetry, it was coming out of the middle of my chest, around the xiphoid (I got to teach spellcheck a new word!) process (don’t ask me how the symmetry was affected vis a vis the thumb).

                I will, however, admit to a certain level of Crazy Eddie thinking.

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                  1. Core processor. The core provessor is the component that gives an extensive lecture about how Freud proved there were no accidents.

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                    1. Weird – I didn’t get that one when I read it last night. Must have been more tired than I thought.

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  10. Topics: Cover art – what has worked, what didn’t, and what to avoid like the plague. How long is too short (at what point does a novella become a novel become two books?)

    I haven’t managed to remove a digit yet, but for a while I was running one broken bone per year. And I tore up my knee and hip during choir in high school. Let’s just say that high heels, narrow risers, and rapid turns are not a happy combination.

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        1. I recall that out of boredom I decided to teach myself to write with my toes. I think it was when I had the measles. It is not easy to grasp a pencil or to control the pressure you are using when writing in this manner. For a while I could claim that not only was I ambidextrous, but pedidextrous as well. Unfortunately, no matter how I went about it, what I wrote was seen as rather illegible by my teachers until late in elementary school.

          At any rate, I cannot imagine trying to keyboard with my toes. ;-)

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    2. While I may have broken a toe, I’m not sure, and I’ve been lucky enough so far (knock on wood) to not break any. On the other hand, when I was cutting material for printing decals in a screen print shop years ago, the carpet knife I was using jumped out of the guide I was using and cut my left index finger just below the base of the fingernail, and I’m pretty sure it must have hit bone. Of course, I was too dumb to realize I needed stitches, but it grew back together reasonably well.

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      1. I have broken both of my big toes– and I am now limping because I jammed the small side of my left foot (around the toes) into a wall. *sigh

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      2. “Knocks on wood” I have never broken a bone. I did crack a few ribs once, and my shin bones have more knobs than I can count, from playing soccer without shin guards. My problem is, I’m part Neanderthal, and my bones are HUGE. That’s one reason they’ve never broken, even though I’ve been through enough they should have. I cut the end of my finger from just beside the joint to the end peeling potatoes once, but it grew back. My fingers and hands are covered with scars from various cuts. Jean cut off the end of her thumb on her left hand when playing on a back-yard gym set. They sewed it back on, but it’s always been crooked and can’t bend. Life’s full of “oh,da**” moments, but we survive. 8^)

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        1. One broken wrist, when I was in my early 20’s and slipped on ice, then landed with my full weight on it. Tailbone also, slipped on ice while walking in a rocky patch in a forest in the spring and landed nicely on the edge of one large rock. I think I disliked the latter more, it hurts as much as any other broken bone but since it sounds rather funny and doesn’t count as a handicap, you can still sit and everything, it just hurts, you can’t even get much sympathy with it. Have I mentioned that I hate ice before?

          A couple of years back I also slipped inside when coming from the shower, went on one knee over the rather high threshold of the bathroom door. The bone didn’t break, but I smashed the soft tissues well enough that I ended up with a fluid filled sack on the spot afterwards which didn’t heal off. The doctor emptied it several times with a syringe and I used a pressure bandage on the leg, but it kept filling back up with interstitial fluid, and the end result was that the only way to get rid of it was surgery. Left me with a rather ugly scar and several large spots which have no feeling on the skin, plus probably since the veins were damaged when I hit it that leg now swells, rather badly, if the weather gets hot or I sit too much. So a suggestion, if you ever get a really bad bruise, see a doctor and start using that pressure bandage if it’s in a spot where you can right afterwards, from what I read keeping pressure on the hematoma when it started to reabsorb might have kept that cavity from forming, or at least made it a bit smaller.

          Lots of small scars on my fingers too, I used to fish and dealing with the catch was something which, half of the time, left me with at least one bleeding finger. Deepest cuts so far have been from a drinking glass which broke when I was washing it and a cat food can when opening it, sliced my thumb on the edge.

