nail biting

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Weigh In Wednesday: Take One, Leave One

I find myself in need of advice on little silly things that are nonetheless driving me crazy. In exchange, I thought I’d share a few little tips that have been helping me out lately. 

If you have any hot tips to share, please do so; if you are in need of any advice, ask away. I will chime in if I have something to offer, and I hope your fellow readers will do so as well. 

Tiny Tips That Are Making Life Better

  • Low-Effort Houseplant Watering: I love houseplants – looking at them, owning them, watching for new growth or flowers. And I am also terrible about keeping on top of their watering needs. After several died or nearly died, I finally broke down and bought a pack of plastic watering bulbs so that I could put one in every single plant I own. It’s not foolproof – they do need to be refilled every week or so, depending on the plant. But it is making my plants SO MUCH HAPPIER and my days are no longer punctuated by random stabs of guilt when I realize it’s been several weeks since I last watered my plants.
  • Morning Time (and Madness) Saver: Mornings have always been tough in my household. They continue to be tough, especially since we have added Primping to our daily routine. And also, school starts earlier this year than it ever has before so we need to be out the door fifteen minutes sooner than we did last year. One thing that has made getting out the door slightly better is to keep a hairbrush, hair ties, and a small makeup kit in my car. That way, Carla can do her hair and makeup while I am driving her to school. Secondary tip: One common frustration around here is that no one can ever find a hairbrush when she needs it. I bought a bunch of small hairbrushes so that Carla can keep one in her backpack, one in her sports bag, and one in her locker.

  • Easy Sheet Pan Meal Clean Up: I love sheet pan dinners, and I love using a barrier between the food and my cookie sheets so I don’t have to deep clean the cookie sheets every night. (They don’t fit in the dishwasher.) I own reusable silicone sheets, and use them for certain things, but they are too difficult to clean for me to use them every time I make a sheet pan meal. For the longest time, I’ve been using aluminum foil. But I am continually frustrated by food sticking to the damn foil. I tried parchment paper, but found it super annoying because it’s so insubstantial it doesn’t stay in place and it’s difficult to crease. I’d seen tips before for putting a little sprinkle of water or cooking spray on the cookie sheet to hold the parchment in place, but it doesn’t always work and/or it requires me to wash the cookie sheet, which I was trying to avoid by using parchment in the first place. Then I saw someone on Instagram crumple up the sheet of parchment paper before smoothing it out onto the cookie sheet. GAME CHANGER. 
  • Connection Points When Talking Is Hard: The credit for this genius idea belongs with my friend G. She told me that she and her daughter have a special notebook in which they write each other secret notes. “Secret” in that no one else can read their exchanges. I have tried this technique with Carla, who can be quite reticent about sharing her feelings and talking about her worries. It works so well. She is willing to share all sorts of things in writing that she refuses to discuss out loud. Because of this silly little journal we pass back and forth, I feel much more connected to her and what’s going on in her inner world. It’s not even something we write in regularly. Sometimes we’ll go back and forth for a few days, sometimes the journal will sit untouched for months. But so far it’s been the perfect bridge when I sense she’s something is troubling her but she’s reluctant, for whatever reason, to share it, or just when we haven’t had a chance to chat in a while. Oh look – there’s a whole line of journals specific to this purpose. We just use one of the many old journals I have lying around.
  • Instant Mood Improver: Get a cat. Please note: mood improvement requires close proximity to cat and may disappear once cat is out of sight, which could be quite often, depending on the cat. 

