Blackened Toenail

I almost painted my toenails last weekend. I think I tweezed my eyebrows instead, or watched a movie. Or something like that... The point is, had I painted my toenails, and assuming that I had not hated the result and promptly removed said polish, I would have missed seeing my left pinky toenail turn black. No, I don't have some sort of strange occlusive vascular disease. I'm just a klutz, and the battle of Brenna vs. Wal-Mart shopping cart didn't go my way.

Remember being a kid, and wanting to push the shopping cart, so that you could give it a good shove and then stand on the bottom shelf part, turning grocery shopping into an X-treme sport? Okay, I admit that I do that now, probably more often than I did as a child - there is no mom to say "Brenna!" in her exasperated voice (I heard that a lot when I was younger...still do, actually...) to prevent me from Xtreme shopping. (That wasn't what I did today, by the way - I was just a klutz.)

My bike offered me a little more freedon, because Mom didn't tend to be there when I was zipping around the neighborhood on my hot pink Schwinn.

I am house-sitting this week, which means that I'm in a real live neighborhood, with real live families and kids. With real live bikes. I saw several kids out zinnping around on their bikes today, and I really wanted to join them. Seriously, is there anything like being a kid on a bike? Such freedom and joy. Hills are never as exciting as they are when you are going down as fast as you can on your bike with your hands in the air. Or standing on the girly-bar of the frame. Or with your feet on the handlebars. Yes, of course, I did all of these things at one point or another. And, miracle of miracles, I never hurt myself. (Incidentally, the only time I did hurt myself on my bike was on level ground, with hands on handles and feet on pedals. I ran into a parked van...)

Unlike the Xtreme grocery shopping, though, these are things that I have not done for years! These are actually things that I think I'd be too scared to do now. With or without the exasperated mother.

I hate to feel that I'm growing up - I pride myself even, on certain aspects of my immaturity. Apparently, I've gotten old enough to learn fear, though. Or perhaps just a healthy respect for life-threatening activities.