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          1. Broken nose, knuckles, the bones across the back of your hand, and cracked ribs, but I have never broken any major bones. Well I did break a chunk off a vertebrae once, but I don’t even know when, just found out about it in a x-ray later. Lots of minor cuts, but not to many major ones, the worst was when I cut my hand with a cutting wheel on a metal grinder, those hurt for a long time afterwards. Oh, and I don’t ever recommend letting a bear chew on you, that hurts to.

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                1. So what you’re suggesting is that I redo plans for Thursday afternoon? Dang.

                  You know what they say: some days you eat the bear, …

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    3. Ummm… cover art? What’s that? OH! I remember now – those are the $5,000 (and up) pictures that the major publishers buy to adorn the covers of their house stable writer’s books. The ones that the rest of us can’t afford for our 99 cent e-books. :-(

      A novella is a short story that just would NOT shut up! I know what a novella is. I wrote one. ;-D

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  11. Well, Sarah, shortly after our youngest was born, I was chopping corn in half (yes I know – stupid!) when the knife turned and sliced into my left index finger. It went from near the first joint to the nail, stopping on the cartilage/bone.
    And years before that I sliced off the side of my right thumb playing with a friends Bowie knife.
    So I think you have a ways to go in matching stipid knife accidents.

    But look at it this way: You’re in EXCELLENT COMPANY!!

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    1. Sib and friends were looking at a knife when all of a sudden the group got very quiet, followed by, “My mom’s gonna kill you if you bleed on the rug.” Guess what? Yup, kid sliced into his hand because, “I didn’t think it was sharp.” It’s a knife, in the Red house. Of course it will be sharp!

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      1. Was it as sharp as a broken toilet? I sliced myself open from knee to shin once when the old toilet I was pulling free–because I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but my heart is the heart of a contractor 4 times my size–I remember looking at the extremely elegant and pain-free slash, whiter than white at first, thinking, huh, I guess I didn’t hit any blood vessels …. uh oh ….

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      2. Then there was the time Sister-in-Law found my toddler nephew playing with a kitchen knife, chanting the mantra his parents always said to him about knives: sharp, sharp, ooh, sharp, don’t touch, sharp …

        That was when they decided to improve his vocabulary by explaining the definition of “sharp.”

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    2. Heck, I don’t even need a knife. I split my scalp on a low ceiling joist (the place we lived in when first married was called “the Doll House”, because the owner had built it as a play house for his daughters years before. Two stories. Bedroom below, kitchen/bath/living room above, built on a steep slope on their property. Everything smaller than you’d expect, but the rent was cheap) as I jumped, hollered and waved my arms to get a local (nice, but not allowed) mutt to leaved the property. Seriously. Seven stitches.

      At least I wasn’t so far gone that I handed my wife the nice new towel, and got some paper towels to slow down the bleeding.

      But I’ve done a couple nearly as dump with knives or single-edge razor blades.

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      1. Speaking of stupid ways to split your head open, when I was a kid a friend and I were throwing rocks in the creek. We would lean over the cut bank and pull rocks out of it, then stand up and throw them into the creek. After a while all the good rocks up close to the top had already been thrown and I leaned over a little to far to reach one, landed on my head in the boulder strewn creek bed and split my eyebrow open. I don’t remember how many stitches it took, but it was several and I still have the scar from it.

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  14. I reiterate my recommendation: this is an excellent excuse to force the men in your life to take up a bit more slack. It helps if they’re squeamish – as you just get blood all over them to, ah, prove you can’t cook/clean/whatever – but not absolutely necessary. Guilt, hunger, Wrath of Mom; many possible threats exist for getting them to do more ’round the house.

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    1. I’ve been “doing more” around the house the last few months because Jean’s knees have been hurting her so badly. She went to the doctor today: torn medial meniscus, bone-on-bone contact on the right, nearly there on the left, plus quite a bit of arthritis. He gave her cortisone shots in both knees today, and said she should be feeling better by tomorrow. He said she didn’t need knee replacement surgery — yet. Getting old is NOT for the faint-of-heart.

