Ouch

Have you ever had something happen to you, where right before it happpened you said to yourself, "You know this will probably happen."

Ok, I'm being too vague.

My grandmother just gave me a lovely little carved set of camels. Carved from olive wood from Jerusalem. Long story behind where the camels came from, so I won't get into it. In any case they were for my Easter basket and last night she presented them to me. The camels were following a rider on a donkey and the whole set of four was linked together with some tiny little chain and little steel tacks. When I went to set them up on my tchatchke shelf by the staircase I noticed they wouldn't stand up. The chain between the donkey and the first camel was too short. Not to mention a very small chunk of the first camel's leg had broken off during production (I know it was then because the bottom of the short leg was shellacked).

So feeling industrious because the spring weather has me feeling "project-y" I decided to take some needle nose pliers and swap out the first camel for the second. The second camel had a longer chain and then the poor short legged camel could sort of hang suspended in the middle of the row.

In the process of pulling out the tacks I noticed they were very sharp. And just as I was pulling out the last tack I had that split second thought of "This will pull out too hard and go straight into my palm." Damned if it didn't. Not to worry folks, it's just a flesh wound. But it was bizarre the way it happened. Maybe it was common sense kicking in just a half a second too late. Or maybe I'm just a very slow psychic.

Anyway the camels stand up now.