Klutz of the Week

It has not been a good week for my right hand. When I was sewing a new set of kitchen curtains, I had put pins in a hem, and caught a finger with a pin--still gives me chills when I think about it. I hate sticking myself with pins, but it happens when one has a sewing project.

Next day, another finger got a plastic cut like a paper cut, but it was from the sharp edge of a plastic bubble form that fits over my calligraphy box. I don't think of my self as a klutz, but stuff keeps happening. I always try to be careful, but I will have to try harder.

I reached over my desk to pull the cord to open the front curtain in my office this morning. My hand slipped and I impaled my thumb on a sharpened pencil in one of those cups where you store pens and pencils. The grandchildren like to use the electric sharpener to sharpen pencils, so every pencil they could find now has a very sharp point. I'm great with 20/20 hindsight.  I took them out of the cup and stored them in a desk drawer but too late to save my thumb.  I turn pens down with the points at the bottom, but the pencils were sticking up--not a good plan.

As if that wasn't enough, I returned from the gym and proceeded to make coffee in the coffee maker. I was washing the carafe before putting water in it when I started to move it from the sink to the counter top and caught the edge on the sink. It just popped a hole into the bottom where the glass curved. It wasn't very thick glass for sure, and the carafe is a pain to wash because the top doesn't detach. It fits against the coffee basket so it depresses it enough that you can remove the carafe enough to pour one cup of coffee before the whole carafe is full. I had another carafe in the basement with a different coffee maker that I didn't like and it is kind of similar, but not quite. It isn't quite as tall. It works, but I have to hold it up about an inch to get it to depress the coffee basket enough to drip the coffee. What a pain.

I will have to see if Mr. Coffee sells a carafe replacement. I got it at Target and have to return something else tomorrow. For that very reason, I refuse to pay tons for coffee makers because it isn't the first carafe that has been broken in this house and the carafe is the secret to their ability to sell so many coffee makers. They make them with lids that attach to the carafe which makes it harder to wash them and then they get broken more often. If you can't get a replacement, gee, you have to buy another whole coffee maker. Also the carafe is different shapes and sizes for all the coffee makers even if they are all 12 cup carafes. More than anyone wants to know about coffee makers. I had three old ones in the basement and not one had the same size carafe even though they all hold 12 cups. I gave one to Goodwill and it might have been one that would have fit--can't win. I may have to just buy another coffee maker because the carafe will cost as much as a new coffee maker. The coffee maker I was using is so new I haven't even cleaned it with vinegar yet.

So I hope my right arm and hand don't fall off from all my injuries. I often laugh at the Sunday column that Lisa Scottoline writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer, because she finds a lot of humor in all the crap that happens during her week, but I have a harder time writing about it in the humorous way that she seems to write. I haven't found the humor in it yet, but it must be there somewhere.