I’m currently trying very very hard to ignore my toenails. Well. One toenail anyway.

And it’s not going well.

See, after I got back from New York the nails on my right foot were all bruised and grumpy. I would imagine it had something to do with walking flippin’ everywhere—

Is it really so wrong to want to take a cab? I mean, that’s almost like of those bus tours of New York. Except with a car. And a stupid mini-TV that un-mutes randomly. That was like the best part of my last trip to New York. Cabs are good. Cabs are meant to be taken.

Where was I? Right. —walking flippin’ everywhere, then spending two nights in a row in heels. High heels. Long nights. So I knew my feet were going to make me pay for their  forced confinement. And pay I did. But bruises and blisters weren’t so bad. Eventually they fade, things return to normal.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I noticed my little-itty-bitty-toe toenail seemed to be coming off.

Which, I gotta tell you, freaked me the fuck out.  Because…. I mean, what would happen when it did? The most likely answer: Pain. Pain would happen. But then what? Would I walk around for the rest of my life with only one little-itty-bitty-toe toenail? Would I be off-balance with only the one nail? Do I need a special license plate? Is there like a walk-a-thon involved? Anything?

But there was a larger and more immediate problem I needed to address. Because ever since I was little I could never just let things be. Nail polish, labels, stickers…. I am incapable of leaving anything on that can be peeled, picked, scratched or scraped off.

I like to call it “helping”. My mom likes to call it really annoying.

So as freaked out about that nail as I was, I had this gnawing curiosity as to what lurked beneath. And I could sort of, like, flip it up. Just… a bit. And… a little.. bit more. And if I kind of… pushed on one si—

It wasn’t gonna last the day.

Now, the only thing more terrifying than never being able to enjoy Sandal Season again is that I might prematurely rip the nail off. Thus disfiguring my poor little-itty-bitty-toe even further. So in a rare instance of common sense prevailing over impulsivity, I wrapped that little sucker up in Band-aids.

Well, a Band-aid. I actually considered using like three or four (duct tape in a pinch) but toes are difficult things to bandage. So one Band-aid would have to do. And it worked. Sort of. For a week or two anyway. Then one day I sort of poked at it and realized the thing was going to come off pretty soon with or without my help. So. Deep breath. Prepare for the worst. Accept the fact that I would now have a no-nail little-itty-bitty-toe, and… no pain. Good. No blood.  Great. No whining. No…

Actually it was pretty anticlimactic (in other words I’m too tired to whip up an awesome fake ending). Turns out that a very thin, very very little-itty-bitty nail had been growing under the old one.

So I now had a brand new magic toenail. It was like Christmas.

Except now my other toenail looks completely different. So I was still uneven, despite the whole “magic toenail” thing. I was thinking maybe I could drop stuff on the other one—small rocks, books… toddlers—so it would fall off too. But in the end I decided that those last two weeks were so tension-filled that I just couldn’t handle that crazy roller coaster ride again. It was time for the healing to begin.

Then just this afternoon I looked down at my now-partially-magic right foot and saw, with dawning horror, that another toenail was falling out. So I’m currently trying very very hard to ignore my toenails.

And it’s not going well.