Cactus Cutie

Soooo, how was your morning? Mine? Well funny you should ask...mine was ok. It started fabulously enough with a bootcamp class that kicked my literal butt. More like my glutes and quads, but trust me, they were KICKED! Then, I came home to find happy smiling kids ready for me to take them on a walk. After Maggies initial breakdown over the fact that I was not going to allow her to run along side the stroller, but instead "enjoy" a ride in the stroller, we were on our way. It was a stunningly beautiful morning, slightly overcast, breeze in the air (which for the record, Maggie calls "wind-ing" as in, "oh it's winding outside.") and me feeling sweaty and worked out. We took our usual route and as we were walking down one of the streets I may or may not have busted out into a rendition of "Oh what a beautiful morning" from Oklahoma. After my initial solo Maggie turned around and asked what THAT was. I brilliantly replied, "that was Oh what a beautiful morning from Oklahoma" to which she said "ohhhh, sing it again." So there I was, breeze in my face, pushing a stroller belting out Oh what a beautiful morning at 7 in the morning. Hey neighbors. I was sung out and felt it best to perhaps stop at that point. After a minute, I could hear maggie yammering something at me, but wasn't sure what. I believe my mind was wandering to other places. However, upon closer listening, this is what she was saying/yelling to me (I kid you not, this is exactly her words) "MOM, OPEN YOUR MOUTH and SING." And with that, the neighbors were once again blessed to hear my rousing rendition of OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING. At this point we were nearing the end of the line. For whatever reason I decided to go up a street I NEVER walk up and on top of that, chose to walk on a side of the street I don't ever walk on. Who knows, could have been the lovely morning, could have been a momentary lapse of my senses, but whatever the case, it proved to be fateful. About halfway up the street Maggie had turned and was "attacking" Max trying to wrench a toy from his hand. I, being the perveyor of justice that I am stopped in front of the house we were at and worked to put a quick stop to this. As I was yanking the toy back from Maggies hand, and reprimanding her for being such a meany head sister, I felt a little prick on my hip and my mind registered that perhaps I'd bumped the cactus right there. I went to brush my hip off and when I did, I felt a rather SHARP sensation sear into my hand, and then I came up with this:



Yes folks, that is right, I now had a lifesize piece of cactus FULLY stuck to my hand. STUCK! (please don't hate me for being so HAWT in the morning, it IS hard to be me). I thought, ok, I'll just pull it out, no biggy. If you must know, it is a biggy. It was NOT gonna move, AT all. The more you try to pull, the harder it sticks in. So, now I'm in a quandry...I have a cactus stuck to me and two kids and no way to get it out. So, what else would I do....I trotted over to my neighbors at 7:35 a.m and knocked on the door. She peeked out the window, I yelled out, "I'm sorry, but I have a bit of an emergency here." She opened the door, took one look at my new appendage and yanked me inside. Now her kids were all intrigued, Maggie was concerned at my well being, and Max was just happy to crawl around on the floor. While Kat went to retrieve some tweezers, I managed to yank my middle finger free of the barbs, which only made the pain WAYYYY worse for the other two fingers. It was as if i'd pissed the cactus off and it said, 'screw you lady, you get one out, we'll put 4 more in."

Thankfully Kat is a woman after my own heart and grabbed the camera so no blog opportunity could go undone. Or just that posterity should see that I suffered due to their naughty fighting. Or maybe so I could sue the man for having a freaking jumping cactus protruding directly onto a public sidewalk. All i can think is, some poor kid is gonna reallllllly hate their life one of these days if they were to accidentally brush past this. Then again, come to think of it, LOTS of kids have apparently been roaming these neighborhoods for many years and nary a problem. Perhaps I'm the only shmo stupid enough to accomplish this fete.

Pretty awesome 5th finger no? Anyway, it became quite apparent that no amount of pulling or trying to tweeze was going to work. So, I finally suggested that perhaps we should try cutting it off and then deal with the spines.

Thanks to Kat and her delicate surgical skills, I was cut free from the offending cacti and now was ready to pluck the remaing pieces out. (I'm really sad you can't click on these and enlarge them to see all the spines better)

Whilst that may LOOK like a smile on my face...be not fooled, it hurt like a freaking MOTHER! When I'd try to pull it out, it seems like it hung on for dear life and pulled back. Good thing I'm a freaking rock star and can handle pain, 'cause I kicked that cactus' butt.

When all was said and done, I had about 10 little bleeding holes, but that went away quickly. No real damage done, no pain in the hand. Mostly now, just a great story with some fun pics to show that I took on a cactus and WON!

Many, many thanks to Kat for opening her door and willingly working to save my hand from a worser fate. She totally scored some delicious salsa sorta from me for her efforts.

May I end with a little word to the wise: Be thou careful where you walk, for one never knows where a jumping cactus may lurk.

Prickles and pains,

Allyson