Let this be the first blog.  And let it be about nail polish.  And also let it be about seven year old daughters that use your phone all day to make videos of themselves and play games so that when you go to take a picture of your ten day old manicure and the polish that you love, your phone dies.  I am charging it now, and I will upload that pic in a minute.  Or a few hours, after I get these kids down for the night.

The nail polish is called Smith and Cult.  It was created by the same lady that created that cool nail polish from the 90’s called Hard Candy that came in all the crazy colors and was so expensive and so out of my reach at the time due to not having things like internet shopping.  It is amazing.

Do anyone else’s kids hijack their iPhone and video themselves all day?  I have like 10 videos, just from today, that are like fifteen minutes each, of my daughter singing, dancing, playing games, you name it.  And nothing will come of the videos, they just sit there and eat up memory or gigabits or whatever.  It would probably take me an entire weekend to go through and delete all of her videos from my phone.  And I would suffer an extreme FOMO attack most likely.  I have literally lost control of my phone.  And now days, that is like losing control of you life.  hmmm….

Back to the nail polish, which doesn’t even seem that important anymore.  So, first of all, I don’t have the time to polish my nails.  If I do polish my nails, which is maybe once a year,  then when it starts to chip in one or two days, I remember why I don’t ever do it and I simply stare at my hands for the next couple weeks while I sit at my desk or in court or in traffic and get pissed about how trashy those chipped nails look.  For  years, I would go and get my nails done with the gel polish at the salons.  I loved that stuff because it lasted like six weeks without any chipping.  I could hand wash dishes, bathe my kids, and keep a perfect manicure.  It was fun to have wild or even tame colors on my fingers, plus, it made me look like I am one of those ladies that really has her shit together.  You know who I am talking about.  Her hair is fabulous, her clothes are always on the cutting edge of fashion and when she objects to exhibits with a jazz hand held out her nails have a certain classy flair that says, “Objection Sustained.”  But really, the gel nail polish seems almost scary, the way you have to bake it on under tanning lights…just doesn’t seem necessarily healthy.  Plus, every time I went to the nail salon, it was $40.  And I went every four to six weeks.  Sometimes I added a $50 pedicure.  Then, I discovered gluing eyelash extensions onto each and every eyelash, which is totally safe and normal, and something had to give.  Bye bye gel nail polish.

So lets be blunt.  If I am going to take on painting my own nails, then I must have a polish that will last at least a week without chipping.  It has to be strong enough to survive peeling stickers off of things, opening plastic LPS toy boxes, soapy hot dishwater, opening various cans of IPA and La Croix  (I am not perfect ALL of the time), keyboard typing, peeling that plastic off the back of pill packets, stuff like that.  Smith and Cult has not chipped for ten days now and has withstood all of this.  I am smitten and just wanted to share the wealth with you.

Recently my husband and I have had a “come to Jesus” moment where we determined that we have been spending more than we should, and need to pay off some good old credit card debt.  Welcome to life with a bankruptcy attorney.  I LOVE budgeting, it really is a passion of mine, I do it for a living.  I can whip out a budget for my family in no time at all, and it is LEGIT.  Even still I have such a hard time following my own advice.  I love buying stuff.  I am not always so proud of that, but it is the truth.  I want to simplify my life, be less of a consumer, not wear a bra or shave my pits while I grow veggies and raise chickens, and then BAM, I’ve bought seven new bras at $50 a pop and twelve new pairs of pajamas on my new Vicky’s Secret card with a 10% discount for opening it and I NEEDED every single bit of it.  But that is a different blog post altogether.  The reason this is even being brought up now is that it is a darn good thing I bought all of this Smith and Cult nail polish before my husband and I had this familial financial bomb of a moment, because it led to a very strict budget in the Johnson household over the next several months.  No more lavish nail polish spending, no more fresh new underwear. Ima be painting my own nails for a while.

And so now, the kids are asleep…for the time being…and it is 10pm.  I don’t even hear Game of Thrones drifting down the hall from the master suite anymore.  Must be time to upload this picture of my nails and then paint them a new color.  Or just go to sleep.