I believe in color therapy, by which I mean painting one’s nails not to spark joy per se, but to FORCE IT. I used to sit at my desk for hours in middle school and mix and create colors and paint my nails to match my notebooks and the inner circle of my crush’s eye. Wednesday I felt cocky, Joe playing quietly in his room, Bobbie napping, me chopping bell pepper for dinner, a clean house, Morrison and I said to ourselves and then to each other, this isn’t that hard! Why do people think this is hard? LET’S THAW SOME EMBRYOS AND HAVE TWELVE MORE CHILDREN. I make plans to work Friday, to really work. Then Thursday Joe gets sent home from school with snot and a fever and spends the rest of the day crying and pooping his pants, Friday’s plans dashed (will I ever learn to expect this? Probably not?) After they’re in bed, I go outside and scrub Joe’s firetruck underwear beneath a garden hose so hard that I bust a hole in my latex gloves. This is a right time to paint my nails, I think. I go inside and reach for a color. I’m high off the fumes before I clock the name of the polish which, of course, because what else could it be?, is Therapewter.