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  15. I was looking at the five scars on my hands, and six on my legs trying to think of a story that didn’t make me look like an idiot and was past the statute of limitations …

    Uh, nope, all make me look like an idiot …

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    1. Yes… 7th day… good idea. But how do you know when to start counting? And what if you forget when you started and have to start all over again? Oh, sure – you could count from the last day off, but that would be admitting that you’re getting old and your memory is slipping… can’t have that…

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  17. Ow! I feel your pain, I sliced my thumb in metal shop in High School. My son took off the tip of his finger in a meat slicer (trying to get that last slice).

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  18. Hmm, hit my thumb with a razor knife and bone stopped it. Healed pretty fast, I didn’t let it part and taped it closed fast. This was Monday.
    Tuesday added almost 200 pounds extra in one of my batches I make. Had to resize the batch. Wednesday I managed to not screw up. Much.

    All week I’ve had knee issues because I decided to hit a car in the passenger side when I was 15 and broke my leg badly. I wasn’t compound as the bone got stuck in the knee joint. I disrecommend doing this.

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    1. All week my right knee has been hurting because I fell carrying a box larger than I, when we moved 19 years ago, and my knee bent the wrong way and tore my ACL. Eh.

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  19. Hatchet, knee, while chopping kindling. Fortunately the blade was clean and sharp and just the corner went into the joint. Synovial fluid is very slippery stuff, but not much blood at all. A band aid and tetanus shot (we had horses) fixed it. I don’t think the recent knee replacement 35years later was related.

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      1. Did my thumb nail twice Hammers both times. Once as a kid, the classic smash when missing the right nail … it fell of that time, and the other as a late teen when I worked renovations a rebound shot after the hammer bounced off a stud Didn’t fully fall off, but I had to drill a hole to relive the pressure from the blood under it.

        When working at the airport, I pealed an orange and the finger nail I used was the left index. After a week or so … It fell off (think it got a fungus). For several years, it only grew a small bit then started to get strange and detach from the cuticle. I kept it shaved down to prevent it snagging and that finger got quite tough. I used it to knock on doors and if I lost my temper and thumped someone in the chest with it, they though I was poking them with a stick or rod. All manner of treatments were tried and nothing seemed to work. It suddenly started to grow correctly and it now is as normal as the rest of my fingers.

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    2. “Hatchet, knee, while chopping kindling.”

      When I was a teenager, my parents had the house re-shingled. I was tasked with cleaning the old shingles out of the yard where they were thrown. I had a pitchfork to spear them.

      Put the pitchfork through my shoe. BETWEEN toes, thankfully.

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  20. I think, if we ever all get together at a Con or symposium, the secret sign of the Hoyt reader will be “show me your scars.” At least those that can be displayed without violating indecent exposure laws. :)

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      1. I think I see your problem, Martin. Back when I fenced the folk I fenced with used foil, epee or saber. Anybody caught fencing with a club would have been asked to leave.

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      2. My uncle got a purple heart from a nail sticking out of the doorway of a bomb shelter in Vietnam, he insisted he didn’t want it, it wasn’t a combat injury, his CO insisted on putting him in for it, because he got it in mortar attack.

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      3. The only scar that hasn’t faded away is one on my arm that came from a cat. (It counts as stupid because I knew that picking up a scared cat was a bad idea, especially with trees available for the cat to climb.)

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    3. Hey, I’ve got another scar in the other leg, too. :D Got it when I was about 11 or 12, I don’t actually remember which summer it was. Went to see my father in the garage, and sliced a big hole in my left leg while walking past a cut in half oil drum (father kept waste oil in it). Just felt like I had bumped it a bit hard, but when I looked down there was this jagged edged hole there, covered in black oil and starting to bleed. Well, I was taken to a hospital, it was cleaned and sewn shut, except the doctor had to cut some rather largish pieces off because they were too ragged to sew neatly, and the end result was that when the stitches were take off there wasn’t a neat line of a scar, but a roundish and slightly depressed one the size of the bowl of most dinner spoons. And bright red, took several years before the color faded into something which did not stand out too badly from the rest of my leg. I have never used skirts much because of that. Less now when the other leg is also scarred.

