This Snagglenail Blogger Has A Bone And A Cuticle To Pick

Now that I am growing long in the tooth, I am also growing sharp in the fingernail. It's like the slower I become, the more my body adapts to protect me from predators, whether four-legged or two-legged. One fingernail especially has become problematic. The ring finger on my left hand.

 

Fortunately, I've not had to use my fingernail as a weapon. Unfortunately, my fingernail is practicing, keeping sharp, if you will, by attacking my own body. My own ring finger on my left hand. The corner of the fingernail cuts into the flesh on the outer side of my left ring finger. I try to file it, but the edge re-hones itself overnight as if I rub it on a whetstone while slumbering. 

The only tool I have to fight my killer fingernail is a file on the toenail clippers in the master bathroom. It's a little file that rotates out from the middle of the nail clipper. It's metal, of course. The drawback is in knowing that Farmer H uses this nail clipper on HIS TOES!

I put NAIL FILE on my shopping list. The Pony reads it ahead of time, and didn't ask for clarification. He bought me a pack of six.

I don't know why the label says MINI NAIL FILES! They are 13 cm long, and 2 cm wide. That's about 5 and 1/4 inches long, and just over .75 inches wide. How is that MINI? Is the regular size a foot long?

 

Anyhoo... The Pony said he didn't get me a metal version because I didn't specify that. Well, I consider these to be EMERY BOARDS, but in The Pony's defense, the label says they are nail files. I don't have an issue with the length, nor the width. It's the THICKNESS that bothers me.

Each nail file is 4 MILLIMETERS THICK! In this picture, you can see that I've taken out one of the three green ones in this stack. They are like DOUBLE emery boards. Like two glued together. So fat that I can't fit them along the corner of my nail to hone it down.

It doesn't help that this fingernail has a cuticle issue. I think that's what you call it. The stringy part that runs up along the side of the nail, and comes loose, and gets dried out and hard and then gets irritated if caught on or rubbed against something. 

I filed my fingernail as good as I could. Then I slopped some triple antibiotic ointment on the corner where that problem cuticle was poking out, and covered it with a bandaid overnight. I'm not risking a red infection with a pus pocket like my mom and my sister the ex-mayor's wife have had. Sis had hers lanced and received antibiotics. Mom let hers go too long during the Great Icepocalypse of '06. Then she had surgery to scrape the infection from the bone. It was her pinky finger. The first doctor wanted to amputate it!

Anyhoo... Mrs. HM would not take kindly to a doctor who wanted to lop off her finger. No siree, Bob! I would NOT say, "Well, it's just my little finger, and I could get along without that." Nope. It's my RING FINGER, and I could NOT get along without it!

Don't you worry about Mrs. HM. The finger is not even red. The overnight treatment softened the cuticle, allowed for its trimming, and also some shoving of the fat nail file into the corner to dull the razor-sharp corner of the fingernail. I used a nail file that is white with green fern fronds on it. It was the easiest to get out of the package. C'mon, man! Surely you didn't think I'd use the one that says: choose happiness. That is SO not simpatico with my personal motto: PEOPLE PISS ME OFF.

I really like the pattern on the top green nail file. I thought it was penguins, until looking at this picture. It's just BLOBS! Black and white blobs on a green background. I feel so cheated...