A funny thing happened last week on the way to the bank…

Early last week I racked up a whole new list of First Times for myself. For the first time since high school I was in a car accident, but it was my first car accident in which the air bags have deployed. It was the first time EVER I have been knocked unconscious. (I was out only for a moment, fortunately, but waking up from it was like slogging through a swampy, muddy nightmare. The last thing I remembered before the accident was I was supposed to be driving, not sitting behind the wheel with my eyes closed! I distinctly remember yelling myself to consciousness--not out of pain, thankfully, just panic.)

Next was my first ride in an ambulance. Before we left, the woman who had hit me was already receiving care in the ambulance. She was crying and apologizing and holding a little baby who seemed not bothered at all by what was going on. Later I was told by the police officer that this woman had just moved from Coffeyville, Kansas. You might have heard about Coffeyville's troubles earlier this year with widespread flooding that was compounded by an oil leak from the local refinery. I don't know if she had left Coffeyville because she had lost everything; but if she had, she was having one stinker of a year.

She refused further treatment, so I went to the hospital alone in the ambulance. In the hospital I experienced my first CT scan and then an X-ray taken by a machine that came to me in my ER room. Afterwards, upon determining that most of my injuries were scrapes and bruises, I discovered my final first of the day: I have a broken wrist, and it's in my dominant hand, the right one, probably because it was poised just above the steering wheel as I was fixing to turn left before the airbag blew.

Before now, I've never had a broken bone in my life. Now I have two. And even though it's my writing hand, I was ambidextrous before I entered Kindergarten, so I can still write with my other hand like a five-year-old. That seems to be good enough for most people since signatures aren't generally scrutinized anymore for consistency. As far as knitting, quilting, and typing goes… I can knit, slowly and with many breaks. I'm composing this entry right now with speech recognition software, which is more or less hands free and another nifty computer doohickey I get to play with. But I am not quilting at all.

Our mantra right now is "It could've been much worse". I've not made it to the bank yet, but (and as completely moral-of-the-story as this sounds) I'm so glad I made it home.

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In other news, Mr. B and I went to listen to Stephanie Pearl-McPhee this afternoon. I am a newbie knitter and a blogger with only three months more experience than knitting. I had heard of the Yarn Harlot, but I hadn't really gotten into her blog or other writings until I picked up her book Knitting Rules!: The Yarn Harlot's Bag of Knitting Tricks. (It's got some pretty good instructions on how to knit socks; that's why I wanted it.)
She as a list maker, and I am a list reader. I read lists out loud (the funny ones), and my husband listens to them. He is not a knitter, but he was laughing out loud at her lists. And so he came with me today.

During the presentation, Stephanie demonstrated her Irish Cottage style of knitting, but I was sitting too far away from the stage to record it. My crappy still shot of her is evidence enough of that. Much to my delight, however, someone else has gotten up close and personal to her to capture it on video.

I won't be attempting this way of knitting any time soon. I'm simply looking forward to getting my short cast put on in a few days.