If it’s pointed up, and you’re fumbling around for a paring knife, forgetting that you put the razor in there, you might get a finger that keeps bleeding. Two days later. Maybe I need a stitch or two. Now the finger next to it is complaining that it too needs a bandage. Chapping, I think, and trying to open stubborn screw-tops that the other finger normally handles. Why does this happen when I’m supposed to be Christmas shopping.

Somewhere, there’s a script. It goes like this: the heroine (me) loves getting packages, especially big ones. Doesn’t matter if they are for other people. The rest of the cast (the delivery guys) conspire to get the packages delivered only when I’m not there. Since I work from home, this gets tricky.

Yesterday, as I rounded the corner after leaving my friend’s house, here comes the UPS guy. Hmmm, I wonder, did I get something? Three packages neatly stacked by the garage door.
Just now, I went to the bathroom to tape up the bloody fingers (more on that later). Thud! Thud! Three more packages neatly stacked by the back door.

A family member works one day a week from home. He manages to receive packages directly from the same guys.

I’ll admit that during the afternoon delivery times, I might be taking the shower that I miss by having to be at the computer before dawn. Infrequently, I’m out back tending to the landscaping. From time to time I am in the bathroom.

Maybe the guys have a Santa complex. Anyway, the two biggest packages (too big for me to lift) have finally gotten here. Family members tend to follow the blog more closely at holiday time, so I’m just saying, fellas, no rummaging around the closets, the garage or under beds. No poking into shopping bags, looking on the roof, in the trunk of my car, or peeling back a corner of the gift wrap.

I mean it.

Yesterday, a friend recounted the tale of her accident last week on a slick freeway ramp. During the morning commute, an airborne vehicle sailed over the car in the next lane, and collided with hers on the passenger side, sending her down a muddy embankment.

She landed four feet from a tree. The airbags did not inflate. Glass covered the baby seat in back, thankfully, her grandchild was not along. All four tires were flat. The back end was completely caved in. The driver of the other car came running over. The woman in the next lane offered her services as a witness. Another driver stopped and called 911.

The other driver said he swerved to miss the car that cut in front of him. The Highway Patrol thought otherwise, but let it go.

My friend escaped without so much as a scratch. I went over with a plate of homemade chocolates, which she began eating before I was completely inside the door. I told her not to stop till she had eaten it all.