      So, two scars, one in each leg, easily shown (in most weather conditions) since all I need to do is to lift my trouser legs a bit. ;)

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    4. scars. egad. right thumb. two in a cross on the back … one from the body of a race car I gutted with an air chisel. When I lifted a welding mask, I bumped it on the rough edge. When I look into the cut I could see the tendon … just nicked it. The other is from a razor knife. Hit it hard enough I hurt from the blow … shook off the hit by shaking the hand hard … “Hey Stupid, the knife was open” …oh, oh …***looks down, bends thumb***… oh look, the tendon again…at least you didn’t sever it!.
      The lawn I was standing on looked like I had gutted a deer. Egad, that one bled.
      8 yrs old or so. Right index finger. Pocket knife I always was sharpening. If I’d had a beard at 8 I could have shaved with it. Cheerios iirc, had a toy snowmobile that was s’posed to be a pull back & let go, self propelled thing, but didn’t work, so I was cutting the wheel holders off so it looked more real. Did mine fine, cutting those off my sis’ I slipped and cut the end of it to the bone.

      6yrs old. We’d just moved, and our back yard was pine trees and hazel nut bushes. I’d made paths with an ax. No never cut myself with the ax (and at 6 I was allowed to use it unsupervised, btw). Now the pungi spikes I left behind cutting through the hazel nut on the other hand … we were playing kick the can and I fell running through a very new path. It went pretty far in. Bit of peroxide, butterfly tape and a bandage wrapped around the calf and I was pouting they wanted me to not run and play some more. It probably should have been stitched … probably should have had a tetanus shot.

      10 or so years ago … grabbed my aunt’s spooked cat and he went Fur, Teeth, and Claws, a la Looney Tunes Wildcat and I was bleeding from the end of my nose, my cheek, and he was chewing into the middle finger knuckle on the back of my hand. Again a nick in the tendon, teeth meeting inside the knuckle. Infection, hand swollen into a useless curled claw. Best stick with an I.V. I ever had (done in the wrist by a quite cute candy-striper using a very large needle(about the size of the end of a ball point pen insert, you know, that bit that sticks out) and they added a pump to get a liter of fluids and antibiotics into me in about 15 minutes).

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      1. forgot the time I was cutting a zip tie on a pair of new gloves and the knife I used was a sheepsfoot style not to mention was using it right handed for some reason (I’m a lefty) and twice slipped out of the tie so I repositioned again but it then cut when I wasn’t trying and I stabbed my hand in the fleshy bit between the thumb and index finger. There are photos online somewhere for that (maybe twitter). Again it likely should have had stitches

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        2. zipties are specifically designed as self mutilation aids, at least I manage to cut myself at least once or twice a year either trimming the excess ‘tail’ on one, or cut one to remove it.

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          1. I’ve been told that beating a coworker for not trimming the end of the zip-tie is considered normal workplace procedure and need not be reported to either HR or to local law enforcement.

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    6. Since we’re mostly talking about dumb scars here, I thought I’d break out a little and explain what I would say was my least dumb one.

      I was riding my bicycle, and had stood up to pedal up a (not very steep – I wasn’t a hotshot bike rider) hill, when the right-hand pedal broke off and the broken piece came around backwards when my left foot suddenly had no resistance, and hit me in the calf.

