I walk into the house, arms around sacks of groceries, keys gripped in my teeth, bag sliding down my shoulder. I shuffle to the kitchen table and release the keys. They clatter off and hit the floor, trailing drool. Portly sniffs them nonchalantly from her sprawled out position in the middle of the floor, her cat disinterest fully engaged. She is not going to help me. She's just hoping I forget to close the door all the way so she can make her break for freedom. We keep telling her this is a bad idea, but like a teenager who knows it all, she thinks that the world outside is made of nothing but open cans of tuna and still-wet bathtubs for her to roll in and lick dry.

I look around for a human who might give me a hand with the numerous paper sacks full of discount edibles. He is standing in the bathroom, leaning over the sink.

"Hello?" I yell as I head back out the door for another load of bulk flour, sugar, and vanilla flavored granola. I hear him make a noise, but not one that sounds like enthusiasm.

I fumble with the bags as Portly tries to sneak past me.

"Ha! Not on my watch. Back varmint!" I lean into the door frame and weasel around her, a pouting mound of fur.

"Didn't you hear me? I'm home. With many bags. Can I get a hand?" I walk into the bathroom and recoil.

The place, to quote my sister, looks like a crime scene. There are bloody wads of toilet paper and cotton balls all over the sink. Chris is holding his hand and swabbing up blood as it swells out of a deep puncture wound in the meat of his palm. The sink has little splashes of gore in the bowl.

"Jeezus, what happened to you?" I say, and instinctively reach for his hand to assess the damage.

"Do we have any big band-aids? All I could find were these little ones."

"You mean like gauze and some medical tape? Sorry. Now, what happened?"

Trying to talk around me while I keep expressing my sincere belief that he should get stitches, I mean, GOD!- he told me that he had been carving away at a block print while holding it down, when he had suddenly relearned an important lesson about cutting away from himself.

I carried in the rest of the groceries by myself. Chris finally got the bleeding under control without the aid of stitches. Portly made another attempt to escape the torturous confines of our house but did not succeed.

But the main thing is that we all take a moment to really think about the object lesson: Always cut away from yourself, or your girlfriend will pressure you to go to the emergency room, where the wait will be unbearable and you will lose precious hours of your life, never to return again. Here ends the lesson for today.

Oh yeah, and get grocery bags with handles. Handles are the way to go.