Holding the Cat Down for Some Petting

So, even thought I hate to admit it, I sometimes dip into that strange and murky world of
'girliness'. And by that I mean, I paint my nails. I actually paint my nails pretty frequently. It's one of those things that, for some crazy reason, I've been doing a lot of over the last several months. (Come to think of it, I've been painting my nails more since I started BJJ. I think it's a subconscious need to balance the testosterone-fueled BJJ practice with something a little more feminine. I often eat tea and biscuits as I polish my nails too.)

But anyway, the other day I painted them a shiny, purplish-bluish color. It's a nice color, but there were a few problems with it:

1. Sweet Pea said, "I'm not used to you being so " - and I can't remember the word she used, but it was something along the lines of 'cool', or 'youthful', or 'fun'. "You're Mom. You're supposed to wear pinks and reds."
2. This wasn't a subtle purplish-bluish. It was in-your-face purplish-bluish. And despite what you think you know about me, I am anything but in-your-face.
3. My nails are the most crooked, uneven, short, funny little nails you've ever seen. Drawing attention to them with a screaming purplish-bluish polish seemed somehow wrong.
4. While the hubster is all into Zombies and Walking Dead, I'm really not, so having dead-blue nails just looked a little creepy.

So, what did I do? That's right. I put a couple of coats of sparkly gold on top to try to tone it down. Yes, you read that right. I tried to tone it down with sparkly gold. But really, it was a subtle sparkly gold. So subtle it did nothing except add a little sparkle to already dazzling purple.

So, why didn't I just take it off, you ask? Well, that would be too easy.

So, instead, I then decided a nice opal pink would tone it down. So I added three (yes three) coats of pink opal polish to the top. Now, at this point we have two coats of purple, two gold and three pink. That's a total of 7 coats. Seven being a lucky number of course. But lucky in the sense that the color was now perfect? The ideal hue to compliment my winter-washed-out complexion? Not really. The color was now a strange light grayish. Not a bad gray for these wintery months, but definitely gray. Rather, it was lucky in the sense that now since I have 7 coats of polish, my fingernails are about an inch thick and weigh about 2 pounds each. That makes things like kneading bread and holding the cat down for petting much easier. And my shoulders and biceps are getting an awesome workout.

I think I may use 10 coats next time.

Quack!