Knitting Needle Catastrophe, OUCH!

[sarah]

One of my great flaws is that I worry too much about our house- how cluttered it gets, how clean it needs to be, etc. instead of recognizing that in a perfectly clean, tidy house no one is actually doing anything, learning anything.  So, in my monumental effort to reinvent myself as a relaxed, unschooling mama that CAN handle mess on the floor (in combination with treatment for anxiety, which is helping with my need for 100% tidiness!!!), i did NOT pick up the knitting needles the youngest was exploring while I crocheted last night.  

 

I gave myself a real talking to, gently scolding myself away from the urge to stop her from dumping them all out and put them away.  "I CAN do this in the morning, it isn't necessary to worry about it now! Let her explore the knitting needles & deal with it in the morning.  She's probably learning something valuable, just leave it alone."   So I let her play with them until she fell asleep on the couch next to me, and scooped her up without putting away the knitting needles on my way to bed. 

 

I was so proud- go me!  I'm growing & changing for the better! :) 

 

Yeah... The first thing I did this morning was jam one of the aforementioned (bamboo) knitting needles about an inch into my foot while struggling to get the darn shades pulled up. (Inside of my foot, kind of slid sideways under the skin below my ankle & towards the back.)  

 

Perhaps I will amend my new "Don't worry, pick it up in the morning" policy to read "Don't worry, pick it up in the morning *unless it is sharp, pointy, or otherwise likely to jam into your foot while you are still half asleep*!"

 

Trying to find a new place in the middle of "too tidy" and "too dangerous!" is rather tricky, isn't it!? :D

 

[Meredith]

Ouch! indeed.

In a quirky sort of way, this could be considered an example of one of Joyce's truisms "don't dump all your rules at once, say yes more". Because people who are used to a certain amount of mess on the floor rarely have those kinds of accidents (and it could be just a random accident, for sure, but I love a good analogy). Some of it is "knowing when to say yes" in a sense - when to let something go and when to pick it up so you don't step on it tomorrow (my good scissors, for instance, never stay on the floor even though I sometimes cut fabric there). Some of it, for people like me who have sort of continuous mild to moderate mess, is learning how to walk in a room full of potentially pointy objects. I walk through my kitchen, where I keep the floor very clean, differently than in my living-room which is the home of legos, my sewing stuff and random bits of allllll the projects we all get into around here. So I walk gently in there, and if I'm not up for walking gently (or cleaning) I stick to the kitchen where its safe to blunder around.

 

Anyway, take care of yourself and your poor injured foot.