How Very

Well, somebody ate too much pudding and can't sleep. You're beautiful, Heather.

(Eeek, I just realized that Heather-in-PA might think that sarcasm is about her. It's not! Although she is a beautiful human being with a beautiful child, a beautiful dog, and beautiful tulips. But surely everyone who is named Heather has seen Heathers, right? Why has Dooce not weighed in on this? There are a lot of us non-Heathers who are looking for Heather leadership to clear up these potential miscommunications.)

And no, I did not take the Tylenol PM. Because I am a dork. A dork who assumed sleep was a sure thing tonight. Isn't it Bill Engvall who has the "Here's Your Sign" punchline? I'll take three. Laminated, please.

I've rewritten my lesson plans for tomorrow about forty-zimmity times already. (Except, by "rewritten," I mean "changed my mind in my head." Reason #8 this is going to be an awesome year: I'm on a team where one person, who is not me, is writing the lesson plans for all of us. Reason #9: This year's boss (a new one every year, remember) understands last-minute decisions that mean following the spirit of the lesson plan, but not the letter.)

(Oh crud. I just had another idea. But it involves magnets or velcro. Why are these the ideas that always come at 1:30 in the morning? Is this the MacGyver Hour?)

I decided the potato dish was too bland, but Mike really likes it. (However, he did think it had a tad too much cumin in it. The cumin being the part I improvised, of course.) I'm probably over potatoes for the rest of the year.

If I've never mentioned it, I have small hands. They probably don't look small in photos because they're chubby and always next to other small things, like dwarf hamsters. Yesterday (or the day before, or... I have no idea), I was watching my hands in the mirror while brushing my hair. And, you know how you can repeat a word over and over and it starts sounding wrong? Like, I have this problem with "sure" especially. After about 10 rounds it just sounds like caveman mush to me. Even the spelling looks wrong, and if I keep going, I worry I might lose the word forever, that' it's just going to become this polite fiction that I play along with. Oh SURE. Sure.

Sure.

The more I watched my hands, the more "wrong" they looked. Even before I was fat, my hands looked small, so I'm sure it's even more disproportionate now. But, back then, it seemed my tiny mitts could get away with being classified as "dainty and expressive." I used to get the odd compliment, even. (Okay, maybe two compliments in total. And one was from an admitted schizophrenic girl who used to be a guy who was technically still a guy but identified as a lesbian. Not that this devalues their opinion of my hands, but they did have documented issues with reality.)

Anyway, hypnotized by the reflection of my hands, one word started pulsing in my head: vestigial. Vestigial. Vestigial. (I have to say that one about 20 times before it starts feeling like a foreign  language.) My hands looked like they were going to pop out of Arnold Schwarzenegger's stomach. (No, wait, the cab driver's stomach. The one with eleven kids. You know.)

But I'm over it now. (Sure.)

What else about hands? Last week I brought my hand swiftly and directly down onto the edge of the nail. I was jokingly making an emphatic point at Chipotle about how I didn't want guacamole on my burrito, which, and I guess my hands were on the bunny setting. (That means "fast." As in, "my dad had a riding lawnmower when I was eleven, and you could put the setting on Bunny or Turtle or inbetween." I think John Deere knew who was really mowing the lawn.) I do move my hands a lot when I talk to strangers. The pain was so great, I couldn't even look down. I felt myself place the hurt to one side while I finished paying for the food. (Check out my bad self, just kind of lucking into ancient martial art techniques.)

In the car I checked and, sure enough, the nail had bent back, lifted off, etc. I'm making "ew ew ew!" noises just typing this. The finger turned hot and purple, a dark line of blood under the nail started to appear. You know what I mean. Ew ew ew.

Eventually I was able to cut the nail down. Now it looks like I have a stubby, slightly jagged nail with dirt under it. I don't want to put a Band-Aid around my finger because that would interfere with typing, and at this point it's just a cosmetic issue. But, I'm walking around worrying that people think I have grubby, unwashed hands. And since sometimes I do have grubby, unwashed hands, especially after a day of being near dry erase markers (why is that?), that's even worse. I can't even righteously send out a memo to the whole school saying, "Hey, if anyone is silently judging me for my dirty fingernails, let me explain."

Because, truthfully, sometimes my hands are dirty. And sometimes nails my break and I don't get a chance to sort them out. (I think I'm the only person here who doesn't get manicures. My last "manicure" was probably during my seventh grade slumber party.) But this is worse, because it looks like the same dirt is on my hands every day.

Except, now I feel better for sharing. Exhale.

And try to sleep.

Comments

[Heather in PA]

ewww ewww eww... your poor hand!