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If anyone has any suggestions or experiences they’d like to share, I’d love to hear them:

“It’s time.”

“No!”

“Come back here!  It’s got to be done before someone, meaning me, gets hurt.”  I hear a muffled, exasperated sigh.  “I can see you.  Throwing your jacket over your head may work on the baby, but I’m onto that trick.”

I pulled the hoodie off and tried to look pathetic.  It wasn’t hard.  “I don’t have the stomach for it.  Besides, you trained for this in the army.  You went through jungle school.  You know how to use a machete.”

My husband put on his patient face.  “True, but the army didn’t train me to use baby nail clippers.”  He shuddered.  “Those things scare me.”  Said the man who walked passed anacondas and snakes (Fur-De-Lance) whose venom would kill you within two steps every day when stationed on a South American army base.  Changing to his determined face, he said, “I call containment duty.”  He was pitting his steady hunky 200 pounds against our daughter’s 16 pounds of squirmy cuteness.  Almost a fair contest.

I broke out in a clammy sweat.  Fodknockers!  He beat me to calling the coveted position of containment duty.  He got to hold her while I used the nail clippers.  I raised my chin and replied with forced calm.  “I’ll get the clippers.”  I stalked stiff legged into the bathroom and retrieved the dreaded item.

Fortunately, our daughter hasn’t seen the clippers enough to be traumatized at the mere sight of them.  I’ve been lucky so far the entire two times that We’ve screwed up the nerve to cut her tiny baby nails.  Making my pleas to God, I took hold of the first tiny, perfect finger.  I couldn’t resist one last look into those big, trusting blue eyes that might never look at me the same again.

“Ready?”

“No.”

“Honey!”

“Well you asked!”

By the eighth finger, I remembered to breath.  So far, no blood.  Two more to go.  I looked at my husband to see how he was holding up.  He was breathing fast, shallow breaths.  He bit his lip and readjusted his hold.  Our daughter chewed on her free fingers, looking with innocent, oblivious fascination at a tumbling dust bunny.  As the air conditioner kicked on, I shivered and the clippers quivered in my grasp.

“Steady.”

I nodded and slowly squeezed the evil appliance.  Then her finger moved.  Just a fraction.  The clipper pinched down and I pulled it back with a gasp, flinging the offending tool of the devil down.  Shocked blue eyes swept up to meet mine.  I froze as she looked to me as to how she should react.  She must have picked up on my guilt because ever so slowly, her lower lip slipped out and her face crumpled into tears.  As many a mother has felt before, I am the worst mommy ever.  She took a couple of hiccupping sobs and then got over it when another dog hair tumbleweed rolled by.  I anxiously checked her finger.  No blood, no mark.  Somehow, I managed to finish and I have since called “containment duty infinity”.  Or I’m just going to let them grow, have her wear mittens and have the Doctor do it.  He is a trained professional.

Has anyone seen my brain?  I seem to have misplaced it and my husband has informed me that it’s time I go back to work to find it.  Affronted by his insinuation that I had probably left my brain there (I know it’s not because I couldn’t find it there, either), I haughtily sniffed and told him that Human Resources said I still had time, so nyah.  I righteously stuck my tongue out, thus effectively ending the conversation.  Whether I return to work for my own good or for his remains to be seen, though I suspect that he wouldn’t be opposed to me going back sooner than later.  His motivation for this is that he thinks that I’m going to lose my mind and if I don’t go back soon, I may never get it back.  That tells me that I’ve succeeded in my ruse that I had a mind to begin with for the last five years of our marriage.  But that’s not the only secret I’ve been hiding.  Welcome to my world of guilty pleasures.

My husband had come home from work and I was my relating how cute it was when I back-danced with our daughter to the America’s Next Top Model theme song.  I held her tiny hands while she lay on her back and moved them around to the beat while bopping and singing along.  Okay, singing is a stretch.  I was making a noise sounding vaguely like the theme song.  Anyway, she thought it was funny.  With wide blue eyes, she belly laughed and squealed with delight.  Now how cute is that??

I thought he’d find it as endearing as I did.  But no.  Didn’t even crack a smile at my solo demonstration.  Apparently, he found my grooving to the ANTM theme song equally, if not more, disturbing to the fact that I watch the show.  Or maybe it was my disjointed bopping and tuneless recreation of the theme song.  It only looked crazy because it was out of context, but I got THE LOOK.  I get THE LOOK a lot.  What can I say?  I like the show for its artistic content.  I love seeing how the photo shoots are going to turn out.  It’s not as bad as some people saying that they read certain magazines for the articles.

Maybe I’m too open about my guilty pleasures and not so secret, secrets.  Of course, our daughter’s three and a half month old sense of humor is going to be on a different level as my husband.  Not in the maturity level, but in the content of what is funny.  For myself, my dignity is a small thing to sacrifice to the entertainment of our daughter.  I never claimed to have a surplus of dignity in the first place.  As for my husband, it’s his fault that he hadn’t figure out when we first started dating that I only pretended to have some sense of decorum.  My husband calls these my “quirky bits”.  Is it wrong that:

1.      I can be bought with quality milk chocolate or a double tall soy mocha?

2.      Like to microwave peanut M&M’s so that they’re all melty with chocolately yumminess inside?  (You have to be careful, because if they cook too long, burnt chocolate tastes icky.  Zap ten seconds or until you hear the first shell crack, then stir them around and do another ten seconds or so, depending on your microwave.  I have this down to a science.)

3.      Have the musical taste of a 14 year old boy

4.      Like to pour Bailey’s Irish Cream over my ice cream?

5.      Bypass the glass and drink my wine directly out of the bottle?  Of course, only after I’ve asked if anyone wants some.  But not always.

I think by now you get the idea that I’m full of bad habits.  But I’m sure that’s only until I get my brain back.  Maybe it went to visit the land of the missing socks.  I hope it’s only a visit.