My Hubby doesn't know how to K.I.S.S.*

*For those of you unfamiliar, K.I.S.S. is a method for completing tasks. It stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid.*

I know my updates have not exactly been regular, and I'm sorry about that. Truth is- not much exciting happens to me unless you find working all day and coming home to collapse at night exhilarating. Either I don't have anything to blog about, or I'm too busy to even look at the computer that day. I'm trying to rectify this, but in the meantime bear with me. I have a wonderful story for you today. :)

So this weekend was Halloween, and dare I say it was an exciting one? If you're a regular reader, you may have been expecting a race recap on Saturday as the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure was listed in my upcoming runs on my race page. However, you can't do a race recap when you didn't even run the race. Yes, I missed a race, and there was a reason. I will give you a recap of that... Enjoy!

So Friday night was spent at the last KHS football game of the season, drinking hot chocolate, trying not to freeze, and dreaming of my warm bed. On the way home from the game, Robert dragged me to Wal-Mart because we needed some last minute touches for his Halloween costume. The plan was to be a ghost and a ghost buster for the 5k we were running in the morning and make everyone laugh as we ran past chasing each other. I was the ghost, and I am lazy, so my costume was easy. I have the KISS method perfected to an art: Buy white sweatshirt. Buy clearance aisle ugly curtain. Cut hole in ugly curtain and stick head through. Done. As soon as I realized my costume was finished, I collapsed in my race clothes and fully intended on just going to sleep as you see me above. Robert didn't like that, so he made me put PJ's on while he finished his costume in the kitchen. I kept saying to him that he didn't need to put that much detail into the costume, but my husband is ambitious to the point of recklessness. His costume, especially the "proton pack" had to be awesome. 

So there I am, minding my own business and drifting off to sleep when I hear Robert yell from the kitchen, "Liz! Get in here quick!" I, annoyed at being woken up, thought that he wanted me to come in and see the dog dance on her hind legs or the guinea pigs jump through hoops. When I asked him why he wanted me, his reply was just five words- "I cut myself. It's bad." I could tell by the tone of his voice that this was not going to be pretty, so I hopped up and ran to see how much damage he had done. 

In the kitchen I found my husband pale-faced and clutching his left hand. Apparently he had been cutting dryer wires with our kitchen shears and ignoring my voice in the back of his head saying "Stop this Robert... You're going to get hurt! Keep it simple stupid!" (Although, I'd never think he was stupid. Ambitious to the point of recklessness? Yes. Knows better? Absolutely. Stupid? Nah. Just an occasional maker of bad decisions. That's all.) The scissors slipped with a terrible amount of force and caught the tip of his left pointer finger. I asked him how badly he cut it and he told me that he thought he might have "cut it off." GREAT! This being the same finger his dad cut off with a table saw some years ago, I wasn't exactly surprised. I asked him if he thought he could find the stump, deciding in my mind that we were going to the emergency room if he did. He picked it up off the floor about two seconds later. I grabbed the half inch thick chunk of only skin and nail (thank goodness), threw it in a baggie of ice, literally tossed the dog into her bedroom, wrapped a jacket around Robert, and hurried off to Parkwest ER. 

I didn't really know what to expect at the ER, but I was calm and Robert was... relatively calm considering the circumstance. I misspelled about eight words on the intake form, fumbled sleepily for my insurance card, and tried not to let Robert see how grossed out I was when I finally got to look at his finger. The CNA's at Parkwest weren't so subtle. Robert quickly became the "man with the finger," and I swear we had 3 or 4 different aides in there to "check his wound" in about a fifteen minute period. I especially enjoyed the younger blonde female CNA that gasped in obvious disgust every single time she saw the wound. She was also the one that disinfected the cut with about eight extremely painful saline packets, so I don't think Robert was quite the fan. My efforts to bring in the stump were in vain however, because the doctor couldn't reattach anything. He covered the wound in what can only be described as an "Instant Scab" called Surgi-seal to stop the bleeding, and he did this with no anesthetic. Robert almost passed out and/or threw up from pain at this point. We thought we were home-free! Not. Right before being discharged, we discovered the Surgi-seal did not work and my husband started to bleed big fat drops of blood on the hospital floor all over again. That was when I almost passed out and/or threw up. 

 After two more layers of Surgi-seal and a compress from an ER nurse, we finally got out of there, grabbed Robert's Vicodin prescription for pain, and managed to make it home by 2am. A 3.1 mile race in 5 hours? No. Not happening. 

So we forfeited our race entry and decided to "sleep in" for the cure instead. Robert got up the next day and went right back to work on his proton pack proving in my mind that he never learns, but the finished product looked pretty awesome. I guess it was almost worth the 4% of his finger that got dumped in the trash at the hospital that night.

My costume though was equally as awesome, didn't require much effort, and left me with all ten fingers intact. 

Clearly I am a good K.I.S.S.-er.