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    7. I think we’ve all had weird or “stupid” accidents from time to time. I think my parents had to take me in for a tetanus shot every other year from the time I was 3 until I left home (then the Air Force took over…). I have two really “weird” sports injuries. One came when I was playing basketball in the back yard of a friend. I went up for a lay-up and jammed a piece of barbed wire completely through my foot (we were, of course, playing barefoot — it was Louisiana and summertime). I walked home (about a block, on a gravel road), Mom washed it with alcohol and put a band-aid on it, top and bottom. Somehow I didn’t hit anything major.

      The other one was during a baseball game my senior year. I was catching, and went back for a foul tip. I caught it by leaping up against the fence. I also caught a piece of wire, and sliced my arm from mid-bicept to my elbow. Put a couple of butterfly-bandages on it, and played the rest of the game. Most of it’s faded now.

      Yeah, “show me your scars”. Since I’ve lost most of the hair on my head, the ones there stick out quite well. We won’t go into how I got them… 8^)

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  21. I haven’t lost any parts yet; but I managed to split open a fingertip with a (baby) sledgehammer when I was eight. The tip ended up slightly misshapen as a result and about once a year the top few layers of skin on one (or both) sides of the scar will spontaneously decide to peel up over the course of a day or two.

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  22. I will turn off my writerly imagination and skim through most of these posts describing injuries. I’m squeamish and sympathetic and more than a little hemophobic (haemeophobic?) and the combination is not good.

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  23. This isn’t a cut myself story (all my cut myself stories are just dumb) but I once picked up a metal bowl and it was like my arm was on a spring with my elbow a fulcrum because I slammed it into the bridge of my nose. The only thing I can think that makes any sense at all is that, for whatever reason, my brain said “this is going to be heavy” so I picked up a super light bowl with the force necessary to pick up a heavy bowl.

    I wonder sometimes if astronauts ever forget and pick something up without thinking about the mass or misjudge the (non) weight.

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  24. I got the tip of my left ring finger a year and a half ago, preparing dinner to go into the crock pot before heading off to church. Of course that was a day my husband was off at work, so after soaking through most of a large paper towel being used as a pressure bandage, I had to call my mother who lives one town over to have her come and take me to the ER.

    At the ER I of course had to explain what I had done and I got as far as “crock pot” when the nurse nodded sympathetically and asked “Chicken or onions?” It was actually the onion; I hadn’t got to the chicken yet.

    I can safely say that the shots to numb the finger before stitching it back together (I missed bone, but the flap was a bit over half way), hurt worse than the injury itself. I do wonder if it wouldn’t have made more sense to glue it. I’ll have to remember where I keep the super glue in case I ever do it again.

    My theory is that anyone over about 15-20 who hasn’t got a scar from a stupid injury has probably lived in a bubble.

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    1. Aaggh, it’s way too late. The whole point about the nurse’s comment was that I hadn’t mentioned a thing about what I was cutting. I can only assume that the majority of kitchen knife accidents must involve chicken or onions.

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    2. Rule #1 – make knife REALLY sharp! (I’ve seen more people cut with dull knives than with really sharp ones… you can pick your own reason for that.) Caution – do not cut yourself while sharpening knife. It makes you look really stupid when you’re standing in the ER dripping all over the place… Yep. I did it.
      Rule #2 – Keep body parts on the DULL side of the knife. (Watch a cooking show and see how the pros do the chop/slice/whack thing!!! fingers usually BEHIND the knife – on the knife’s back)
      Rule #3 – Do only ONE thing at a time. If a distraction arises, put the knife down and get away fast lest it sense your vulnerability and attack!!!
      Rule #4 – when cutting or chopping thick stuff, use the “Dueler’s Pose” and a meat cleaver, or a real US Marine Corps infantry officer’s sword! (Not an ornamental one – a REAL one that could be used in combat. I actually own a 2nd Empire/Weimar Republic infantry officer’s sword.) + (Dueler’s Pose = one hand behind the back, the victim on the cutting board, the cleaver wielded with GREAT prejudice.) And do NOT whang your knuckles on the edge of the counter as that hurts a LOT!

