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I could use every single bit of space contained in this here blog, just telling stories of all the times my dad has hurt himself. And not just the usual klutzy trips and falls we all do. I'm talking about major, gonna-lose-a-limb type accidents.

Like the day before I left for college. He got stuck in a machine at the facotry where he worked. As in, he was inside the machine, fixing it. A machine that wasn't turned off. And it ate him, earning him a trip to the hospital once it spat him out.

My dad was born blind in his right eye, a condition that would lead most people to take special care to not do things that, oh, I don't know, might blind the good eye. Not Dad, who was once refinishing an antique cabinet with industrial-grade paint-stripper. Without goggles, of course. Turns out, when you throw a bottle of industrial grade paint-stipper at an antique cabinet, sometimes it splashes. And when you only have one good eye, Murphy's law dictates that it will splash into the one good eye.

My all-time favorite Dad accident happened the day after Thanksgiving two years ago. My mom, B. and I were at their house, waiting for Dad to take a break from building a horse fence at my grandparents' house so we could go out for lunch. I was six months pregnant at the time, and eating was the most important thing in my life, next to urinating every 15 minutes and sleeping in cat-like proportions. Anyone who interfered with my pursuit of these activities was subjected to my horrible wrath. You know, after lunch and a nap.

The phone rang, and I started waddling to find my shoes, knowing it was Dad, calling to tell us he was on his way to the restaurant. I was only half right. It was Dad, but there would be no lunch. Instead, there would be a trip to the ER. Seems he was holding a chain saw when he stopped to ponder ... something. He put his hands on his hips, forgetting that he had a running chain saw in one of those hands, and sawed through his thigh.

A month later, on Christmas day, his thigh was mostly healed. After the big family dinner, I hauled my car-sized pregnant gut outside to get some air, as temperatures above 60 degrees gave me the dry heaves at that point. One of Dad's horses was outside the pasture, tied to the fence. As I neared, she rared up on her back legs, flipped her head, snapped the wooded fence rail, and proceeded to run towards me, swinging the big, splintery tree-trunk-sized slab of wood as she went.

Ever see a fat woman, eight months pregnant with an exceptionally large child, running for her life from a horse, swinging half a fence abover her head? A few lucky people who happened to be driving down my parents road can say that they have.

So my dad, B. and my uncles had to do a little emergency fence repair. With the chain saw. Nothing happened with it this time, but damn if we weren't all waiting for Dad to saw through his other thigh.

This morning, I was talking to my mom. We talked about how we're glad that Dad's finding things to do with his friends that don't involve her. He tends to rely pretty heavily on my mom for entertainmet. Plus, we were all afraid that Crazy Workaholic Man wouldn't handle retirement well and we'd find him in his barn, scrawling, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" on the walls, shortly before hacking his way through the kitchen door with a pick ax and sneering, "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!"

Of course, if my dad tried to do that, he'd probably put his good eye out with the ax before getting the door properly hacked.

"I'm not crazy about him getting into guns," Mom said.

I told her that I wasn't either.

"But he does know what he's doing. He hunted for years before he stopped. He knows what he's doing," she said.

"Refresh my memory, Mom. How mady times has Dad shot himself while hunting?"

"Just the one time."

That's what I thought.