Bag of pine needles, 1, Shelly, 0

As a college classmate said of his parents to Roy once, "they had a house to live in and a house for junk".


We, unfortunately, resemble that remark. We are, at least, down to just two houses and two two-car garages now. (From July 2010-July 2014, we also had a 10x15 ft climate-controlled storage unit a couple miles away....)

As you can see from the pictures, there is miscellaneous lumber stored on shelves and in the rafters, Elfa shelving, lawn chairs, a dis-assembled 1/2-inch copper pipe trellis/cage we built, etc. You name it, and there was probably some of it in the garage at 5127. 

This past holiday weekend, we worked most of Saturday on sorting through the garage so that it can ultimately be torn down. We shredded the nice bags of leaves down into just a couple bags (good for gardening and our vermiculture bins), sorted things into move to other house and apply (various soil amendments — a whole mini-van's worth!), trash, recycle, or give to Habitat for Humanity's ReStore donation center. Good work was accomplished, and I should have had us quit while we were ahead.

But ... I could see either a bag of leaves or, most likely, pine needles hiding on the floor in the far back corner, behind the decorative door sitting up on bricks (Roy is immediately in front of that door in the picture to the left) and the old utility shelves (on the right wall), and the bikes hanging from the joists (to the left of Roy). And I wanted that bag out of there, and stored with the other bags of pine needles or shredded leaves, wherever it belonged.

Thus began my tug-of-war with that bag, with my arm extended as far as I can reach, while I'm standing side-wise between the door and the shelves, and I'm trying not to knock the door over, which could start a whole lot of bad (see above pictures for different angles of lots of stuff I can knock over if I'm not careful).

Roy pretty quickly said to leave the bag alone, but I was playing at being a stubborn Chicken that day, and I gave it one tug too many. The door wobbled, I grabbed it, but didn't let go of the bag... and in the process, dislodged a piece of the 1/2-inch copper pipe cage that we had built that was up on a shelf above my head and above that bag.

Said piece of copper pipe cage is flung down onto my fully outstretched forearm, with one of the rough-cut ends smacking into that fully-engaged muscle. To say it hurt, well, it's been a long time since something hurt so bad that I couldn't actually say anything. I was stunned. It immediately began to swell, and we can see the complete imprint of the end of the pipe. We figure we are now finished for the day, but we still have to pick up everything from the driveway and put it away, then go home and get showered. As a reward for not screaming bloody murder, I wanted to try out the new ice cream shop in the shopping strip around the corner (La Monarcha for anyone in the 'hood). That's a nice scoop of pistachio ice cream I have there, by the way. We recommend the place (next to Peru Gourmet).

I iced my arm, and iced it some more, taking ibuprofen along the way. All told, I wound up icing it on and off for 3 nights because of pain and swelling. Tuesday night, I braced that wrist, as my arm had throbbed mercilessly all afternoon at work. (Flex your wrist toward your arm and/or type, and you'll see quickly which muscle I'm talking about.)

It looks pretty good today (Wednesday) - the swelling is almost completely gone and I can physically brush across the injury with my fingers and not flinch. Once the scab finally goes away, I'll put Mederma on it for the next 6 weeks or so, since I'm not really excited about having a perfect half-pipe scar on my forearm.

Have I learned my lesson? Oh, probably not. But I will be more cautious for a while, at least.