It began one very hectic Friday evening. Our friends, Jeremy and Amanda Tyler, missionaries to Brazil, were coming to visit us for a few days. I was about to begin preparing supper, a Mexican Lasagna, when I decided to do a quick clean up first. I started picking up things and putting them away, ordering (sweetly of course) that my children do the same. I found several ornaments that had been knocked off of our tree and began putting them back on. That’s when I noticed that the cardinal ornament that my Aunt Kathleen gave me had gotten a broken tail. “Super glue!” I thought at once. My Hubby got it for me. Being a “Mrs. Fix It”, I quickly spread some on and began holding the tail in place.
Well, you guessed it. I found that I had not only glued the tail on, but also my thumb!

If you are an I Love Lucy fan, then you will recall the episode where Lucy accidentally glues a beard to her face…I sorta felt like that. I am glad, however, that I glued the bird to my thumb and not my face! That would have been worse!

We quickly began trying to remove the poor bird from my really poor thumb. We tried dabbing nail polish remover on the area. Nothing. Terry even tried to use his pocket knife to separate my skin from that bird – but the ringing in his ears from my shrill sceams put a stop to that!

Finally, after a quick web search, we discovered that I would have to soak my thumb in nail polish remover to get the cardinal off of my hand.

Hey, I love cardinals, but not enough to be glued to one.

I hope you get as many laughs from this as we have!

Yep, Valerie glued a cardinal to her thumb. I can now testify personally that super glue lives up to it’s name. I could endorse them! 😉

The soaking begins.

And yes, dear friends, we’re still soaking!

Finally, after about 20 minutes of soaking and pulling, the cardinal is removed from my poor, sweet, innocent thumb- who was only trying to repair the beautiful ornament! You can’t trust wild animals, though. I learned that the hard way! They don’t understand when we’re trying to help them.

HURRAY!! Laci’s happy for me, too.

There was minimal damage done to my thumb. The bird, however, had some paint removed due to his nail polish bath. I went against my usual OCD tendencies and just took red sharpie, colored him in and hung him back on the tree. I think I heard him breathe a sigh of relief. Or was that Terry?

I was so busy getting the cardinal off of my thumb that I didn’t get to prepare the Mexican Lasagna. Thankfully, we have several good restaurants in Hope. We took the Tyler’s out to eat, and I made the lasagna the next night for them.

And, lest you think these “Lucy” moments are rare for me, I’ll just share this. When I got ready to make the Lasagna, I realized I’d forgotten the diced tomatoes!

Ah well. Such is my life.