Stop and Smell the Acetone
A street hooker pauses long enough for me to jack her style
It doesn’t matter if the brick red polish on my fingernails is so chipped I look like Courtney Love coming off a bender. No, I mean, it deeply, truly does not matter.
And I really believed it mattered. The sight of my jacked up hands on the steering wheel made me slightly tempted to veer into a tree.
About a week ago, I began to panic about the nails. When would I have a chance to get a manicure or just take off this god-forsaken polish myself? Were people staring at my hands and extrapolating that my life, like the polish, must be crumbling and chaotic and maybe a bit busted?
Despite having a job and a toddler, I somehow always manage to keep up appearances, right down to the tips of my fingers, even if I’m up half the night administering Tylenol and suctioning mucus out of my child’s nose. This time, though, it got away from me. I’m typing this right now with hands like a woman who might offer you oral sex for three cigarettes and a Twix, and you know what? I’m okay with it.
Turns out, I needed ugly fingernails to scratch the surface of my own distorted thinking.
Now that it’s been three weeks of these half vamp/half meth head nails, it’s become obvious that my lack of manicure did not bring about either a global or personal apocalypse. In fact, it’s highly probable no one has noticed.
This is a very small personal grooming detail, and stupid, I know, but it was real to me that things would disintegrate if I walked around looking like this. A sick baby and a crammed schedule elbowed this out as a priority, and now I know a lot of things I couldn’t see when my nails were lacquered and things were looking prettier all around.
As the world continues to rotate and the sun to rise and set, I have to admit that life goes on not only if I look imperfect, but also if the laundry sits in the washing machine for three days before I get a chance to throw in the soap and start the cycle. If the baby eats a bowl of rice and beans tonight from the fast-food chicken joint, life goes on. If I can’t return a few phone calls or order a new package of special nighttime diapers online or get a picture framed or send someone a thank-you card or get to the gym or pretend to meditate for eight minutes, it doesn’t matter.
After three pediatrician appointments in one week and the dreaded call from day care that sends you rushing over there like your child is having a heart attack when he’s just running a fever, I’ve had a minor come-to-Jesus. (I’m Jewish, but I love that expression, and “come-to-Moses” just doesn’t have that ring.) In the world of a parent, especially of a little one, life feels easier when you choose your battles and distill the checklist to something incredibly simple and manageable: Is my baby healthy and safe? Is my relationship healthy and safe? That’s it. That’s all.
If the task in front of me isn’t essential to either my child or my husband today, it goes on the back burner where it may get a bit crusty before it gets cooked or tossed. So what?
At least for me, it was all getting to be too much. I hope you can relate. If not, I don’t care for your equanimity and time-management skills, and we probably could not be friends.
Once life forced me into accepting all I can’t get done, I was liberated. OK, that’s a bit dramatic. It’s not like I’m Andy Dufresne escaping Shawshank. Still, “So What” is a philosophy that gets me through the day right now. If it seems like I’m patting myself on the back for being deep, that’s just so I won’t have to see my nails.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! From the mom of an 11 week old
Hi Teresa,
I love your personality. I’ve been listening to you since AC show.
I want to train you. I teach tennis, boxing, salsa dancing and great
Gym workouts. I’m not hitting on you! I’m married with 3 precious
Ones. Verify me on FB, Marco Reed. I have a great clientele and only
Like training people that I enjoy being around.
If you already have someone then just follow me on Twitter @GetBeyondFit.
I send out weekly workouts.
Keep doing your thang girl!
You’re great.
Marco
It’s difficult to put one’s finger on what, precisely, is the creepiest aspect of this posting: the oddly forward and clearly delusional desire to “train” you, or the fact that the entire proposal seems to have been written in verse.
teresa,
just wanted to get a message to you and say you ROCKED it with david frum back in february. i just heard the recording of that show. OMG you actually said just what i’ve been screaming at the radio about for years.
love you, love your work,
joy
Thank you for your eloquent detailing of being a mom who came to a ‘real’ version of reality when her child was born (and every day since)! Your ever hilarious and endearing tales are what many of us read to remember lots of other moms are out there loving their children and ‘ just learning to deal’ with chipped nails.
On the other side, I have recently discovered CND Shellac nail polish and even as the mother of a 2 year old who has been working in an office, working in the yard, washing dishes and overall NOT caring how my nails look – I have gone almost three weeks with NO chips, scratches or broken nails! I am sure it is toxic to no end but hey, I am a little less like Courtney Love every day they don’t chip!
You rock. Yea its that simply. You rock for all of us who leave clothes unwashed, nails unkempt, and possibly children unbathed (do sprinklers count?). Being the “perfect mom” is overrated and too exhausting to even comprehend.
Wait … what ?? we can get ciggies for oral … damn someone ripped that page out of my union contract… I feel deceived !!! (anyone want part of a life time supply of Twix !) .
Hey T,
I know you have an over flowing plate of responsibility at this time, but I have to say I love your writing and hope that some day you will find the time to write another book. As they said on Blahblahblog…you really are a word smith…I however am not and hope that my spelling and grammer are not making you squirm if you read this.
Love your work,
Mindee
I’m glad you posted yesterday and today. My kid (who turned 2 today) was a semi a-hole in his kid music class and the Mom on the little girl with the worst name ever was giving me heavy stink eye. I thought of you and it made me feel better
Aw sweetie, don’t sell yourself short – I, and presumably many other guys, would offer at least a full pack of ciggies for your services.
Love that you are back at the blog. Your last two posts are fantastic – keep ‘em coming.
I too, have been there with my Courtney Love nails…amazingly once they are painted again, I feel like a rock star. Painted and filed – even though I haven’t showered in two days, have so much grease in my hair I could fry you up something nice, and have a mixture of spit-up, snot, and breastmilk dried to a unique mixture on my work shirt right now, and I can’t remember the last time I got longer than 4 hours of sleep in a row, but, f*#k, mama’s nails are painted!!
Dear T,
Reading your last two entries left me in a nostalgic quagmire. I recall and miss (not as you would miss a chocolate dessert or glass of bourbon when you’re PMS’ing), the days when my time and talents were being used an honed by the two and half foot terrorist that were my dear girls. I don’t miss the sleep deprivation, the constant second guessing, the worry, the daily laundry list of regrets I kept stapled to my forehead, less anyone who THOUGHT I might be handling the single Mom thing well- I conveniently posted my shortcomings to silence any praise. But all that allowed me to wear that elusive and coveted banner of “experienced Mom’ – once they moved on to school homework and their own social networks. I was amazed at how many of the “tools” I was accidently learning could be used on co-workers, the cranky dry cleaner, the recalcitrant auto mechanic. I still marvel at the fact that I can without a second thought offer the sleeve on my jacket to dry the tears and snot off a toddler I see do a face plant with no hovering Mom/Dad/Nanny in plain sight. It was a weird transition that started the day I marched into a drug store in broad daylight in pursuit of the latest round of peds medicines dressed in sweats of dubious cleanliness, hair *barely* in a scrunchy on the top of my head and not so much as a thought of mascara. As I observed the “Mom view” of me in the security camera I thought – wow, that chick needs a bath, a stylist and a quick trip to Cabo” – I wonder whose mother she is? At that precise moment I knew that whether my children turned out balanced happy and productive, or spending thousands on therapy I was officially their Mom.