All thumbs up, one thumb down.

Thanks to Tammie Miller-Hardy and sons Griffin and Phoenix (and of course, Diana Baylor) for their hours of work yesterday, stripping an emptying my mom's house in preparation for new owners. It was a bittersweet exercise to deconstruct what took 45 years to organize, but luckily there is a destination for quite a lot of the furnishings and unneeded items, and that is a fine outcome, indeed.

Having finished hauling three trucks loads, I reserved my own contribution for last. On the final pitch of the game, headed for the cars to come home, I crashed a lamp against the overhanging roof by the front door. One of the broken pieces raining down gashed my left thumb. Hats off to the Urgent Care at Highlander Point, where the thumb was scrubbed down and a single stitch affixed to hold the cut shut, as well as heavy wrapping and a splint. On Monday morning, it's off to Kutz and Kleinert to see how bad the tendon was damaged, and perhaps minor surgery if it was.

My reason for telling this story is that there is a workplace/home space safety lesson to be learned. I was tired, hungry, thirsty and in a hurry -- and these are the perfect, textbook preludes to accidents. Yesterday I conclusively proved it. In this instance, it could have been far worse, so as Sgt. Esterhaus on "Hill Street Blues" used to say:

"Let's be careful out there."