This is a post about fingernails.

Dariush told me to blog about my fingernails, because I remarked to him that they are quite long. (His actual reason is that he is frightened of Giger Baby and would like him/her/it pushed off the homepage.)

So. My fingernails? Pretty long.

Normally by this point at least one of my nails would have cracked--most likely the left pointer nail, which has been damaged since the late 90s--and I would have clipped them all down. But as you can see, they've grown well past my fingertips and show no sign of stopping.

It's affected my typing, and not in a good way. I keep missing the keys I want, or adding letters I certainly didn't mean to. My typing is also slower than it once was, which has adversely affected my ego. After all, if you've been clocked at 115 wpm, you don't want people seeing you typing 80, do you?

But for some reason, I can't bring myself to chop them off. I'm so proud of them. I've even filed them carefully to maintain their shape and used nail polish--nail polish!--to keep them strong. It's the longest I've ever maintained long nails.

The aforementioned damaged nail does give me fits, however. It's warped. It grows out and down. It looks stupid.

Fortunately, you can't really tell from the top, but check out this frontal shot:

The middle fingernail has curving tendencies, but it's reasonably similar to the other, normal nails. (And hell, the middle fingernail on my right hand looks exactly the same.)

It's that mutant pointer nail that's out of whack. Deviant. Unforgiveable.

It also bothers me that I'm not particularly adept with nail polish. This is because I have put it on oh, approximately five times in my life, and three of those times were in honor of this recent long-nail phenomenon.

This all really started with my toenails, which started when I got my new job. You see, the women at work are typically well-dressed and well-groomed. They are always wearing new shoes, which are always commented on. Things like nails are afterthoughts; they come naturally.

I noticed that my toenails looked pretty scummy without polish on them whenever I'd wear sandals, so I figured I could at least do something about that. So one day when I was feeling a little down I treated myself to shopping (ah, new shoes) and a mani/pedi. (Do people actually say 'mani/pedi'? I have no idea.)

The polish on my fingernails fascinated me. It looked so pretty. So when it started to chip off, I went to Wal-Mart and got some polish, polish remover, and a pedicure kit that came with a big nail file. Now I tend to leave my toenails alone (they're only on their second style, sparkly)

and maintain my fingernails religiously (which have gone from deep purple to blue to sparkly to burgundy). I still have several other colors to try out, too!

Now that I am slightly more stylish (I tend to buy more shoes these days, too) I'm starting to notice that my hair is generally pretty flat and uninteresting. Maybe I should do something about that as well...