and in toenail-related news...

The second toe on my right foot—i.e., the toe next to my right foot's big toe—has been defying holy prophecy for months. That toe's nail was starting to blacken way back last year, in October. The change in shade was visibly progressing almost daily, so I predicted that the toenail would fall off by Christmas. It didn't.

It lingered.

Like John Belushi's Thing That Wouldn't Leave, my toenail clung stubbornly to its assigned toe for months, and even after it had obviously died, it still refused to fall off.

Until today.

I was working at my toenails with my heavy-duty clippers, and when I ran one blade of the clippers underneath the dead toenail, as I've done for months, the nail suddenly popped up on one side, indicating that it was finally ready to come off. Because months had passed, I knew that the dead nail was covering a new toenail. In the past, I've tried very hard not to tug dead nails off because I don't want to provoke any bleeding. Today, though, I decided to help the nail along, first by scraping under it several times with the clippers, then by pulling slowly but steadily on the nail when one end of it came loose. After about thirty seconds, the other end of the nail came loose, and the whole thing was liberated bloodlessly from my toe. The nail underneath was rough-looking, having been covered in grit and sludge and toe cheese for months—only now seeing the light of day. I'll need a few rinsing sessions at the kitchen sink to pretty the nail area up, but for the moment, it's enough to know that the worst is over.