Self-Improvement and thumbs

I have the bad habit of chewing on my cuticles. I don't know quite how it started. When I was a small child I used to suck on my first two fingers. (Several of my peers sucked their thumbs, and I remember thinking that was silly. This was apparently before I understood irony.) When I was in middle school I chewed my fingernails, which I may have picked up by watching my sister. There was once a time when my sister's friend showed me how she chewed her cuticles, and I was really disgusted. But then, some time in high school, I switched from chewing my fingernails to the skin around them.

The difference is that the soft bits protected by fingernails hurt immediately if the nails get too short. Cuticle skin is dead and doesn't hurt, or show any signs of true distress, until it starts to bleed. There have been times when all of my fingers are torn up, the skin ragged down to the first knuckle, with several of them scabbing from recent bleeding. It sounds gross because it is. I'm very self-conscious about it. I'm always surprised that very few people notice.

It is a compulsion. I don't even notice I'm doing it until it's too late. I've identified that a big problem is feeling the ragged bits scrape or catch on anything. I want to cut off the offending hangnail. My incisors being the only cleaving tools available, I end up biting or tearing the skin off. Of course, this makes the skin more ragged (and harder for it to grow back). Always wanting to stop, I try to beat it with pure will. Every year I plan to stop chewing my fingers as a new year's resolution, or for lent, or just as a goal for myself. I stopped chewing my fingernails during one of these bouts of determination (and it stuck to this day), but I have never succeeded in laying off the fingers. The closest I have gotten is during my last year in Cleveland I would obsessively manicure myself while sitting at my desk. There was little left to catch or scrape. My fingers generally stayed out of my mouth, but the end results of over-manicuring weren't much better.

Recently I've been going back to a tried-and-true trick. I've been covering up my thumbs with bandaids. Every morning I put them on, every night I take them off and let my thumbs air out. I carry spares in my wallet. It's been fairly effective, as it has been in the past. The thumbs are my go-to fingers for chewing, so having them covered keeps me off of the other fingers for the most part. Seeing the bandages, people have been asking what's wrong with my thumbs and it's embarassing to tell them, but it seems to be working.

I am proud of my progress. It might be the healthiest my fingers have been in a decade. Pretty soon they will be healed to the point where the bandaids will serve no further practical purpose, and I will have to decide whether I will wear bandaids for the rest of my life or if I'm ready to try and go it alone. I am not confidant of my ability to keep it up.

This may be an extended metaphor.

Jet Lag: Jet Lee's evil older brother

SO I guess I haven't done this in a really long time, though I suppose it's doubtful that anyone noticed. However, I have good reasons for abandoning this, and coming back, and possibly abandoning it again soon.

FOOT UPDATE: It turns out the thing is broken, for real! Hairline fracture of the "foot" bone. Apparently it's connected to the "ankle bone," if I remember the song right. (Un?)Fortunately, by the time I actually saw a doctor it had healed enough that she decided there wasn't any point in doing anything about it. She's all, "If you came in last week I would have put you in a cast, but you waited long enough that it's healing. You're 23 so we have no reason to think it won't keep healing. Luckily it's healing straight, or else we'd have to re-break it." Anyway, long-story-slightly-shorter, after driving home early from a trip to Cleveland, getting a speeding ticket, waiting in the doctor's office for 2 hours, and paying a co-pay, the verdict is: you wasted your time. Thanks yo!

ABSENCE UPDATE: I wasn't just slacking off, I was out of town! First I went to Cleveland for 4th of July weekend, then I went to California! We had a giant family reunion in Yosemite National Park for a week, then we visited Lake Tahoe for a few days, with a trip to Oakland in between. It was rad. I hope to put up a(some) picture(s) of how rad it was. To show you, you know?

UPCOMING ABSENCE UPDATE: I may well not post for another long period of time, because my sister is getting married and I am going to Brooklyn for 1.5 weeks to celebrate right. More on that later?

WHAT STUPID THING ACTUALLY INSPIRED ME TO LOG ON AND UPDATE THIS THING UPDATE: One of the things that I hope is never to be shot. But if I ever do get shot, I hope/plan to have this exact conversation with someone, verbatim-style. If shit goes down, do us a favor, play your part.


