Growing Edges
Aja-lexaArchive for health
Desperate Measures
My fingertips are more prone than the average person’s to crack open and bleed during wintertime or any other time of year.
I have yet to find the magical topical solution for this.
Even as a child, the soles of my feet cracked open and bled, which brought about a semi-regular nightly ritual my mom had for me: slathering A&D ointment on my feet and putting socks over them before sending me to bed.
By the time I left work for the day a few weeks back, six of my ten digits were bandaged (don’t want to bleed on the customers’ groceries as I’m ringing them through at TJ’s). My fingers throbbed that evening as I lay down to sleep, and they still throbbed the next morning despite my trying a Bag Balm/cotton glove combination while I slept.
Oh, so painful!
“When have I ever not had this problem?” I asked myself.I remembered that when I have nails, my fingertips take less of a beating and they are less dry.
Only I can’t grow nails because my nail beds are flat and thin. It’s a genetic thing.
And I stopped wearing fake nails nearly two decades ago because it seemed more about vanity than anything else. Not to mention that I’m not a dainty, delicate woman and I work a lot with my hands…not a promising combination for keeping pretty nails.
Desperate, I went to a nail salon and got a full set of acrylic nails for my very sore hands.
It has been a month. My fingertips are not cracked; my cuticles are not bloody, and I am not in pain.
It has been worth it.
Now, let’s see how “worth it” I deem this whole thing when my computer class starts later today.
© Alexa Lopez, 2010
To Laugh at (with) Oneself
I don’t know what I would do without a sense of humor about myself.
Oh, wait. Yes I do. I would do things like…well, like take everything personally.
I would probably also second guess everyone else’s motives for laughing around me. I would assume that people are laughing at me. I would believe that everyone thinks I’m a fool and a loser. I would convince myself that people — friends included — make it their purpose to crap on my day.
I would get along with nobody.
Because if I don’t laugh at myself, then nobody else is allowed to laugh at me. That’s how it goes, right?
I don’t know whether it is possible to “learn” a sense of humor about onself. I just know that if I couldn’t laugh at myself — including laughing with others when I’ve accidentally done something funny — I’d be friendless.
Because I’d be sour.
A party pooper.
This I know about me: I am a goofball, and sometimes clueless; I make careless mistakes and I sometimes don’t get the obvious jokes. For instance, I wore camouflage pants to work one day, and as he walked toward me, the Head Dude (they don’t like to be called our “bosses”) said, “Oh no! I can’t see anything but a torso!”
“What?” I asked, totally confused about what he was talking about.
“You’re wearing camouflage pants,” he said in passing.
Oh…Duh! Laughter. I shook my head as I walked on. How’d I miss that?
I wish I were funnier, quick-witted like my husband or my daughters, or like my sister Jole’, or my friend Cathy at church; I do a lot of funny things accidentally, but on purpose — not so much.
Instead, I am funny in my head.
A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
© Alexa Lopez, 2009
