Friday, February 28, 2014

Nail Clippers


What can I say? This was an icy month. I slid all the way from the Beatles to the end of February, almost into March.

March! That's a serious gear. You got your Ides. Your Daylight Savings Time. Your red-winged blackbirds. Your Purim. Your spring.

But February did its job, built the bridge from January to March in just 28, spanning a considerable gap when you compare New Year's and the vernal equinox.

I started the day trimming my fingernails with very tiny nail clippers that seemed to lack the bite for my right thumbnail, so I put it back in the medicine chest and spent the next ten minutes searching for a bigger one, knowing there were probably ten hiding in various catch-alls around the house, not finding any, and settling again for the little weak-jawed one, which at least didn't have one of those annoying little chains that get in the way. It required an assist from a pair of blunt scissors ("Look, pal, I won't lie. You got some horny nails. I mean, I've seen toenails that were more cuttable.") but it did the job.  And I'm not saying February is like a pair of weak-jawed clippers that gets the job done, I'm just saying the metaphor is available.

Anything else to report? Red Sox lost their first Grapefruit League game to the Twins.  February delivered baseball. More snow due on Monday. That's on March's watch.

Discussed with my therapist, Jack, the gulf between my nocturnal and morning self. Concluded they need to coordinate. Morning guy glances at the ambitious to-do list penned by energetic night guy when all seemed possible, fed by some untapped well of dopamine I can only access after eleven o'clock. Sometimes he even identifies what task to do first, second, and so on. Morning guy, however, feels like reading the Boston Globe, fairly exhaustively, including the obituaries and how Jeremy Lin did for the Houston Rockets last night. Or chooses a finite but meaningful task like wiping off a drip spot in the refrigerator that's been there since the first Bush administration. Or trimming his nails, which becomes a 45-minute saga. Night guy holds no sway in this noisy, bright domain. Perhaps John Kerry can broker some kind of partnership, like the one between the clippers and the scissors.



Nail clippers, I told Jack, sounds like something I'd write a blog post about. Amd so I have.

Goodnight, February, that 28-ed.
Goodnight, nail clippers that collaborated.
Goodnight, pen that wrote this entry.
Goodnight, Night guy, standing sentry.
Goodnight, March, in half an hour.
Goodnight, snow and hoped-for flower.
Goodnight baseball, goodnight blog,
Goodnight Sid Caesar, Harold Ramis, 
and the old Groundhog,
who went back to sleep.
Smart.          

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