The Dishwasher & My Toe: Both Busted.

Sunday morning I get into work and cheerfully awaiting me is a massive pile of dirty kennel dishes and litter pans that I have been picking at all week.  They'd been accumulating faster than I could pick at them, however, and this mountain of dirty dishes was the result.  I resolved then and there to take care of that before I left for the day.

When I opened the dishwasher to load it, I discovered that someone had already loaded it.  Even filled it with detergent.  It appeared that they forgot to start it.  So I turned the dial to start and the washer started making normal dishwasher noises.  Happy!  

When it stopped, I opened the dishwasher and found it in the same state it had been in half an hour before.  What the hell?  Same detergent slopped down the inside.  Same dirt encrusted to the dishes.  I refused to believe that something might be wrong with the dishwasher, and so I removed a few things (it was packed pretty tight in there, not tight enough to impede washing, but it's a decrepit dishwasher) and run it again.

No dice.  The damn thing has finally given up the mechanical ghost.  The irony of all this is that just a few days before I had jokingly asked the owner, "Hey, when are you going to get a new dishwasher at your house so I can have your old one?"  (This is how it happens at the store that I work for.  Things get recycled from the owner's house.)  At the time there was nothing wrong with it except that the racks weren't attached to the wheels that they roll out on very well, causing them to fall off frequently.  It was minorly annoying, but that's it.  

Now I have the distinct feeling that he thinks I sabotaged the dishwasher.  I swear I didn't.  It worked fine Friday afternoon when I left.

Where does the toe come in?

Well it's funny that you wonder.

Kitsune has a Nylabone toy that he has had for years.  It is a fairly large, annealed nylon ring.  He loves that thing.  It's his favorite thing in the history of ever.  I've never known a dog that messed with a regular Nylabone past the first five minutes of receiving one, except for Kitsune and that damn ring.  I got him one the night I brought him home, and he has had one ever since.  He doesn't play with it constantly, but every couple of days he digs through his toy basket, pulls it out, and gnaws on it, tosses it around, flips it over his head and acts like a fool, and then forgets about it in the middle of the floor. 

Where I inevitably step on it.

Anyone who has a dog who loves Nylabones knows how much this hurts.  It hurts like a bitch.  

Every time I step on it, I curse and think, "I should really get him a new one of those."  I think this ring is now on year 2 and a half or so.  Every time I'm at the store and I look at the Nylabone rings, I think, "But he really loves the one he has now, and he's broken it in so wonderfully."  Half of the purpose of the Nylabones is that they make this rough surface once they've been good and chewed that really scrapes gunk off of a dog's teeth like nothing else.  Forget your Pedigree Dentabones and Dentastix and Denta-whatevers.  They can't hold a candle to a nicely chewed Nylabone.

That rough surface is also what hurts so damn much when you step on one.

Tonight, I did not step on it.  I stubbed my big toe on it.  I was wearing only socks, and it hurt a good deal.  I immediately sat down on the couch and started to massage my toe, when a bright red crimson dot appeared on my sock.

Great.

I took my sock off and inspected the giant chunk of meat the Nylabone had dislodged from my toe.  I haven't stubbed my toe that badly since I was a kid and ran around with no shoes or socks on all the time.  I doused it in peroxide.  Rinsed it.  Doused it.  Rinsed it.  Took pictures to share.  Rinsed it.  Applied pressure, bacitracin and a band-aid, and now I am praying that the nasty bacteria both in my dog's mouth and in my shoes will not give me cellulitis.  (Something similar happened to the SO about 5 years ago and he did get cellulitis.)

I maimed myself on a dog toy.  It was pretty epic.  Not many people can pull that off.

It feels great!

The Nylabone.