… requires three things:

1. Patience
   I have probably the most unsteady hands in the history of unsteady hands and can recall numerous times my nails have been uneven. Or a time I have completely forgotten to clip my pinky nail.
2. Desire
   When I used to play the violin and guitar regularly, I detested any nails at all on the ends of my fingers, so I carried around a nail clipper with me (in my violin and guitar case, especially). The feeling of my nails scratching the finger/fret board drove me batty.
3. Goggles
   An absolute must unless I want to be the next Hellen Keller. Yes, I do believe finger/toe nails have minds of their own and are out to not only blind me, but also take away my sense of hearing. Call me insane, but I swear it’s the truth.

I used to subscribe to Disney Adventures or some such and remember a section of the magazine that focused on the extraordinary but true. There was a story of a man/woman/hermaphrodite (most likely one of the former two) who collected all of his/her/its finger/toe nail clippings and stored them in a jar and displayed them in a closet. If this person weren’t featured in that magazine, he/she/it could likely be misconstrued as a serial killer because it definitely sound like something right out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre to me.

I’m not entirely sure how the above paragraph relates to the bulleted items, nor how this sentence really relates to anything - I felt inclined to share that little Disney Adventure memory I have of a possible hermaphroditic serial killer in Texas.

The weather’s been on the cold, near-freezing side in SoCal. Quite unusual since we typically face 70+degree (F) weather throughout most the year. I don’t think I could brave the colder climates in a lot of the northern and eastern contiguous states (and Alaska) and I’ve compiled a short list of reasons I would not ever manage in cold weather … or a list among many lists that proves I am a wuss:

1. Inside vs. Outside
   My body has the most difficult time adjusting to extreme temperatures. The drastic shift from extremely cold to hot-cocoa-by-the-fire hot does not bode well with my body, so much so that one time when I went skiing up in the mountains, I broke out into strange hives when we went back to the ski lodge. I blame it on the blasted temperature shift.
2. Snow
   It snowed one time in the Inland Empire, back in 2004 - I even submitted a photo to weather.com on that historical day. Actually, it has probably snowed numerous times, but in the span of time I’ve lived in the IE, it has only snowed once. Anyhow, it was enchanting waking up to a winter wonderland, but that enchantment ended when I walked out into the blistering cold and nearly lost all feeling in my fingers. Imagine the horror I felt if my fingers couldn’t fing!
3. I have horrible hat/scarf head.
   It’s a simple truth. Put a scarf on my head and I either resemble a teletubby or the spawn of Satan - but those two are one and the same. I briefly remember sharing my scarf-head dilemma this to a woman at the customer service counter at Kohls and she said her daughter had the same issue with scarves, save for the bit about the whole spawn-of-Satan thing.