it's the fingernails

so it's been kind quiet in blogger world lately.

i'm chalkin' it up to 2 things:

first, i'm having a nice, pretty new site made just for me.

my own little home on the web. that's been an interesting exercise though 'cause it feels a little like i'm decorating my own little corner of the World Wide Web so it's been wildly important to me that it be JUST PERFECT. that's the kind of functioning obsessive compulsive person i am.

plus, i don't want you talking behind my back about the dust bunnies hiding under my navigation bar.

but really it's been all about the fingernails. this is point number 2, in case you didn't notice already.

i can't type with 'em, and i can't find the clippers.

i blame it on ms. boucher.

as she's dead and all i'm not implying that her spooky aparition visited my bathroom and took the clippers. most likely it was a kid - one of mine - who's lost all 200 pair of scissors in our household and is now using my fingernail clippers to give the stuffed shrek doll that screams "DONKEY" when you grab its foot a haircut. not that shrek needs one or anything.

ms. boucher. miss boucher. mizz boucher. mizzzzzz martha boucher.

old maid piano teacher extraordinaire.

there's more to be said about ms. boucher but today we're just going to talk about fingernails.

she hated 'em.

and no, they did not have to be long and sparkly to incite her white-hot tweed-suited anger.

even a nub could set her off.

it was a quiet anger, though. one that would begin percolating as i would arrive for my lesson in time for the prerequisite "sight reading" practice over on the tiny electric piano while patrick, the prodigy student, was finishing up his lesson.

patrick never let his fingernails get too long. he had weird hair though. kinda scoopy and floppy and too styled. like an unwarranted combover to cover an imaginary bald spot.

anyway, i'd be sight reading away the theme from "Ice Castles" on the tiny electric piano and the click click click of my barely there fingernails would give me away.

then i'd get THE LOOK and i just hated THE LOOK because really, down deep, i'm a pleaser so while my brain was busy calling ms. boucher names like "you big giant booger head" i was quietly dying a thousand deaths over disappointing her with my evil fingernail growth.

as time passed i got better about clipping my fingernails regularly. this always bought me a few extra minutes to read Archie comic books before my piano lessons. which is always a good thing.

and then i got used to them being short. really really short.

my productivity depended on it. especially when keyboards became an integral component to my day-to-day life.

let's face it, long fingernails really can hamper certain activities like typing, gardening, and picking at blackheads.

so that's my excuse.

i can't find my fingernail clippers and you CAN NOT imagine how painful it was to even type this latest installment when "this" comes out as "5y8w" because my fingernails are now too long to hit the right keys.

so, in closing, let me say this:

i yqtei o9tn r8qjwefwoq!

and i mean every word of it.