Well that’s what my grandfather used to call the first aid kit.  According to other family members that is.   My only childhood memory of my paternal grandfather’s words was “Shhhhhhhh!”

No matter.  It is the last quarter of the moon and you know that is the best time to clean up, throw out things, organize what’s left and make space for all the new ventures of a pending new moon.   A month earlier, Stayatworkfatherofthree had obtained his first aid and CPR certificates through the Coast Guard safety courses and while that was not the first time I had held such qualifications, it was welcome.

Last week we purged the carport storage cupboards, pruned the kitchen of unnecessary clutter, repurposed the space under the stairs, the list goes on.  Stayathomemotheroffour showed little excitement, although the lack of busy clutter in every corner must have had some positive effect.  With the new found space in the hall cupboard where we keep the first aid kit, she decided this would be a job for “Mr. Anal Retentive.”   She placed the three crammed plastic containers that comprised our first aid options on the dining table and said “you do it as you know what everything is.”

There is rarely progress without sacrifice.  So as much as I loved keeping all my IT cables and plugs in a little plastic pigeon holed container with lid, that was a vessel destined for recommissioning in the next 24 hours.   

The only problem with traveling with such a mobile Radio Shack / Dick Smith branch packed into my roll on luggage was the extra weight it hogged from the meager 7kg allowed on budget airlines I am so fond of.     Space was not the issue as for half a decade we have been evangelical about the merits of not folding holiday clothes if possible and laying each garment flat on top of each other until one or two final folds.   I had needed a system for keeping cables, plugs and devices like the three phones etc. and thought it would make things simple.  It did, but low net weight won over and I did not even bring the eight compartment pigeon holed plastic container back on the return journey.

We still had an identical container at our island home and it was now in line of sight with the three container first aid mess we had once tried to explain to contents of which to our last baby sitter before she called the child services hotline (just kidding;-)   Like a mindful guy, I put everything to one side on a chair and slept on the problem.

Woke this morning and went down to the marina to change the fuel on our boat and get her ready or a nice day of sailing with Grandma and the boys.   Then the wind picked up too high for our little boat which does not even take half meter waves all that well.   Not problem, our monthly Coast Guard meeting was not until 18:00 hours, our three year old daughter would not finish day care until 16:00 hours.  We were in no hurry to fight the wind.   So the boys settled down eight Grandma to watch a funny French movie about school boys and the English subtitles kept them busy and possibly counted towards their daily reading quota.

Meanwhile, I tossed all the out of date medications first, unfolded boxes if they were printed with instructions and separated everything else as so:

1. Small blue box with only Alpha’s seasonal asthma puffer and note to self to make sure we would never need to use that again.

2. Medium plastic box with only items for cuts and bruises.  Plasters, antiseptic creams, cold sprays, bandaids, sterile scissors, saline solutions and surgical sheets for all manner of bloody mess.

3. Said eight compartment plastic organizer containing only medication and ointments for after care.  All carefully labeled with homemade bi-lingual sub headings.   Nose, foot, ear, pain relief, intestinal, muscle , cold and flu, at which point Grandma piped up the immoral words only children English colonies can create.

“Cuts, colds and sore holes” with all the crudeness of an East-end hawker and laziness of an Antipodean hooker I suppose.