janetlin: (Nails: biting)
sira_underhill ([personal profile] janetlin) wrote2006-09-17 08:27 pm
Entry tags:

Backsliding

They say it takes three weeks to break a bad habit, and three more to replace it with a good one.

I'm sitting here at six weeks, and apparently have done neither. I don't know what happened (really, that should be _why_. 'What' is obvious if you look at my hands). You'd think that spending the weekend at grandma's, around her and my mom, and being so proud of how far I've come with my nails, would be the _one_ place and time I would be certain not to mess up. Maybe it's _because_ I was showing off my nails; maybe I was paying closer attention to them, myself, and thus found weak corners and unevenly-shaped edges that just _had_ to be picked at/smoothed.

Maybe it's because I forgot my cuticle oil, and after three days of handling material while working on my NAAMA dress, my fingers were all dried out. Maybe it was the stress of doing my homework on grandma's dining room table where _everyone_ could see whether I was being a good kid or not. I dunno.

Anyway, the long and short of it (heheh, I know) is that I took three more nails down to the two-week level, which left only four nails on _both_ hands intact this whole time. Well, that disparity would have driven me crazy, so before it got to that point, tonight I filed those four down to match all the others. *sigh*

The only good news is that none of them are completely down to the quick. So it's three steps forward and two steps back, but that's still progress, right? And they still click when I drum my fingers (with no exaggerated over-bending, either), which I don't remember happening when they really _were_ at two weeks, so I guess overall they're really longer (because the quick is growing out), but when the most visible sign of growth is the whites, and those are tiny right now, it's still sort of depressing.

[identity profile] starfirenz.livejournal.com 2006-09-18 05:37 am (UTC)(link)
*poot*

Alas, poor nails :-(

Still - backsliding happens though, and it sounds like the place you slid to is definitely further up than the place you started, so that's all good, and definitely constitutes progress.

And still being able to drum them is cool too :-)

Hugs

Starfire

[identity profile] janetlin.livejournal.com 2006-09-18 07:26 pm (UTC)(link)
I hated having to file those four down to match the others, but I knew that if I hadn't, it would have bugged me so much that eventually I would have just bitten them down, and then they might have ended up even shorter than I intended. So I guess this is better.

Just... yeah, it's poopy.

[identity profile] elven-alchemist.livejournal.com 2006-09-19 12:36 am (UTC)(link)
*hugs and cheesecakes* You'll be ok. It's just a hard time to survive.
By the way, congrats on your new LJ design. It's amazing and wonderful;-)

[identity profile] elven-alchemist.livejournal.com 2006-09-19 04:05 am (UTC)(link)
Oooops...
Where is it?
That dark pink layout?
I saw it! I really did...
Did you just try to change and didn't like it so changed back?
Or something is wrong with my vision?

[identity profile] janetlin.livejournal.com 2006-09-19 04:10 am (UTC)(link)
You're just insane.

No, really, I did try out one of the new layout possibilities they have for paid accounts. And yeah, the pink was a fun change, but I didn't like that there wasn't a clear break between entries (the way I have it now, each entry is in its own little box). And the tag list on the side was cool, except that apparently the size that the tag name shows up in is indicative of how many entries are in that tag. So "Alan" was huge, and took up, like, half the line. *blush*

[identity profile] janetlin.livejournal.com 2006-09-19 04:10 am (UTC)(link)
I dunno, I might go back to it. The pink was oddly hypnotic...

[identity profile] elven-alchemist.livejournal.com 2006-09-19 04:57 am (UTC)(link)
That pink was wonderful! And hypnotic, yes.
And I saw that big ALAN, very cute;-)
Ok, I'm insane, if I even happen to catch that moment of pink...

[identity profile] janetlin.livejournal.com 2006-09-19 05:01 am (UTC)(link)
The pink, it calls to me..... lol

[identity profile] janetlin.livejournal.com 2006-09-19 05:53 am (UTC)(link)
Mmkay, I fixed the tag list (my, it's long!) and I think I can get used to the lack of clear breaks on the recent entries page. I'll live in it for a while and if the OMG that's pink!-ness doesn't kill me, I'll keep it.

[identity profile] elven-alchemist.livejournal.com 2006-09-19 11:01 am (UTC)(link)
Pink rules!
And your tags look very beautiful.

[identity profile] cat-i-th-adage.livejournal.com 2006-09-19 06:17 am (UTC)(link)
Well, your nails are better off than when you started, not so?

Be proud of that.

[identity profile] janetlin.livejournal.com 2006-09-19 06:18 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, I am. I feel better about it today than I did right after I'd filed the long ones down (and finished smoothing out the jaddedyness of the ones I'd bitten).

[identity profile] janetlin.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 04:04 am (UTC)(link)
Grr. I meant jaggedyness.

[identity profile] cat-i-th-adage.livejournal.com 2006-10-08 05:10 am (UTC)(link)
So, when you're chewing your nails, how do you go about this?

Pick at one edge? Both upper and lower teeth involved? Is it sore when you do it?

Just curious.

[identity profile] janetlin.livejournal.com 2006-10-08 05:31 am (UTC)(link)
(huh. I've never thought about _how_ I do it...)

If the other nails are long enough (= have any edge at all), then I use those to pick at the others. Usually, though, this isn't the case and I just go for teeth. Umm, generally just my bottom teeth, and it's like... well, the reasoning behind it is like using a plane to smooth irregularities in the surface of wood. Only these are teeth and thus it's a much less accurate process, which usually means I cause an even bigger problem in trying to fix the first one.

I've been biting for long enough that I know when I'm getting too close to the quick, and I stop before it starts hurting and long before I draw blood, at which point if there are still rough spots that snag on my clothes (which is generally how I discover them in the first place), then I use a file. Which, I know, I should have done in the first place, but for some reason I always think that I can do just _this_ much, you know, and it's hardly worth finding a file when it's just a tiny thing that needs fixing.