Thumbs

~ Jenny

What you don’t need thumbs for:
Typing if you don’t hit the space bar.

What you do need thumbs for:
Everything else.

I cut my thumb open on a can lid yesterday, and now I can’t do anything. Plus ice storm tonight (please please please let the power stay on) and eight inches of snow on Thursday. Thus I am typing short posts for Wednesday and Thursday and setting them to go up on those days, but I will probably be absent in the comments because I’ll be in the fetal position waiting for my thumb to be usable again. Obviously I can type, I’m typing this, but it hurts and I’m a wimp.

Next week, it’s supposed to be in the forties. I can make it till then. I have Diet Coke and chocolate. It’s do-able.

Y’all have a good time in the comments.

40 thoughts on “Thumbs”

  1. I feel your pain. Please take better care of your thumbs in the future. Unless you deploy speech-to-text software, how will we ever get more books from a Crusie with disabled digits? (You should deploy speech-to-text software anyway.)

    Get well. Be well. Stay well. Please?

    1. As someone who has a partially deaf brother, I can tell you that that software is less than perfect. Half of what his telephone tells him I said bears no resemblance to what I actually said. It makes for a lot of laughs, but it is very slow and inaccurate.

      1. Yes, some of the things the software “hears” are no where near what the person is saying. I’ve come across some doozies at work.

        1. aunt snack, Office Wench Cherry, your observations are too true. Both the software and the user require training and practice to make the best use of it. Starting now or soon might make a difference.

          1. I’ve had fairly good results from “Dragon naturally speaking” voice to text software, on my laptop, with the quite mediocre headphone-microphone I use for Zoom meetings.
            It requires some training and isn’t perfect, but the results are mostly correct (about 90% I’d guess, on a sentence and paragraph level – more if you count word by word).

  2. Sending you all sorts of get-well-thumb vibes.

    I suspect it says something about me that my first thought on reading your first four lines was: “Jenny’s been talking to Bob again”…

  3. As someone who has cut off the tip of a finger, I feel your pain (me and Bill Clinton). I also send you wishes for a speedy recovery.

    According to last night’s weather report, you are going to have a lot of company in your snow burial.

  4. Crossing my fingers for your power. My power went out last night, so I’m over at my parents’ house which has has tea and internet.

    Oh, for anyone politically inclined, a new group supporting progressive women in politics, Her Bold Move, launched today, if you feel like giving them a follow. https://www.herboldmove.org/

  5. Best wishes for a speedy recovery! I can look at my keyboard and see that I usually only use one thumb for the space bar. There’s a smooth space where my right thumb rests, while the left side of that bar is still textured plastic.

    I once cut open the base of my (left) thumb opening a can of soup. I was making tomato soup for my dad, since he wasn’t feeling well. I still have the scar, and I still don’t care for tomato soup.

  6. The upside of being snowed in with a hurt thumb is that it doesn’t matter if you can’t do up your bra without help.

  9. Was it from one of those evil flip top cans? I can only get so far with one of those then I get a screwdriver for the rest. Please take care.

  10. Awww. Hope it heals soon. Hurt fingers are a pain. It’s amazing how we take them for granted until we cut one.

  11. Holding the thought for your thumb and you, Jenny, though I was taught, back in the dark ages, to hit the space bar with either thumb — I’m sure there was some logic to which thumb was used depending on what letters were being typed — but the upshot was that when I cut my thumb and couldn’t use it, I was able to type only slightly slower because I was used to using the other, too.

    On the other hand, I once had my fingers seize up when someone presented me with a kidney-shaped mouse that was supposed to be ergonomic. It took me a year of flexing the fingers to get them able to straighten out again.

    1. I just had a discussion with a friend of mine who bought an ergonomic snow shovel that gave her a sore back. It assumed you were tall. I pointed out that ergonomic tool handles assume people’s hands are more or less the same size and shape.

  13. Paul sliced his thumb down almost to bone a while back and he was messed up for weeks. It wasn’t even fully closed when the stitches came out.

    I was chopping lettuce and the knife slid into my thumb right at the bottom/side of my nail. The really stupid thing is I watched the knife slip and had time to think “that’s gonna hurt” before my brain caught up with my hand and stopped it.

    Honestly, with the number of thumb injuries, it’s a wonder we haven’t evolved armour for them.

    1. Finally, the reply I needed.

      Jenny, text or email pics your doc to make sure you are preventing infection.

      Healing vibes to you.

  15. I dropped a can which had a serrated lid still partially attached, and sliced my thumb down to the bone. This was in 1977. I still have a wicked scar. What I remember most is that my dad picked me up and carried me to the car (I was 15 and well able to walk), thus throwing out his back. We had just arrived for a month-long holiday in Maine. He spent the rest of the holiday in bed, and I was unable to help with anything – no cooking or cleaning or anything else for the entire holiday. We were there with his girlfriend – who I am sure still ranks this among her worst ever holidays. They broke up shortly afterwards. I hope your thumb feels better soon. Chocolate helps.

  17. I still have power, oh joy, although it is still snowing (it was supposed to stop and begin again Wednesday night.) I saw the snowplow go down my road late this morning! This is the backest of back roads and the snow started Sunday night, and this is the first time we’ve been plowed. I did not go to work Monday, and after my scheduled days off I think it is unlikely I’ll be able to get there Thursday. (I’ve done more than six years of living half a mile from work and being the person who could *always* get there to take care of the animals. Now that I’ve moved 26 miles away, I’m through with that.)

  18. I’ve discovered what to do when you run out of candy and ice cream: peanut butter sandwich with chocolate sauce! Thank gods I have chocolate sauce, because it’s hideously cold in Dallas and there is real snow on the ground and my car battery is dead (again — there must be something else wrong) and I wouldn’t drive in the snow anyway. Chocolate sauce FTW! (I’m just not sure I have enough ….)

    1. Skye, you could have something that’s draining power or it could just be the cold. Cold kills batteries and you don’t have the benefit of a block heater. We have one truck that has the block heater and a trickle charger plugged in all winter long. I do think (but I’m not at all knowledgeable so take this with a grain of salt) that different batteries have different cold ratings.

  20. A few years back I bought a can opener from Pampered Chef that doesn’t leave sharp edges. Of course, if it’s a pull top cab, that doesn’t help.

  22. Yikes. Take good care & feel better soon.

    Maybe binge watch funny movies. Why yes, along with rest & such, that is my idea of “take good care”:)

  23. Good luck, Jenny!

    All I can think of (besides the chocolate) is copious antiseptic ointment, serious bandaging to reduce movement of the thumb itself while it heals, and elevating it whenever you can.

    In between the pain pills, I mean.

    Hope it gets better soonest.

  24. Okay, sharing thumb injuries… Jinks Junior High (no relation?), Panama City, FL. Locker room after gym class, butthead slamming/locking lockers. I stuck my hand in the way, butthead slammed it shut anyway. Door had a knife edge. Spurting wound at the first thumb joint. Six stitches at the base hospital. I don’t recall if the butthead was suspended.

    I just Googled the school. It’s still there, but now it’s a Middle School.

    2. Yes, but do you think JMS is also the square root of 49? Huh? Huh?

      Also, apparently the city commissioner who that school was named after came to Panama City from Butts County Georgia.

      It’s a small world. 🙂

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