This is What Happens When I Don’t Have the Internet.

They told me there was a problem with our internet that couldn’t be fixed for at least 24 hours and I panicked: “But…but…how do I survive without the internet? What will I make for dinner without recipes online? Where is Gabe’s dentist appointment tomorrow? WHAT WILL THE WEATHER BE LIKE!?”

“Wait. No. This will be great! We will get out and do stuff! We will be internet-free for an entire day! Maybe I can even write a post about how awesome it is to have an internet-free day! We will rock at this! Okay, let’s go Gabe!”

We walked to the library, where hey! This place has an awesome play area! Our no-internet day, man. So many discoveries already! I picked up a few holds I had waiting (the first West Wing DVD and 20 books on toddler behavior and sleep. Nothing says desperation like checking out a dozen books on toddlers, amiright?) and walked back to the play area.

Gabe played with some toys and hovered around a sweet little 4-year-old boy who was building with some plastic snap-together things. Gabe would knee over to him, and Little Redhead would slowly scoot away Gabe. Gabe would knee, Little Redhead would scoot. I intervened, apologized and explained to Little Redhead that Gabe was very little and didn’t know he was bothering him.

Then Little Redhead whipped out a marker and started drawing red lines on the plastic blocks.

I pretended to ignore it, because no one likes being the bad guy (and I am scared of talking to kids when their parents are around). Finally, I just whispered to him, “Hey. Do you think you’re allowed to do that?” Little Redhead shrugged. “Well, I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”

He looked at me over his tiny, round glasses, and very seriously said something in a tiny, garbled whisper that I like to think was, “Okay. Don’t tell anyone I did it.” Or maybe it was, “Shut up. Don’t tell me what to do, woman. I will cut you.”

LOOK MOM. I FOUND A CREEPY ARMADILLO THAT I WILL NOW TRY TO EAT. HEY MOM DO YOU THINK THAT LITTLE BOY WILL LET ME PLAY WITH HIM? LET ME GO GET IN HIS FACE AND ASK HIM.

I plopped down with a book for some glorious 20 minutes,  reading while Gabe continued to try to play with every child in the library. Eventually, his persistence paid off and a preschooler got mad at him and pushed him into a chair. He started crying, so I picked him up and explained to the little girl that he didn’t mean to make her mad. “He doesn’t understand what you’re saying to him yet.” Instead of going all Mama Bear, I surprisingly didn’t even care. Two minutes later, Gabe and the little girl walking around together, finding books to read.

We left the library and went for a walk. It was a lovely, clear day. Oh, naïve Ashley.

We got back to the apartment and I was in gung-ho cleaning and cooking mood. “Load of laundry! Must do all the dishes! And clean up ALL THE THINGS! Oh, I shall make macaroni and cheese soup for dinner! Yes! Today is great! I feel so accomplished!”

I grabbed my trusty immersion blender to mash some beans for the soup. A hunk of beans got stuck in the bottom, so I carefully started to pull the mass of bean mush out of the bottom of the wand. Except.

My finger suddenly got shredded. I threw the immersion blender down, confused. I looked at my finger. “Weird. It’s all cut up, but not bleeding.” For 10 seconds. It started gushing. I grabbed a clean dish towel and tossed back a few ibuprofen (I knew that mo fo would hurt once it got feeling.)

Apparently, my other hand was holding the top of the wand, where the world’s Most Sensitive Button was lightly touched and shredded my index finger on my right hand. MY LEFT HAND SABOTAGED MY RIGHT. (Attention: no mean jokes about my stupidity. MIKE.) (Also, I’m not alone, according to the reviews on Amazon. CUISINART.)

I was afraid I’d pass out (my mom passed out a few times when she cut herself on broken glass when I was a kid, so it’s a Fear), so I laid down on the floor with my dish towel-wrapped hand on the seat of our recliner. Gabe came over to see what I was doing, while I fumbled for my phone. I called Mike. No answer. He turns off his phone in class and wouldn’t be home for two more hours.

I laid pathetically on the floor and texted to Twitter about how much it sucked. I couldn’t look at my finger – I could just see that there was a cut with a hunk of something coming out of it and that my nail was sliced through at the base. MY NAIL WAS SLICED THROUGH TO THE SKIN. AND THE SKIN WAS BLEEDING, PEOPLE.

When I couldn’t get ahold of Mike, I did what any adult would do: I called my mom. I was hoping to get advice about whether the ER was warranted or how I care for a finger I can’t even stomach looking at, but she didn’t answer. So I called my dad, who spent 15 minutes on the phone with me.

“What should I Google?”

“I don’t know. ‘When to go to the ER for cut finger?'”

“….”

“Dad, are you finding anything?”

“Yeah. Oh, ew. This story is disgusting. How did this person type this with a severed finger? Oh, wait. He said it was really hard to type.”

My dad came over to watch Gabe (who I found in the bathroom BEHIND THE BABY GATE next to the toilet.) (Yes, we have exactly ONE baby gate in this house: in the bathroom. In front of the toilet.), since I was out of commission (“It’s not like you broke your leg,” said my husband. Two words: MAN COLD, Mike. Man. Cold.) and my mom came over to give me her expert opinion and bring my dad s0me dinner.

My parents’ advice: Don’t go to the ER. Your nail is totally going to fall off and might not grow back. You have nerve damage. I have no idea what that hunk of stuff coming out of the wound is. Oh, and get a rubber glove to wear so it doesn’t get wet. And use hydrogen peroxide. Wait, don’t. It might cause tissue damage. Wait, do. It’s good.

I would show you a picture except it’s just nasty. NASTY. NAAASSTTTY. I shudder every time I change my bandage. Let me describe what it looks like:

Diagonal stripes across the nail, which are sliced through the skin. The skin bled under the nail. Then a big hunk on the side looks like it just exploded. Not a clean cut, just an explosion of skin. I have no idea what the heck is going on there. I’m a little scared of how it’ll heal, to be honest. It doesn’t even hurt, which makes me think I really do have nerve damage.  Which, according to my mom, “The only downside of nerve damage is it gets cold faster than the rest of your body.”

So. Bright side! It’s like when I burned my finger so badly the skin turned gray, but it didn’t even hurt.

Most of the time, it looks like this:

(They are called ‘finger cots,’ but I think you can see why we called them ‘finger condoms’ when I worked at Starbucks. Ahem. They come sized, as well.)

We didn’t have any gauze, so I improvised. I was rifling through the contents of our bathroom, when I found an old box of disposable nursing pads. Genius struck, and I cut it up to use on my finger. Just all me MacGyver. Or Weird Lady with a Boob Pad on her Finger.

I’ve also poked Gabe in the eye a few times trying to feed him something. He looked offended.

Oh, and I totally finished making the macaroni and cheese soup later that night. It was freaking tasty.

And we have internet again, we actually got internet from one of the best internet providers in camden sc.

Medical advice welcome.