The TOE

Well, it's time for an update to this post. I't been almost three months since my hunk of a man, decided to rebuild our patio cover.

Judging by the picture above...alot has changed in three months.

Obviously this project has taken longer than expected, taking on a veritable life of it's own. But my husband has the patience of a saint (duh...he married me, didn't he?).

Of course the summer he decides to take on this project, is one of the hottest on record in Los Angeles in years. It hasn't been easy keeping the diet coke stocked.

Every evening after slaving away at the office, my husband comes home to a home-made turkey sandwich, lovingly slaved over by moi. He then goes to work. Painting beams of wood, measuring, sawing, hammering away.

Slowly but surely, a new patio cover is coming together. All of my worries about him falling or breaking some part of his body were, of course, unfounded...

NOT!!!

Just as it was beginning to look like we were out safely out of the "contsruction" woods...this happens (in the words of Mr. Cruisin', as he describes his calamity in an email to a friend)

So there I was installing the last joist...
I position one end of the 12' joist on the outer beam and walk the other side up the ladder while it is on my shoulder.

Put a 6x8" block on the top step of the second ladder to hold the house end of the joist up and then get off the ladder and jack the joist the remaining 2" into place.

Perfect!!!. I can do construction!!! I could be on This Old House!!!

Quickly, I grab the steel joist hanger, manage to get 5 out of 6 screws in when the 6th screw flies out of the screw gun. No biggie, scurry down the ladder to grab more screws.

While I am down, I guess I can move the second ladder out of the way now that the joist is secured.

That is about the time the train left the tracks. I forgot about the 6x8x10" block of wood previously mentioned.

Newton's laws of gravity and physics are immutable and the inevitable happened. I see the block falling and pray to a higher source that the block doesn't deflect it's trajectory and go thru the slider window.

The higher source hears me, lets the block hit the third rung and land on my left foot. I guess something or someone had to pay the piper on this one. I figure it won't be that bad because I didn't go thru the slow motion thing that normally occurs during normal disaster...

HA!!! You know, it is true, one can see stars when injured if the impact is great enough. Strangely, after a couple of minutes, the second toe next to that ugly little one on the end goes numb.

Great, now I can finish in comfort. About and hour later, I take off my shoe and sock and see that my toe is the color of a ripe eggplant and approximately doubled it's normal girth.

It looked like an eggplant with a toenail on it.

So, there you have it. A broken toe...there's nothing to do for a broken toe but grin and, well, bare it.

All I can say is, thank goodness purple is my favorite color.