Ugliest Hand in the World

Between the wrinkles, the overall huge size, the bruised nail, the broken nails, and the ever-so-lovely thumb, this is my submission for the ugliest hand ever. Here's what happened. We're using Flor carpet squares for the kids' room - see the picture below. Our builder (if you can call him that), ran out of money, so he didn't replace all of the old plywood subfloor. Where the new floor and the old floor meet, it's uneven. The old floor is about 3/8" lower along the wall. Here's where the ugly hand comes in.

I had to fill in the low spot along the wall before I could finish putting the squares down. So I bought some 1/4" plywood and some 1/8" vinyl adhesive tiles. Ripped the plywood length-wise and screwed it down, then (did you guess it already?) used a utility knife to cut the vinyl tiles. Well.... yes, the knife skipped over the edge of the framing square, leaving a huge gouge out of the metal and taking about an eighth of my thumb with it. (Oh, right. This was after replacing one of the joists underneath the floor, hammering my ring finger, and trying to get a new beam in place by myself, dropping it on my head twice, not to mention the numerous broken fingernails.)

Of course, this was at 7:00 at night. I was alone with the kids since Mike had to stay in NY to work. So it's bedtime, the hospital is twenty minutes away, the kids are tired and cranky. That's right, I decided it wasn't as bad as all that, wrapped it with a cotton ball and some blue painter's tape (couldn't find the first-aid kit), and proceeded to get the kids in bed. I should have known, when I couldn't get to sleep because of the pain, that it was that bad.

The next day, I didn't unwrap it until the afternoon when I'd had a chance to feed the kids, dress them, warm up the car (did you see the snow outside the window?), get to the store to buy band-aids, etc. Well, once it was unwrapped I saw it was still bleeding, knew it probably wasn't anywhere as clean as it should be, hadn't had a tetnus shot in who-knows-when, and decided I should go get some antibiotics. The doctor scolded me for not coming in sooner, so that it could have been stitched, but the nurse (with kids of her own) just said, "Oh yeah", and got everything taken care of.

So my head hurts, my broken-to-the-quick fingernails hurt, the bruised nail hurts, my thumb hurts, my arm hurts from the tetnus shot, and after the stressful drive back to NY, my neck hurts. I am soooo too old for this. Anyone want to buy a house?