Eye Contact

This is for tamnonlinear, who posted this morning about a lovely encounter with a praying mantis.





Eye Contact by Matthew Bradbury

Viking Woman Quiz

I don't think a Sami shamanka qualifies as a "viking woman" -- but it's nice to find a quiz that even includes that as a result!

Your Score: Shamaness

You scored 37% nobility, 78% magic, 13% slavery, and 33% practicality!

Most likely you were born of the Sami people in the arctic and are trained in the magic arts. You might stay with your people in the far north, or choose to journey south and dispense advice to powerful men. Either way, your life will be full of magic, and most likely adventure as well. Shamanesses rarely marry, but who cares? You live a full life anyway.

Link: The Which Viking Woman Are You? Test written by SnoDragon on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Fingernail Dilemma (Who Me??)

Two or three months ago, the nails on my thumbs started splitting down the center, and no matter how far I trimmed them back, the cracks went deeper. So finally I did something I'd never even considered before: I got acrylic tips put on.

The difference those tips made was startling. Instead of having thin, irregularly-shaped, easily torn nails, I suddenly had a double handful of beautiful, strong, symmetrical nails coated in dark red polish that almost never chipped. I loved how they looked and how they felt.

There were a couple of drawbacks on a day to day level: the thickness of the tips made it difficult to manipulate necklace clasps, and they didn't give a really good scratch anymore. But the biggest complication was that my own nails continued to grow out, resulting in a gradually enlarging area of naked nail down at the cuticles, and a corresponding increase in the number of typing errors as the longer tips got in the way of my keyboarding. Getting them cut back at the top and filled at the bottom cost approximately $50 every 2-3 weeks.

Which was fine for a while, because I was the recipient of several very generous giftcards from my local salon last winter. But I'm coming down to the end of them, and couldn't really justify laying out that kind of money that often for fingernails.

So this morning I had the tips removed and my own nails covered with clear polish, so that the inevitable chips won't show.

And you know what? I really miss my strong, vibrantly-colored nails. My hands look soft and helpless, and I've already lost a chunk of polish from one thumb and developed a tear in the center again that I'm going to have to trim back as soon as I finish this post.

It's the unfinished helplessness of my hands' appearance that's hitting me hardest. At the moment, I'm ready to run back to the salon to ask them to put the tips back on. But the financial considerations are still valid.

I'm going to have to think about this.

I've never been vain -- but then again, for most of my life I've used that as an excuse to not take very good care of my phyiscal self or grooming. I'm clean and decently dressed, and I keep my hair brushed, but if I can let it go at that, I do. To have an emotional reaction to the appearance of my fingernails makes me feel alien to myself.