It's all about the putty.

In early April, I found some Silly Putty at the drugstore. I have always loved the stuff. Squishing it & smooshing it is kinda therapeutic to me. I bought the package & put the little red egg of delightfulness in the console of my van. Almost immediately I found myself squeezing & squishing the putty every time I got into the van to go anywhere. With the steering wheel in one hand & the putty in the other, I squished & smooshed my stress away. I found a cool way to smoosh it out flat, wrap it around 2 fingers, seal off the end at the tip of my fingers, then close up the other end, and you're left with a big air bubble of sorts that you can squeeze & make a loud POP sound. I know...it's stupid, but I'm a little weird. I get addicted to the oddest things. All three of my kids know how to make the putty pop now. Tee hee...the legacy I'm leaving behind is so profound.

About 2 weeks into the month, I looked down one day & realized that my fingernails all had little white tips on them. This is something a nail biter does NOT see very often. Not on her own hands anyway. It struck me then that I must do most of my biting in the car while I drive because I'd spent 2 weeks squishing putty & my nails had grown. Wow. How about that? Of course once I realized there was some white there, I had to bite it off. You know, like a moron.

No sooner had I bit them off then I regretted it & wished I had executed a LITTLE self control & let them grow longer! The truth is, it's an addiction. I found myself really having to fight the urge to stick my thumbnail in my mouth one day when I lost my silly putty, so I stopped and bought a new package! Something just clicked in my head & I said "I'm done" (with biting my nails). I went back to smooshing my putty and lo & behold, here we are mid-May and my nails have never looked this nice. They're long enough to look nice without getting in my way (too much). Long enough to paint, long enough to need to clean them out now & then. Long enough to file a little. It's kind of weird. I'm actually beginning to get compliments on my nice-looking hands. I have never gotten compliments on my fingernails. Ever. 'Cause you know, I've never had them. I've always gnawed them off. But thanks to my little friend, Silly Putty, I have fingernails.

And it's a good thing I had the putty these last two weeks because I surely would've had a big ol' helping of fingernail sandwich by now if I hadn't.

You see, two weeks ago our computer died. We'd had some struggles with some virus-like issues off & on for about 2 months prior, but it finally caught up with us. We took it into the local Best Buy store & handed it over to the Geek Squad. They told us it would take 3-5 days to get the problem identified & fixed. We signed our invoice, choked a little when we saw the number at the bottom, and walked out of the building feeling a little sad. We crossed our fingers & hoped for the best. Unfortunately our crossed fingers didn't QUITE do the job. After a *VERY* frustrating two WEEKS in their care, it's fixed now and everything seems to be perfect, but I can tell ya one thing. We will never use them to fix our computer again. I won't get into the details, but they've lost a customer.

And ya know what? Although I've been able to check my emails on Larry's work laptop, it just doesn't quite seem the same if I can't blog or read other blogs or see what's going on with my friends & family on Facebook. I've felt a little disconnected from the world. But somehow I've kept busy. We went on the Cub Scout camping trip I mentioned in the last post. We came up with a pirate costume for Samuel's school play coming up this week. We had plumbing issues. We've been to a local church library. We've stayed so busy in fact, that yesterday I folded nearly THREE weeks worth of laundry that I had not previously had TIME to fold.

My stress level's been up. And somehow through it all, I still have my fingernails. No nubs! It's amazing. It's gotta be the putty.