Please Advise: Here’s Where You Tell Me What To Do

  • Do you have any tips for making it simpler to put laundry away? Especially if those tips apply to getting other people in your household to put laundry away? Our current “system” involves me doing laundry, folding or sorting Carla’s clothing, and then asking Carla to put it away. Which results in Carla using my bedroom as a dressing room, because that’s where I fold the laundry. I have started putting the clean/folded laundry in a basket and putting that basket in my bedroom on the landing outside Carla’s room in Carla’s room, but still – the basket remains there, full of clean clothing, growing less folded by the day, until I Make A Fuss. And honestly, the Making A Fuss only results in the laundry ending up on the floor, which makes me incandescent. I have not opened the door to Carla’s closet lately, and do not want to, lest my head implode like a firecracker. I am willing to do Drastic Things. Should I get rid of 75% of her clothing? (I did ask her to go through her wardrobe this summer and remove everything she doesn’t or won’t wear.) Should I buy her another dresser?  The child has AMPLE storage, seriously, so much storage, but what we are doing is clearly not working for her and she doesn’t have any ideas (besides I like having all my clothing in a laundry basket / on my floor) for how to make the situation more user friendly for herself. The only thing I am unwilling to do is put her laundry away myself. She’s twelve. She can put her own laundry away. Oh, okay – there is another thing I am unwilling to do: ignore the mess. I have tried that tack and it is not workable for me or for our family. 
  • What are your favorite low-effort houseplants? Especially if they require low light? As I mentioned above, I LOVE plants and would love more. But a) our house has very little direct light and b) the cat will seriously eat any plant, or at least give it a little taste test, so any plants I buy need to be non-toxic. I have moved all the currently toxic plants I own to out-of-cat-reach spaces, but they aren’t necessarily low-light plants and they aren’t doing very well. For instance, the Christmas cactus and the kalanchoe I owned pre-cat have been relocated to the top of my bookshelves, and they are no longer dying of thirst but they are clearly not loving their lighting conditions. I have also purchased a few plants that require “bright, indirect light,” and even those seem a little light-starved. I think I need plants that thrive in less light. But not no light. All the plants have access to natural light. Just not bright light.

  • How do you keep your fingernails tidy? Okay, confession time: I am a nail picker. I will pick at my nails and the skin around my nails, sometimes until my fingers bleed. I think I developed this gruesome habit as an alternative to nail biting (although I still do that at times, too, ugh ugh ugh), and I am ready to stop. But… I don’t know HOW. It’s a nervous habit, for sure, and I don’t think you can help me get over my social anxiety. But part of the reason it’s such an addictive habit is that my cuticles (is that the right term for the skin on the sides of my nails???) are often dry or peeling or otherwise pick-able. Right now, my pinky finger is all painful and inflamed because of this habit and I Don’t Like It. My questions for you are: a) If you or someone you know has gotten over this gross habit, HOW? And/or b) Is there something I should be doing to enhance my overall nail skin / fingernail / cuticle health? I do tend towards dry skin, and use Working Hands cream like it’s my job. But I get overwhelmed by the abundance of cuticle oils and creams and have no idea which ones WORK. Or if buying a “cuticle remover kit” would do anything at all to help me.

I do not want to end this post on weird giant photos of my fingernails, so here’s where I turn things over to you. What hot tips do you have to share today? Or, at least, the little things that are making your day-to-day easier/better/more enjoyable? And in which areas are you in need of advice?

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Best Friends and Nail Biting (Two Separate Topics)

Do you have A Best Friend in the place that you live? I don’t; I have acquaintances and former work friends and mom friends, but no one who’s really… a Best Friend. I mean, I have my spouse! He’s certainly my best friend and my soul mate, but let’s not get all ooey gooey about him. I’m talking about a non-romantic bestie, someone to go grab a glass of wine with, someone who will go shopping with you and tell you which jeans look best, someone who knows and loves you for who you are, someone who will dissect every facet of an awkward interaction ad nauseum, perhaps while watching The Good Place.

I do have close friends. They just… don’t live nearby.

Some days I am totally fine with the fact that I don’t have a best friend right here in town with me; other days I feel crushing woe. This is a crushing woe period, and I think the root of the current woe is a communication desert between me and these friends. Take my lifelong best friend, for instance. She lives in our hometown, where we met more than 25 years ago. She and I have maintained our relationship via the magic of phone calls since we left for college in fall of 1999. Sometimes we talk every day. Sometimes we go a few weeks without talking – especially in the past few years. But I’d say on average we talk about once a week. And right now, we’re in a period of very infrequent contact. It sucks.

