Sealed For My Protection

Am I getting weaker or are they making packages tougher? I can’t seem to open anything these days without a jackhammer and a chainsaw. Everything comes signed, sealed and shrink wrapped for my protection. You can buy crystal meth easier than you can open a CD case. It’s ridiculous. I can’t imagine what it must be like for folks with arthritis. I know companies are trying to make their packages tamper proof and theft proof, but it seems to me it’s a little out of control.

Have you tried to peel the stickers off of produce lately? Those suckers are attached with supercallafragalistic expialadocious glue. I almost starved to death today before I got the label off of my mid-morning apple. An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but now I have to go to the dentist to see about that tooth I chipped trying to gnaw the label off the apple in desperation. I bought a new hairbrush recently, and it was hermitically sealed in one of those plastic cases that refused to pull apart no matter how much I flung it onto the floor and stomped on it. I finally had to cut it open with the largest pair of scissors I could find, which made me nervous, because you know what kind of luck I’ve had with scissors. That plastic doesn’t cut easily, so you risk at least two fingers when you try to cut it open. It’s a task that requires safety glasses and a hardhat. Medicine bottles have been a challenge for years, ever since the big Tylenol scare. My vitamin C comes in a bottle with a vacuum seal Hoover would be proud of. It also has that tight little cellophane wrapper around the lid that can only be removed by handing it to the neighbor’s Rottweiler to chew on. The worst though is CD cases. Forget about listening to a new CD on the way home from the music store. You’ll never get it open in the car. You have to wait until you get home to your toolbox. Once you remove the packaging, IF you can remove the packaging, you have to get rid of that sticky seal that runs along the top of the case. I have yet to find anything that removes that seal in just one or two pieces. And the music companies wonder why we are downloading most of our music these days. Hello! Make me a CD that’s easier to open and I’ll think about buying a few of them.

I realize a lot of this is for my own protection, but I liked it better in the old days when you could open a bottle of aspirin without a plunger and an engineering degree. And frankly, the odds of me hurting myself with the assortment of knives, scissors and power tools needed to pry open packages are a lot higher than the chances of someone slipping some poison into my Motrin. Of course, if I were stronger this would not be an issue, but buffing up requires buying more exercise equipment, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to open the box.

Keeping Me in Stitches

Nothing helps to make the season bright like a trip to the emergency room. It's all my fault. I made the mistake of saying out loud the other day, "Gee, this is the first December in several years that someone in the family hasn't had surgery or needed medical treatment of some kind." I slapped my hand over my mouth as soon as those words slipped from my tongue, but it was too late. I had already put some kind of hoodoo, voodoo, double jinx curse on us. It was only fitting that I was the one who ended up needing the ER. That will teach me to keep my big mouth shut. Maybe I should have had the doctor sew that up too while he was sewing up my hand.

I was trying to open a box delivered by the UPS man. With the blade from some scissors I opened up my hand instead, right in that bend between the thumb and forefinger. "Yippy Skippy!," I shouted. Well, something close to that only a little more blue. Sorry Santa. I knew right away it was going to need stitches, but I kept putting it off hoping that oozing bleeding gap would magically seal up while it was trapped under a big wad of gauze. It did get a little better while I did a load of laundry and went for a run. When I finally peeled back the gauze it was obvious that cut would never heal in that location without a little help. With a pain level of two, no massive bleeding and no chest pain, I knew I would be low on the triage list when we got to the hospital, so I took a book and a snack.

The ER was swamped, of course. Is it ever not busy when you're there? There were the usual characters: the poor wailing baby who probably has a painful ear infection, the kid with the broken leg, someone with the flu who looks as if he'll yap down your back any minute, the guy doubled over with a kidney stone and an 89 pound elderly lady delirious with dehydration. We've been pretty lucky in that the few times we've needed the emergency room it hasn't been a dire emergency, except that time Hubby fell off the roof and I thought he had nearly killed himself. Remind me to blog about ladder safety one day. Anyway, yesterday's time in the waiting room was a good reminder of just how healthy we are. I felt a little out of place with my little old laceration. Miraculously, we were out of there in two and a half hours. I ended up with a few stitches and a tetnus shot. I couldn't remember the last time I had a tetnus shot. Probably when I was a kid and my mother the nurse made me get one. I didn't want my jaws locking up and hampering my ability to eat this holiday season, so I got the shot. We were home in time for dinner and still had time to drive around and look at Christmas lights. My cut should heal nicely, and the stitches should be out in ten days. And the best news of all? We finally found a pair of sharp scissors in this house.