How Much Blood Would a Blood-Letter Let if a Blood-Letter Did Let Blood?

I have grown complacent. Fat and sassy, hobbling around with thin blood, on knees that creak and argue because the Tibia-Fibula family wants to go one way, and Old Man Femur wants to go another. Yes. Except for the aching bones and muscles, which I know are a side effect even though the pharmaceutical family does not list it right up there with sudden death, I have resigned myself to life until May as a thin-blooded person.

Sure, I still curse at drivers coming at me over the center line, and take one hand off the wheel to shake my fist at them for almost killing me in a collision that would result in my blood spouting like Old Faithful...but I have kind of forgotten that I'm taking a blood-thinner.

Until last night.

I have been very careful, you see, not to bump or slice or internally injure myself. For three months I have survived life's jostling without incident.

Until last night.

Hick built my desk space in my dark basement lair. It's a corner affair. Hick put in two sets of cabinets with drawers, and laid some butcher-block laminated countertop across them. So I can have a high desk with a stool (salvaged by Hick from a bar). Then he put in two sections of V-shaped countertop in the corner, lower, so I can sit in my rolly chair at my New Delly in that V, with comfortable counter space upon which to rest each arm. No carpal tunnel syndrome for Val! Hick put in another high section on top of a cabinet at my right hand, holding my laser printer. It's the next best thing to an apartment with no furniture, only levels covered by a bunch of pillows, favored by hipster doofuses.

Last night, as I reached to the left for my glasses in their case on the upper counter, I raked my left forearm against the corner of the countertop. I heard a scraping noise, kind of like an icepick across old leather.

Did you know that thin blood flows out quite quickly? Sorry, Best Ol' Ex-Teaching Buddy Mabel, for that description. It wasn't exactly a river. That's because there were just two little spots, about as far apart as snake fangs, that went deeper into the scratch. Blood bubbled up and dripped over the side of my arm. I dabbed at it with some Puffs With Aloe. After a couple of times, the spouting turned to little bubbles that got a coating and stopped flowing. I left them to harden.

This morning, after my shower, I saw that my blood was again flowing like syrup from a mighty Maple. I slapped a BandAid on it and went off to my first day of school. Not that I was trying to attract attention to my infirmity. For that, I would have put a fancy Angry Birds BandAid on it at work. Nope. Just the flesh-colored one, which matches nobody's flesh, unless that body was born in a Crayola Crayon box with the last name of Flesh, whose parents changed the family name to Peach.

I'm going to take it off later tonight. The BandAid, that is! Don't get your hopes up. I hope my platelets and fibrin can take time out from their year-long vacation to phone in a little work.