I have been known to have clever ideas that turn out to be…um…not so clever.

Take my butter-softening method, for example. I like to bake a lot, but it’s often spontaneous, meaning that I don’t have time to let my butter or margarine soften at room temperature for 30 minutes. No problem! There’s always the microwave. And if the microwave is occupied, well, I have another trick up my sleeve. I put the whole, wrapped, stick of margarine on an oven rack while the oven is preheating.

Be sure to get it out of there after a minute or so, I tell myself. Give it just enough time to soften, but whatever you do: don’t let it melt.

Most of the time, it works out just fine. I successfully extract the softened butter and get on with my baking. But occasionally, I get distracted. The phone rings, the toddler pulls all the books off the library shelf, the cat pukes in the middle of the hall. And the butter lingers in the oven a bit too long.

Let’s just say that the alarm company has called me more than once to see if there is a fire in my house. At which point I sheepishly explain that it was just an oven “issue.” I pretend not to hear the amusement in the voice on the other end of the line.

Yesterday, I had another clever idea.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we are currently on vacation. Unfortunately, I left my watch at home. And I cannot function without a watch. It’s a problem I have. But Wal-Marts abound, so we ducked into one yesterday morning on our way to the caverns and picked up a replacement. As luck would have it, the watch had some industrial-strength plastic cord fastening it together.

No problem. I’m like the female version of MacGyver. Surely there would be something in my purse that I could use to free the watch, enabling me to put it on my wrist. Ah-ha! I removed the little metal spring from a pen that I found at the bottom of my purse. I was sure that I could straighten out the spring and insert it into the plastic cord’s fastener, spring the mini plastic latch in there and release the watch. I set to work straightening the spring while Chad drove us to our destination.

Let me just tell you now: Do not attempt to straighten a pen’s spring with your bare hands.

I thought I was doing well. I pulled it, stretched it. Yes, it was expanding. But I needed to get the end un-coiled so it would stick straight out. I gripped it firmly, pulled, and….

Suddenly, the spring attacked me. The end of the spring went into my finger, and then came back out a different part of my finger.

I looked like I’d just invented some fashionable new body-piercing trend: The Pierced Finger Pad™.

If I’d had my wits about me, I would have insisted that Chad pull over and take a picture, so you could see this event in all its gruesomeness. But instead, all I could think was, I need to pull this out. I need to pull this out carefully. I need to pull this out now. I need antibiotic cream and a band-aid.

The spring came back out. I stopped the bleeding. C. handed me the First Aid kit from the back seat and I was bandaged in mere minutes.

Ouch. It hurt. A lot.

The band-aid is off today. There are two little purplish marks on my finger. It’s still quite sore.

And I’ve learned my lesson: I’m not as clever as I sometimes think I am. Of course, I’m sure I’ll forget that lesson next time a creative solution is needed. But that’s okay; I’ll just learn it again.