Same goes for… pretty much everyone else on my Regular Contact list. For some reason, there’s a lull in communication with everyone. And it’s freaking me out. I miss these people! I miss knowing what’s going on in their lives. And I miss talking to someone who knows me really well; it’s really hard, for me at least, to get to the point in a friendship where you feel fully relaxed and comfortable around the other person.  I just don’t have that kind of relationship with any of the mom friends I’ve made.

I am 95% sure – based on past experience – that the communication desert has nothing to do with me. The most likely explanation for the radio silence is that my friends are just really busy, and keeping up with me isn’t top of the priority list at this moment. If I think about that too hard, it makes me sad, but I do understand it.

Since I believe that my friends are just busy, I do try to stay in touch anyway, despite a lack of response. But that can be tiring. And disheartening; I end up wondering if I’m being annoying, or if I’m pushing on boundaries my friend is trying to set, or if I’m not getting the hint.

Because even though I know the likely explanation is that they are just busy, it’s hard not to worry. Did I offend them somehow? Is something really upsetting going on in their lives that they can’t tell me about? Worst of all, are we drifting apart? Are they ghosting me? Is this the end of our friendship? Am I unlikable and destined to go through life friendless and alone?

Okay, okay, let’s rein it in here. I am feeling lonely and adrift and the gloom of ceaseless rain seems like it’s here to stay but dwelling on it certainly isn’t helping, so I am going to change the subject.

Have you ever bitten your nails? Carla does, and it’s to the point that I cannot look at her fingers without every molecule of my body cringing. I worry she’s permanently disfiguring her fingers. Or that it’s just a matter of time before she gets some horrific bacterial infection and goes into septic shock or loses her hands. I haven’t heard a lot of stories about nail-biting-related amputations (and nor do I want to, thank you!!!!) (must… resist… googling…) but my mind always goes to the worst possible outcome.

I talked to her pediatrician, and he was pretty blasé about it; he recommended touching her hand gently every time I notice it. That was it. That’s all well and good if she bites her nails while I’m sitting next to her, or if she’s sitting on my lap while I’m reading to her. But what if she’s in the next room? What if she’s in the back seat of the car? What if she’s at school? The “knock it off, Carla!” and “stop biting your nails, Carla!” yelled across the room/car method is not a good deterrent, that’s for sure.

We tried putting special tape on each of her fingers, creating a physical barrier between her teeth and her nails. The tape stayed on for approximately three minutes and then came off.

We suggested bandaids instead, but Carla has a severe phobia of bandaids (I’m not kidding), and just trying to convince her to let us put one on a single one of her fingers was traumatic enough that we gave up.

We bought some of that nail biting polish that tastes horrible, and tried that. It did not work. She still bites her nails.

We tried bribing her with pretty nail polish and with those cute nail stickers — the ones that have unicorns, mermaids, flowers, or animal faces that you can stick directly on your fingernails. But her nails are so bitten that the stickers don’t fit on them, and so far the bribe hasn’t been enticing enough to keep her from biting.

So now I am trying the Ignoring It method.

My husband used to bite his nails, until quite recently. He finally just quit cold turkey. I have no idea how. My mother and father-in-law both used to bite their nails, and they managed to quit. So there’s hope.

And I used to bite mine – still do, if I’m being honest. At some point in high school or college, I stopped biting them compulsively. But anytime they get so long that they peel or crack, I bite them. And I cannot wear nail polish because the instant it chips, I peel it off with my teeth (I know, GROSS and probably poisonous) (In my youth, I used to wear Sally Hansen Hard As Nails clear nail polish just so I could peel it off with my teeth. Kids are weird, man.) and then bite my nails. Sigh.

So maybe it’s genetic. And maybe she will eventually get over it (like her father and grandparents have) or learn to manage it (like I have). But sheesh. It is so awful.

Well, at least she doesn’t bite her toenails. I suppose I should be thankful for THAT.