My first (real) knife wound.

This morning, I awoke, saw my mom off back home, then crawled back in bed for another hour. When I woke for the second time, I began my usual morning routine.

(1) Make coffee. Put the 8,000 pieces that compose a Cuisinart Grind 'n Brew together, fill the water area with water, and put in the appropriate amount of beans.
(2) Sit on couch and wait for coffee to beep. Oftentimes, I consider this to be the best part of my day. That little sweet three-part beep letting me know my sweet caffeinated nectar is ready.
(3) Watch WGN Morning News. (P.S. If you don't watch this and live in their viewing area, you are definitely missing out.)

Rather than making breakfast and my lunch, I decided to get dinner ready. You see, P.I.C. and I have a picnic date tonight at Millennium Park. Lucky for us, his sisters had given us "party sub sandwich" leftovers and there was little to do aside from cut them into more manageable pieces. So I got out my bread knife (party subs are big, you need a big knife) and proceeded to cut them. I had cut the ham sandwich in half when a clumsy moment of my own knocked the bread knife onto the floor. That sucker bounced back up and caught me in my lower leg, right above the angle. I looked down, and noticed a little white scrape about an inch long. That scrape then began to turn bright red with blood. It was not just a superficial scrape, this was a bona fide actual cut.

I immediately marched myself to the bathroom, cleaned the bloody cut, put some ointment on it and bandaged it with sterile gauze and first aid tape. I then walked to my bedroom, grabbed my phone and sent a calm text message to P.I.C. "I  may have to go to the er for stitches. I dropped the knife and it sliced my leg pretty good. I got it bandaged up, so hopefully it'll stop bleeding."

One minute later, he calls. Of course, he was worried, but knowing me, if it was truly serious, he would have gotten a hysterical phone call and not a rather calm text. I promised that I would check it before I left for work and if it looked bad, I would go to the emergency room or an immediate care clinic to get a couple of stitches. It looked alright, so to work I went.

I cleaned the area and changed the bandage once. All looks well down there, despite a small gash in my leg that wasn't there when I woke up this morning.

It is quite amazing that something like this hasn't happened sooner. I have small counters and no chopping skills. I quite frequently take a whack at any one of my fingers as I attempt to chop vegetables and the like. Lucky for me (not so much for the vegetables, or those for whom I make food), my knives are dull with a capital "D." Usually I just take off my nail polish with the chop. But today, on a sunny, lovely Monday, I scored my first real knife wound. On my leg. While making a sandwich. At above waist level.

Only me.