* * * Out! * * *

My Dang Foot Hurts

A notable part of my life for the past week and a half is that I am Injured. I was playing some basketball with my friends while wearing sandals, and I managed to land on my right sandal in such a way as to bend my foot under and bruise the hell out of it. I don't think it's broken or even sprained, because I've been walking around on it fairly well. I pop a few ibuprofen in the morning and try to keep it elevated, but otherwise I've been trying not to let it get in the way. I don't think I'm being unreasonably stoic. I'm pretty sure there's nothing you can do with a hurt foot/toe other than try not to piss it off even more. So I've spent the week hobbling around like a scholiosis-free Quasimodo. I don't like it very much at all. Nothing hurts more than an injury, plus my team lost the b-ball game once I left. Sucks.

One amusing moment to come out of this ordeal was the day following the initial harm. A group of my friends were having a barbecue, the same group who witnessed the injury the night before. The weather was perfect, and frisbees and water guns were coming out. My foot hurt a lot, and I was having significant troubles moving around, but I didn't want to seem like a party pooper who was just sitting around on a perfect backyard-fun day. I thought to myself, "what would a Cool Dude do in a situation like this?" I thought of House, M.D. one of the few TV shows that I actually know a little about. The main dude, House, in undeniably a Cool Dude, and he straight up walks with a cane and makes it look badass. Well, I didn't know about the second part, but it occurred to me that I do have a cane. I mentioned a long time ago that I went as Waldo for Halloween, but the cane I made was purely decorative. However, with the advice of my dad I attached a little thing made out of "metal" that made the cane sturdy enough for practical use. Consequently, I saw no reason to use part of the costume when I sported the whole thing so well, so I put it together. I showed up early, and as each person came in their face lit up as their attention turned to me. I was still involved in the rest of the fun day, but it seemed to make sense that I wasn't participating as physically. This kid's dressed like Waldo, he doesn't have to play four square. It worked.

Now I've finally bitten the bullet and made a doctor's appointment. I fully expect him to tell me that there's nothing terribly wrong with my foot and I should just stay off it. It may be unsatisfying, but at least I'll know I don't have some double-secret fracture or alien infection.


"Nothing hurts more than an injury." Words to live by, Jack Mack 2006.

*today's gimm*ick

*So guess what I have? I*'ll give you *a hint. *It comes in semi-regular interva*ls, *is distracting* while you *type, and is a spasm of* your diaphragm. Give *up? It's the hic*cups! Hooray*! Actuall*y I think the hiccups* are super-annoy*ing, but I thought I'd try and do something interesting with them sinc*e I've got them. *Every time you see a*n asterisk, that's when I hiccuppe*d. So *there you have it. Thi*s is what it's *like to type with* the hiccups. In case you hav*en't tried *it. It's pretty anno*ying to *read, I assume? Well it's annoy*ing to write too.* * * (*That was a moment where I was tr*ying to plan what *to say next. I'm trying to be as stre*am-of-con*sciousness as I can here*, to keep the flow*... flowin'.*) *I don't really like the hiccup*s, and I'll tell you why. I don't* like it when I'm *not the one who's controlling something in my body*. For example, I don'*t like being sick,* I don'*t like it when hunger or sleepynes*s impedes my ability to function, an*d I don't* like being really, REALLY drunk (*A little drunk or regul*ar drunk is okay)*.* Whoa! Those two were quick!*

*

*Damn y*ou, the hiccups. Damn your eyes.* Maybe I* should try* holding my breath.

(inhale)

I'm taking blogging to a whole new level today. This is what it's like to type while you're holding your breath! Awesome! I wonder if it comes through to the reader. I imagine not, since I'm not being very delicate about my writing here. You can tell someone is a good writer when they're like "This is what I'm doing, and this is how you should be feeling!" That makes it very clear to the reader, but perhaps not very engrossing.

Though speaking of involving the reader, I'm pretty sure I know what you're thinking. I'll admit it, people, I didn't hold my breath that whole time. A few times I gently let it out and inhaled again. That's how you do it when you want to relax your diaphragm, and that's what I wanted so that's what I did. Lo, and behold! The troublesome hiccups have dissappeared, and with them has gone the asterisk-gimmick!

END OF STORY. NO POINT, NO EDITING.