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  25. I once ended up in the ER getting stitches in my forehead after shinnying up a pole to tighten the cog holding tension on a volleyball net ended with the locking gear slipping, allowing the handle spinning around to crack me a good one.

    Mind, what I told them was that I had been viciously struck by an old crank.

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    2. I din’t do it, I wasn’t there, I don’t even know where you live! Besides, the Statute of Limitations has expired, and I don’t have any money, so suing me is also out.

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  26. When it comes to subjects to write a post about – considering that troublesome kind of ubermensch character I seem to be stuck with and was complaining about in the comments earlier, would you care to give your thoughts about how to write a good larger than life type of character? Fairly normal ones I think I can get now, but I am scared about the ones who really should be better than almost everybody else. Mary Sue anxiety (or Gary Stu or whatever the male equivalent one wants to use). Too good at everything can be very boring, and there is the problem of thinking up suitable challenges for them too, something which does look as if it actually is difficult enough to be something they might not be able to solve, while not looking ridiculously enormous.

    I’m not talking about actual superheroes here, or at least not of the Superman types, more like James Bond types, somebody who can solve most of the problems which would give normal people a struggle, or be unsolvable for most of us, with seeming ease and can dominate most people they meet.

    Real life and politics – if one happens to get some extra money nowadays, what do you think might be the best way to use it? While one should keep some savings, saving larger sums does not really seem like a particularly bright solution right now. (Not that it looks likely I will have problems with that question, just academic interest here :))

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      1. Yep. I have tried too, with mine. A couple of times. If I ever manage to fill up rest of the plots for the scenes I have (there seem to be at least three of four different stories there) he may acquire the nickname ‘Lazarus’. Other, less polite, alternative is ‘cockroach’.

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    2. Well, I wouldn’t buy Euros, and I wouldn’t put money in a Cypriot or Argentine bank. as to what to put it in, I used to talk to a friend’s mom (through his translation) about what went really scarce in Germany between the 30’s and 50’s when she was really young. Some stuff is always good to have and might have a decent resale value.

      As for bigger than life characters, the ones I liked the most did some things really well, and made no fuss about the things they couldn’t do well. (Crying because they couldn’t learn to knit, or whatever)
      The real tension was the struggle to keep the fight in the areas they were strong in so they could succeed. The humanizing part was where they worked at expanding the area of expertise.
      Doc Savage always did his exercizes and did lab-work. Daniel Boone learned more woodscraft. Granny Weatherwax kept having to conquer her tendencies to act as if she were greater than everyone else. Now spy and detective novels are different, but also the same. Marlowee and the Continental Op weren’t physically better, but had a way of untying tangles. They also spent a lot of time trying to trying to get the mystery elements shuffled around so they could bring their strengths to bear on it: one of the problems is when they start to react to things instead of work with them. The sexy part is when you let them cheat by letting them break as many rules as they can without violating their own morals. The scary part is when they don’t care about their morals. That’s when you start edging into Noir and anti-heroes.

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      1. Land maybe, if one had enough money. Good forest may not be highly valuable right now, but presumably that’s something which will always keep some value. At the very least you could get your own firewood from there. Something right next to a lake or sea, and you would also get some fishing rights.

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          1. Yep. But nowadays probably better make sure no spotted owls or anything have been spotted anywhere even close before you buy, though. (Flying squirrels, in Finland, proposed highway was once routed kilometers around a spot where some poop was found. The damn things aren’t even particularly endangered, except locally. Who knows, perhaps the Rodent Liberation Front has been doing some clandestine work around here, bribing, or extorting, or something along those lines.)

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            1. Preebles Jumping mouse in CO — which turns out to be the same as another mouse,which is not endangered at all, but is why we can’t have new power plants. (Or nice things.)

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              1. I do support protecting rare species, but I don’t really see much point trying to protect every damn local variation of some species, especially when there are lots of some very closely related variations of the same critters around. It’s not just the nuisance value, it’s, even more, the waste of time and money. Besides, pissing people off needlessly is not exactly good when it comes to protecting something that really, truly is endangered. The environmentalists are doing a lot of crying ‘wolf’ needlessly right now.

