Ways Michael and I are alike

M and I have been told we share a resemblance. Despite the 10 inches of difference in height and the fact his hair is an afro and my hair is so straight it looks ironed. We do have the same coloring, although he tans and I don't. Ironic, since I am the one who grew up in sunny L.A. and he grew up in balmy Philadelphia. I'm not sure he knew he tans dark until we lived in San Diego.

In New Orleans a co-worker said we looked like brother and sister, and I dead-panned that "We are, but in our town, everyone knew about us and we had to leave." She stared hard at me for a minute before laughing.

While he was in Chicago this week, cousin V told Michael that he and I have similar mannerisms.

Now, as of Monday, we both have box cutter wounds on our left hands from doing stupid things. I went to a book arts class, and was using Michaels flip-out box cutter and the blade was dull and it slipped and very neatly sliced open my left index finger. It was about an inch long wound, and at first, though it hurt, I looked and thought, wow, no blood.

And then it decided to bleed, and when I pressed it, I could see down and down, and wow, I could see all the layers of skin, and, underneath that, muscle and ligament (michael says it is fat). Like an anatomy lesson, but in my hand! Erg. I was staying calm, and the teacher came and we cleaned it and bandaged it and off I went. No stitches (unlike M), but it does hurt. And I have full flexion in the finger, so I obviously didn't go into the important structures.

Now the funny part of this is that Arabella wanted to know what the heck I was doing, and why I had a mass of gauze wrapped around my knuckle, so I told her. And she told everyone. EVERYONE. "Mommy cut her finger with a knife and got a bad boo-boo, so she has a band-aid" Who needs press releases? I think she may have a future career as a publicist.

For those of you wondering about Michael, he stabbed the palm of his hand with a box cutter while cutting the binding off a new saw about 4 years ago, the night before Easter, and after driving around half of town we found a place that would stitch up his hand and put it on our insurance. I think he had 4 stitches, but I could be off by one or two.

Michael is back home as of last night, and we are happy he is back from romping in Chicago.