The best way to spend Mother’s Day

Days I do Habitat, I drop Carli off at James at 630 AM. This was waiting for me this morning. So sweet. However, he wanted me to wear the ballon around the Habitat site today. We have had a lot of rain over the past several days. Thursday and Friday, they worked in rain. Yesterday and today we worked in the mud.

This was what I looked like at noon yesterday. I wore the same pants today.

Today it was cloudy at the beginning, followed by a 30 minute downpour followed by bright sunshine – I prefer the cloudy. Yesterday I cut my finger while trying to cut the “blue board which is 1.5 inches deep. The utility knife does not cut through the full thickness. Theoretically, you cut part way through and then you can break it the rest of the thickness. Perhaps with lots of practice you can get this to work reliably but my team was struggling with it. So I was given a big “dullish” kitchen knife to try. It worked a bit better but was very dull. Just as I was saying “this is so dull, I don’t think it would even cut skin”, I cut the skin at the base of my left index finger – I was wrong. It cut full thickness of the skin but I had sensation and movement so I wasn’t too worried. It was bleeding a fair amount and it was in a position it was going to be hard to bandage. We poured water over it and antibiotic ointment and but a couple of small steri- strips on it. It slowed the bleeding but did not stop it. I was then offered Super Glue which is what the Habitat people use. It worked. It immediately stopped bleeding. I covered it as best as I could. When I got home, it was bleeding a bit so I decided to wash it with soap and water and use hydrogen peroxide on it and then applied more super glue. I ended up with superglue all over my hand but the bleeding stopped. I left it open over night. Bandaged it as best as I could to keep it clean today. it worked.

The bandage worked. The would was clean. The only thing I am a bit concerned about is infection since the knife was dirty and my skin was dirty at the time of the cut but so far so good.

This is me at the end of today – happy that I was able to help build homes for other mothers that are working so hard to provide homes for their families.

Now I get to have dinner at my son’s and pick up Carli, my balloon and flowers.

Happy Mother’s Day.!!