I Am My Mother's Daughter

Yep, I am. I called and told her that last night.

Me: I'm your daughter.
Mom: Yes, I know.
Me: I'm your daughter.
Mom: Yes, I know.
Me: Dad says I'm more and more like you all the time.
Mom: Uh oh, what did you do now?

Mom can take the simplest job and find a way to injure herself. It seems I took the first step in that direction yesterday.

First of all, I live in an old house.

This is the old house. It is an old house in desperate need of repair.  Okay,  it's more in need of a good cleaning than repairs but today we're talking repairs. I finally found a man who wanted to work - someone with a resume of repairing and renovating old houses. Someone whose work on new construction I've seen. Someone that I've known for a couple of years and during that time earned my trust and respect.

So yesterday Andy and his nephew, Brian showed up prepared to work. Eric was in seventh heaven. Two of his favorite people, with tools, and they let him help. Eric and Brian did the needed work under the house while Andy installed a ceiling fan.

Now, we're getting down to the knitty gritty. The threshold of the back door had rotted. Andy started working on that. Then it gets nasty. The sill of the house also has rot. Now, I get the warning that all old home owners (I mean owners of old houses not old owners of houses although I qualify for that too.) dread hearing. "I'm going to have to start ripping this out. I don't have any idea of how much damage there is. I won't know until I get in there."

This is what my deck looked like once upon a time in a universe far, far way. Isn't it pretty? Oh, I do love to sit on my deck and sip ice tea.

This is what it looks like today. What a mess!

Now at this point you're probably wondering what all of this has to do with me following in my mother's footsteps and her ability to injure herself. Bet you can guess where we're going now.

See that pile of lumber on the right? Can you see the nails sticking out of the boards?
Well, look here. I was very carefully moving the boards out of Brian's way when I very carefully set one down on my foot with the nails pointing down. I also very carefully impaled my big toe at which point I very carefully watched my language.

The guys leave and I head to the doctor to get the requisite tetnus shot since I couldn't remember the last one I got. I thought I'd just bop in, get jabbed, and come home. WRONG! I had to see the doctor who decided that I needed an antibiotic in addition to the shot. She offered me some pain killers, but being my mother's daughter, I turned them down. (We're tough, right Mom?) So my little jaunt ended up lasting 4 hours. By the time I got home I was ready to do in anyone that came within 5 miles of my foot. Long about 3 a.m. I was wondering what I was thinking when I turned down the pain pills.

I do have a long way to go to reach Mom's level of self destruction. She scratched her thumb picking blackberries for jam and ended up going to the doctor several times to have it debredded. She smashed her thumb with a hammer when they were building their house. That was interesting. She dropped a 40 lb. (I think that's what it weighed) flag stand on her big toe. That wasn't pretty. She stepped of a step stool and broke her ankle. It was, to quote the ortho-doc, NASTY! 

As much as I love and admire my mother and want to emulate her, I think I'll work other ways to do that. I think she'll still let me be her daughter.

Comments

[Cindy Lee]

OUCH! precisely why I'm "not" a fixer-upper kinda person! hope your toe heals quickly! hugs, Cindy Lee