So last night I cut my thumb. Dad, you may want to stop reading here! I was prepping vegetables for a stew recipe I got from a Rachel Ray magazine...French Spring Chicken Pot. Basically chicken stew. It sounded great. It looked great in the picture in the magazine. No big deal.

So I was prepping veggies while the chicken was poaching in onions and water on the stove. J.E.B. was working out in the living room and V was crawling around the kitchen playing in the Tupperware cabinet. A pretty typical evening in the Bolen house actually. Well that is until I brought the chopping knife down on my thumb knuckle.

I said some choice phrases as I grabbed my thumb and went to the sink to run cold water on it. On a side note, at least I cut my thumb in the winter here. In the summer we don't have cold water. No, I'm serious. We have hot and luke warm. I'm not kidding. Ask my mom; she visited me this past summer when V was a tiny thing and remarked on how she'd never washed potatoes in warm water before! So thankfully when I needed cold water to run over the gash in my thumb, this time of year allowed me to do so.

I was doing fine with everything as J.E.B. came over to look at it and then he went into our room to find peroxide (which he couldn't because I had tossed the rest of it just that morning as it had expired over a year ago). Then things changed. I started to get really, really warm. The room started to close in on me. I could barely hear V's upset crying/whimpering right at my feet. My legs started to get a little jellyish. I knew I was about to pass out. I called to J.E.B that I was going to pass out and then did the only thing I thought I could do and not pass out/fall on top of V who was hovering close to me: I sank to the floor with my hands still above me in the sink.

That was the sight that J.E.B. came back to--me kneeling on the floor, leaning against the cabinet with my hands in the sink. I barely remember him helping me to sit against the dishwasher. I only wanted to close my eyes and pass out. I do recall him yelling my name and forcing me to keep looking and talking to him as he picked up V and cleaned/wrapped my thumb.

The timer for the chicken went off as I was trying to stay away from the darkness which was desperately trying to overcome me. In the end, it was all ok. It wasn't deep enough for stitches so some neosporin and two bandaids later I was sitting on the floor leaning against the dishwasher comforting a distraught V while J.E.B. put the prepped veggies into the fridge for dinner another night. We ended up having noodles and pasta sauce instead since he was hungry and when I thought of food I felt sick.

Many of you will laugh at this post since you know that I used to be a veterinary technician and my favorite place to be was in the surgery, scrubbed in and participating. What I say to that is that was always an animal. I've never once claimed to be brave when it comes to blood and people, especially my own. Heck, I still need to sit on the table to get a vaccine and I can't watch the technician poke the needle into my arm, but I CAN watch the blood fill up the tube. Strange, I know!

Apparently J.E.B. feels that I overreacted as it was just a cut. But what he doesn't realize is that I come by it all honestly. As far as I can tell, the Angelovich clan (or at least the branch of the Angelovich clan that includes my parents, my brother and sister and I) is not great with blood or crises involving blood. I can think of a situation of each member in my family regarding blood in which we did not "shine" except for my brother and that is prolly because he has been living outside of the US for years and hasn't told me about his less than macho moments!

But on a plus note, I was quick when I first got cut and there was no blood on the knife nor the cutting board and veggies! That's right, cat-like reflexes over here! Thank you very much!