Randomly connected brilliance January 4, 2007

I have a problem. Well, not so much a problem as an issue–one that I am having difficulty resolving.

For the past couple of months, I have been adamant about the application–and reapplication, when necessary–of Sally Hansen “No More Breaks” Restructurizing Strengthener to my fingernails. As a result, my nails have grown quite long and, contrary to the usual, look very nice. However, yesterday, I did something. I don’t know what it was–I bumped into something, poked somebody in the eye too hard, something–and the nail on the index finger of my left hand sustained a breakage right at the point where the nail leaves actual connection with skin. Actually, just the teeniest bit of the tiniest millimeter BELOW that point. The break wasn’t all the way across the nail, but kind of in the middle. In serious fear for how much the removal of the entire chunk of fingernail from the breakage point to the tip would hurt, I have been constantly applying Sally Hansen’s “No More Breaks” Restructurizing Strengthener in the hopes it would hold my fingernail together until such time as the nail grows out enough so that when cut off at the breakage point, I am not left with a throbbing little finger stub complete with a painful and bloody wound that won’t heal properly.

However, I could not stop myself from fucking with it. And it became so completely broken that I had to cut it off, carefully. It’s a little wavy-looking, because I did not want to cut it straight across, leaving myself with the above mentioned bloody wound and throbbing finger stub.

Here’s the issue: this looks stupid. I have a bunch of long fingernails and one short one. One very, very short one. In addition, typing can be said to be much easier with this particular finger, as there is no nail in the way. What do I do? Do I cut off the rest of my nails, so as to make things even, and also to facilitate typing? I mean, this could very well be the reason I have been blogging infrequently of late. Perhaps I was subconsciously irritated by typing with long fingernails? And what if I cut them off and I still don’t feel like blogging about anything?

I force my children to keep their fingernails clipped short, because it’s easier for said fingernails to be kept clean. Whenever I bitch at them to clip their fingernails, they point out that I have long fingernails. I point out that I know how to keep them clean, yadda yadda, typical parent-child argument ensues in which child attempts to point out that parent is being a hypocritical ass, and parent ends up saying something childish, as in, “Because I said so.”

Being a parent, it is frequent that I find myself being hypocritical. Don’t smoke! But you do! True, but I’m an adult, nevermind that I’m stupid. Don’t drink alcohol! But you do! And on and on. I just hope I’ve rid my home of all incriminating paraphernalia! I am constantly telling my children, for instance, that they should eat healthier. Yet, for dinner tonight, I made macaroni and cheese (Kraft, of course) and pigs in a blanket (“homemade” with little mini smoked sausages and crescent rolls). True, I put out a bowl of carrots, but nobody took any. It could be said that I put that bowl of carrots out because I feel guilty for feeding them food that, if eaten on a regular basis, will require them to have a quadruple bypass before they are 18. Whatever. I never said I was a perfect parent.

Just now, one of the children of this not-perfect parent brought me one of the brownies she made with a friend earlier this evening. They are absolutely disgusting. And by that I mean, they taste like eating the entire brownie might actually kill me or cause me to endure a great, long-lasting illness. I do not like to be ill. I had food poisoning once. I spent three days in bed, aside from frequent trips to the bathroom. Even though I didn’t eat anything for three days, I was still capable, somehow, of, shall we say, “voiding.” It was horrible, and while it is not an experience I wish to repeat, I could actually use an excuse for remaining in bed for 72 hours.

Sleeping in the winter is a pleasurable thing for me to do. I put these ultra-soft flannel sheets on my bed, and it creates the coziest of cocoons. There doesn’t seem to be any real pressing reason why I should drag my ass out of my cocoon and into the cold, dark, non-light of of a dreary Chicago winter’s morning.

And dreary our weather is. Even though the weatherman keeps claiming that it’s 50 degrees outside, and how fantastic that is for January, I can’t help thinking that it’s horrible. It’s cold and damp. As much as I hate a biting, arctic wind, I really do believe that I prefer it over this dreary cold/damp thing we’ve got going here. It’s so…pointless. You can’t go out and play in the cold rain. You can’t go sledding. You can’t go ice skating. You’re not sure how to dress, because while it’s cold OUTSIDE, every public building has its heat BLASTING, so you find yourself shedding outer layers, and then sweating in your inner layers, no matter where you go.

It has been more years than I can count since we had snow on the ground all winter long. Is this global warming? Is this just a weird weather trend? Is this El Nino or El Nina (please mentally add the tildes)? In a week or so, it will likely be ridiculously cold, and then I’ll complain about that. I’m just wondering where the consistent, unending, freezing temperatures are. The ones that create a frozen, slippery crust on top of the constantly present snow.

I think I have to stop now. This most certainly isn’t anything near to being Randomly Connected Brilliance, as the title of the post implies. I’ve run out of steam. I started talking about my bed, and right now it seems perfectly logical to curl up in my pajamas with a good book (I’m reading What’s Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges. It’s really fantastic. I’m looking for inspiration, as I’m trying to rewrite my novel into first person, in present tense) and a vodka tonic (I do wish I was able to lower myself to the point where I could train my children to make a perfect vodka tonic and not feel guilty about it). I suppose I could curl up there with my laptop, but at this point, this post is long enough, and my son has seated himself in front of our fireplace, in which a fire is raging, and I can see on the little scrolling LED message board we’ve installed above his head that tells us his thoughts that he is considering what kinds of things he’ll be able to get away with throwing into the fire, and I probably need to intervene.