Goodbye nail biting, hello manicures

Hi, my name is Christine, and I'm a nail biter. I have been for almost my entire life. I know it's a bad habit, but I just can't help myself. I've gone through brief periods of non-nail biting. All of those happened sometime between college and having children. I tried to stop biting my nails after college and was relatively successful. I even got manicures! When I got married, my nails were short and a little raggedy. I should have gotten them cleaned up with a neutral polish, but what did I do? I got fake nails. I got swept up in the idea that I needed long nails to get married as if it were in the wedding vows. Have you ever seen someone go from a nail biter to long, fake nails? I could barely hold a coffee mug. I was dropping things all over the place. We had our honeymoon at a warm beach resort where my fake nails promptly turned yellow. I had them removed when I got back home and that was the end of a nail era. Recently, I told myself I'd get a manicure if I stopped biting my nails. It was a tough challenge. I'd be doing great then (bite, bite) "Noooo!" I would bite a nail off and suddenly realize that's exactly the thing I was not supposed to be doing. This happened quite a bit for the first couple of days. (Bite, bite, "Nooo!") Finally, I'd gone over two weeks without biting my nails. Today was the day. I thought it would be fun if Lilia went with me and we could also check that off as a new adventure. Thanks to Grandma, Lilia has gotten a mani-pedi before, but we've never gone together. When I asked her this morning she was so excited she said, "I'm going to fly to the moon, then take a picture where it looks like I'm holding Earth over my head, then I'm going to e-mail you the picture!" Yes, we sometimes express excitement a little differently in this house. We walked into the nail salon this morning and I sat with Lilia while she got her "kid" manicure. I told her if she liked it she could do it again next year. (Oh yeah, I'm serious. She's seven.) She picked out a metallic polish which reminded me of her moon story. I picked out a new spring/summer polish by OPI called Live Love Carnaval. It was a cold, gray morning. I was dead set on walking out of there with something crazy bright. After our salon visit we went to a French restaurant for some caviar and, okay, we went home and had leftovers and mac and cheese. Still, we felt fun and sparkly. I'll take it. Check out the What color are your nails? post by Ups and Downs of a Yoga Mom that inspired me! To read more about The New Abides and our adventure to try one new thing, every day, for an entire year, please follow along on Facebook and Twitter. To subscribe to The New Abides, type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.