Running Afoul of the Martini Gods

I have angered the Martini Gods. I am not sure how; perhaps it is blasphemy to reveal the secrets of the Vermouth Mister to the uninitiated. If so, I swear on the sacred altar bar of Ketel One, I did not know.

The gods used cunning to reveal their wrath and so I must tell you the story.

It started during Kathy's Sunday night dishwashing. A martini glass spontaneously flung itself out of the soapy water, shattering its thin-glassed Art Deco body across the counter and tile floor. What seemed like a hundred fragile pieces of glass scattered everywhere. A broken martini glass is, to me, no big deal. If I was doing the dishwashing, our casualty rate would be higher as it is a hazard of the martini-drinking art.

Kathy was quick to start cleaning up the glass and I, ever pushy, insisted on helping. Barefoot, as it were, because that's how smart I am.

She objected but I said, no, no, you'll see, everything will be fine. There is no talking to me when I have a Good Idea. But it was fine. We gathered pieces of glass from all reaches of the kitchen, deposited them in a thick paper bag, and Kathy took it out to the trash. I pulled a matching martini glass out of the recesses of the dish cabinet, washed and dried it, then set it on the martini tray in the lounge.

My bare feet were intact; no harm, no foul.

I then went out to the garage to turn down the heat on our new water heater so that Kathy could stop being scalded when she washed dishes. Of course, for this I put on shoes. That's right, no shoes for cleaning up glass, but definitely shoes for walking across a dirty cement floor. (As it turned out, that was for good reason – just a few feet away from the water heater was a live Potato Bug/Jerusalem Cricket. EW. Who knows what else I stepped on.) Once back inside, I took my shoes off because, as far as I'm concerned, shoes are only for social situations and emergencies. Uhhhh…emergencies being bugs and dirt, not broken glass.

About an hour later, as I was walking across the floor in the studio downstairs, I felt something sharp underfoot and I began trailing blood. Near as I can tell, a piece of glass must have been stuck harmlessly to my foot all that time, then somehow it rotated around into my flesh as I walked. I stood in front of the studio sink in a yoga pose, foot held under the faucet while I did my best to try to get any glass out. However, my foot was bleeding most annoyingly and I couldn't see to be sure, so after a while I gave up and just put a Band-Aid on it.

The next day, my foot was hurting something fierce, especially while I vacuumed the downstairs and then lugged the heavy vacuum cleaner back upstairs. When it began bleeding again in the shower, I figured I had to do something. I took a pair of tweezers and started probing around painfully. The tweezers kept making a "chink!" noise as I did so, and since I've never known my body to make chinking noises before, I figured out there was more glass inside.

At this point I wisely turned to the World Wide Web for guidance, as you do, trying to find the best ways to get glass out of your foot. There, I read the tale of someone who had a tiny bit of glass migrate through his/her body, severing a tendon and fracturing a bone or some-such, causing months of pain and torture and at least the story didn't end in amputation. Omigod. With a little more motivation than before, I limped to the studio to find a magnifying glass. I found a very pretty one from Studios Blackbird, but it turned out to be more decorative than useful, as I tried to juggle magnifying glass with tweezers while standing on one leg in a dim bathroom.

By this time I was considering whether losing my foot would be the end of the world. You know, preparing myself and all that. I decided, well, maybe I would be an even better pirate if I had a peg leg. There's a bright side.

I called a nurse-friend and she advised me to keep working at it to get the glass out. I did not ask her about the possibility of amputation.

After some searching, I located my collapsible work magnifier. Settling down in front of a glass door, with a towel, magnifier, and Tweezerman tweezers at the ready, I went back to my excavation. Chink, chink, ow. Chink, chink, "can't I leave this here?!? OW!"

At last, I pulled the glass out of my foot and instantly felt so much better. A little antibiotic ointment and a Nexcare Pirates tattoo bandage and I was good to go.

On her way home from work, I told Kathy about my adventure. "Did you save the glass?" she asked.

"Of course!" I laughed. "I'll show you when you get home."

As soon as she walked in, I took her to the kitchen and showed her where to look on the blood-stained tissue. "My god, that's BIG!" she said. "It's like a dagger!"

I nodded bravely. "I know. Do you like the extra touch of the blood on the tip of it? Kind of dramatic – you can see how it went straight up into my foot."

Then I moved the magnifying glass away. It became much, much smaller. Rather tiny, as a matter of fact. I had to turn it so that it caught the light, to make sure she could still see it. Umm.

I figured I had paid my penance and absolved us, but that evening, Kathy found large, thin pieces of glass dangerously embedded in the drain stopper of the sink. Later, in her office, she felt something on her arm and reached to brush it away – and it was yet another piece of glass. Clearly, the gods were not done making their point.

Kathy thinks it is her blue-cheese stuffed olives that offended the Martini Gods. Nice try, but I know that it can only be my post. If you have ideas on ways to appease the heathen gods of Martinis and Assorted Cocktails, please leave me a comment with instructions. I'm afraid of where the glass will show up next if we do not make peace.

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