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            2. Oh yeah, this as well. There is an ongoing court case regarding a preposed house in the north west and a pair of nesting ‘endangered’ birds on the property.

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            3. It would be wise to confirm that no puddles form when it rains before buying land, lest you inadvertently purchase wetlands subject to the EPA’s supervision.

              Probably a good idea to make sure that the land has not been at any time in the past, is not now and will not ever become habitat to any species of plant, animal or mineral that might under any circumstance or contrivance ever be considered endangered for any possible meaning of the word.

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              1. “It would be wise to confirm that no puddles form when it rains before buying land, lest you inadvertently purchase wetlands subject to the EPA’s supervision”

                This is not always sufficient, a friend of mine spent 50K on court costs fighting the EPA (he won for certain values of winning, he had to sell the land to pay court costs) who designated his land wetlands after the highway dept. put in a culvert and ditched the water onto his property. The property had never had water on it and was in no way a wetland until they diverted water to it. He took a backhoe and ditched the water off his property (back into the highway drainage ditch) and poured the foundation for a house, then the EPA came in and charged him with ‘disturbing’ a wetland and a bunch of other charges, it took several years and over 50K for him to beat it.

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                1. This brings up an important point. Guys – don’t pee in the yard. I know it can be tempting and convenient while working in the yard to just stop and pour out the bladder, but the risk you’re exposing yourself to is just too great.

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              2. You forgot to mention checking that the property was never used for extraction of, storing or manufacturing anything involving a substance that might be declared toxic and therefore require mandated clean-up.

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          2. Anyone who lives on a volcanic island will tell you otherwise. Also do be careful about shore line, it may soon become ocean.

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            1. Neither, fortunately, a problem here. Land is still rising from the sea, so if you buy seafront property your inheritors will get a bit larger piece than what you bought.

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    3. Real life and politics – if one happens to get some extra money nowadays, what do you think might be the best way to use it?

      Buy seeds and fishing gear! I’d say buy bear traps, but those may be illegal in Finland (they are here, too, but there are ways… 8^))

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      1. Bear traps are illegal, but you can find old, still functional traps in antique and second hand stores. Could always hang them on the wall as decoration, I already have some old farm implements used that way. Like a couple of pretty old sickles and axes. :)

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            1. I picture you in a black long cape with hood (think pics of Death) about five feet tall with a scythe in one hand. ;-) The scythe, of course, is gleaming with sharpness.

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                  2. The problem with a short Death (note to self: not the most fortuitous phrasing; clean up in re-write) is that She is forever cutting people off at the knees.

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                    2. My kid thinks death should be a T-rex, so I’m now stuck with wanting to draw a t-rex in cape and scythe. Maybe i’ll make a t-shirt for the zazzle shop “When death comes for me, it better be big.”
                      Or perhaps “Death of a dinosaur fan.” (Which I am.)

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      2. Actually they are readily available and were legal to use up until a year or two ago in Maine. They are normally sold as ‘for display purposes only’ however, and some research on which ones are actually well built functionally and which are built just for decoration would be advisable. Hint: the ones that offer to sell setters with them have a higher likelihood of being functional.

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              2. Don’t feel bad Wayne, this poor country hick was trying to figure out why gay guys would be talking about bears also.

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                    2. What I mean is that — and you’ve seen pics, I’m not remotely masculine — people tend to forget I’m not a guy. As in, total strangers come up to me and say “sir, could you tell me?” or “excuse me sir,” and they do this while I’m wearing dresses. I think similar things are in effect even with people who know me because all guys (gay and straight) talk around me as though I WEREN’T a woman.

                      I read the book of that woman who went undercover, by dressing as a guy and wrote what she’d found out about how men are without women around and I was going “DUH, I knew that” and “I knew that too” and “What kind of ninny needs to cross dress to hear guys talk.” But maybe it’s different for other women….

