1. I seem to have become a person who wears nailpolish as often as not, and all it took was a complete revolution in nailcare! Really, it’s amazingly fun having sparkly nails, as long as I can trust them to look respectable for more than half a day. (About five, seems to be the current average. Meaning, I actually wear the polish a full week, I just accept that the last couple of days will be a bit ratty if I don’t top up.)
I mentioned this on Twitter and there were Questions, so: it’s all about the topcoat. Since Vinylux came out, a bunch of other brands have done their own “gel-like” nail systems, but unlike Vinylux, these are basically magic topcoats that will work on regular polish. Sally Hansen Mega Shine and OPI Infinite Shine are both working really well for me (with OPI I use the Infinite Shine base coat too). Don’t bother with Vinylux, btw, I was mad about it at first but the polish went really icky in the bottles really fast.
2. I had one of those Very Fed Up With Parenting moments this week, and because I have nothing else of interest to discuss, I’m going to burden you with it, even though it’s nothing I haven’t ranted about before. It is this: I have heard the first decade or so of motherhood described as “the sacrificial years”, which sounds martyrish but also sort of defined, and which I have come to believe understates matters quite markedly. It seems to imply that the sacrifice is of years that could otherwise be devoted to career or creative progress, or something, but at any rate one is instead devoting oneself to the higher cause of motherhood and it’s all very noble. Or something.
What this phrase signally fails to, well, signal, is that one is not simply sacrificing one’s time. One is sacrificing one’s self. One is, unwillingly (in the case of most of us, or so I assume), giving up on any right to directing one’s own activities, or controlling one’s own stuff. I suppose it doesn’t have to be entirely so, and obviously, one does set limits. And yet. I find that, for instance, I never, ever use my iPad, because the second I pick it up somebody wants to play on it (and since I’m not in the mood for a fight, it’s easier to just leave it hidden away somewhere, if it’s not designated screen time). I find that I cannot get the simplest things done because – say – I walk over to my computer to do a couple of small things that have just come up, so aren’t written down anywhere, and would take at most 5 minutes altogether, and as soon as I’m there I see a useful reminder to make an important phone call, but meanwhile someone has trailed me to my desk and immediately asks if she can check her online advent calendar and the point is not that I can’t say no – of course I can, and do – the point is that I am already engaged in a conversation that has quite effectively distracted me from that very short list of things I wanted to do, and which I have now completely forgotten.
So I don’t get things done, and I lose the ability to concentrate on anything for more than two minutes at a time (because I never have the chance!), and this is just normal, for the foreseeable future. And I don’t see a solution, because it’s not about how to tell my kids no, you can’t use my computer or iPad. It’s about the fact of inevitable interruption and distraction. I can’t set a rule like, don’t ever follow me into the study or talk to me at my computer, because (absent a firm home-working structure, which I do not have or exactly need) that would be utterly unreasonable. And if I did, they would still interrupt and distract me constantly during every other possible activity, so really, what would be the point.
So that is today’s motherhood rant. Refreshing and delicious!
3. I’m having a moment where I really, really want to just sit and knit on all the pretty things in my queue and none of the things I’m designing and not talk to anybody (ANYBODY) or do anything remotely useful for at least a month. Obviously impossible on a number of fronts, but it’s such a pretty notion.
What’s your right-now fantasy?
Woolly thoughts (and fuzzy logic) 