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                    4. I knew, but with me it’s just that I read a lot. Everything. And have this tendency to search until I find out what everything I don’t get the first time means.

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    4. Writing a larger than life character…
      “Jabone was larger than life. How else could you describe a man who tipped the scales… over… because he weighed 467 pounds”

      The real problem with LTL: characters is if you write them true – no one will identify with them and the story will flop. Perhaps it would be better to write an all around average character who has that one moment or that ONE skill in his/her life where they somehow do something extraordinary… Now that would get you a lot of readers who’d identify! (Many of them still waiting for their extraordinary moment… they just KNOW it’s coming… )

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  27. Mine involved a router table, a too small piece of wood & the lateral half of a finger nail. Hurts, bleeds like the proverbial stuck pig … and completely undermines the handyman grunting image.

    Stooopid me (but I see we are all in good company).

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  28. Pohjalainen, to answer your question about what to do with extra money, (I will, with great difficulty, stop myself from suggesting you send it to me) I suspect one of the better things to do with extra money is to buy precious metals.

    On the subject of cutting oneself; I think I was about 4 when I found a safety razor blade lying on a display table at the local drug store. I had seen cartoons where the ‘toon would run a finger along the edge to check the sharpness, so that is what I did- giving myself a nice deep cut.

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      1. I do hope you mean that you might buy precious metals, and not that you would imitate a cartoon character checking the sharpness of a safety razor.

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        1. Yep. Precious metals. I have already done something like the second, only with a knife I had been sharpening, but since I didn’t run my thumb on it, just pushed a bit, the cut was not deep enough to leave a scar. More like paper cut. Been more careful since.

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          1. The way it’s supposed to be done is to drag your thumb lightly ACROSS the blade’s edge – NOT along it. If you feel resistance – it’s sharp. If your thumb slides across the edge, it’s not. (Also you can eyeball the edge for burrs – which can be removed with a steel)

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  29. Remind me to show you my shins, and let you listen to my left hand’s joints — the fruits of a youth misspent riding bicycles on the horse trails of Southern California, with no helmet and no padding.

    “Scars are the Body’s way of reminding one it is possible to survive Stupidity.”

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  30. Wow! Remind me to wear armour around you lot. After reading how accident prone you are, I am a bit paranoid. I, too, am some what of a clutz. And when younger, a dare devil in many ways that resulted in more than a few broken bones and cuts.

    Sarah, so sorry you are suffering. Hope you heal quickly.

    I am MIA because my great granddaughter was born on Feb. 11. Our house now lives on Adrianna time. Meaning I am generally up from three a.m. until mid day, then nap until six, then up until around 11. We trade off because our Addie is NOT a child who wants to sleep. (My granddaughter lives with us.) So, I have a whole new reason to be brain dead and out of sorts.

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    1. A new born in the house?! Congratulympathies!

      I remember all too vividly the extended sleep deprivation following such invasion, the being high on fatigue toxins … Symgratulations!

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      1. Why Thank You, I think. It isn’t too bad as I tend to be a night owl anyway, and she is a sweet baby. Yeah, I’m besotted (blush).

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        2. Congratulations (since I don’t like children, better you than me, but good to know sensible people have been reproducing too).

          (I can find babies cute when seen from a distance, though. As long as I don’t have to be around when the diapers need changing, or when it drools, or gets fed, or gets cranky. I have great respect for people who look after them)

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            1. LOL– I have her second hand (step) and I have a grandson too. I am so proud of their mother and how she is raising them. Great kids. Of course they make stupid mistakes… they are kids. ;-)

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        2. Hey, that’s 19 years on average per generation. Could be worse. I used to ride the bus with a woman who was a grandmother before turning 35.

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    4. My great-grandson is 65 miles north of us, and we don’t see him much. He’s a good kid, almost 9 months old now! Congratulations on the birth, sympathies for the lost sleep.

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