Nothing makes you feel less beautiful than when....

the pedicurist gets out a sheet of newspaper and a implement normally use for shaving corns off feet because your foot skin is that thick and crackly that the only way she can actually work with your feet is to SHAVE THEM. Yeah, so incredibly hot. That's what I get for wearing flip flops everywhere.

Anyways, at the end of a long and trying day yesterday I walked up to the local nail place "Nails by Time" I'm not really sure why they're called this or what it means, but I don't fight it because the place is cheap and fairly clean. The girls who work there seem really into body things. I have been to chi chi spas in the suburbs and they flip out if there's a speck of dirt under your toenail or you have a wart or something. By going to this nail place you give up the ambience of a fancy spa, but you get the full fix-up - the girls there will take this horrible hook-like dentist-looking tool and scrape stuff out of your toenail crevices. yum. while it's not the most delightful thing in the world, you feel really clean, well once you get over the shame you feel about someone having to help you clean your feet.

I have never had to have my foot skin (which sounds dangerously like "foreskin" LOL) shaved, but the woman yesterday held up my feet, made a clicking sound, sighed and got up. I thought "Oh Jesus I know they're so dirty, but please, let her come back alone and not with have the staff so they can stare at my dirty feet." She did come back alone, but with a page torn out of the Metro. I thought "I get why she's doing that, I've made dirt stains on their towels, she's probably gonna put that under my feet instead" When she put it on the floor I was confused, and then out came the shaver. She went at my feet like she was peeling a carrot, and without mercy. All I could think was "please don't break the skin, my tetanus is out of date." She didn't though, and soon my nails were painted and lovely.

Another thing about your local nail place, and I don't say this to be a jerk, is that it's run by people usually of the asian persuasion (rhyme!) and I don't know if it's a language thing or what, but the women talk amongst themselves in Vietnamese/Chinese/insert language here and not to you, which I find to be a blessing. There's nothing worse than having to make awkward conversation while some woman is scrubbing your feet. The lady who took care of me yesterday conformed to this rule until she started my manicure. Then we launched into a long conversation about everything, where we went to school, how much money we still owed undergrad (yes the nail lady went to college!), where I live, whether or not I cook when I'm at home, how I get to work, if I go to Trader Joe's in my home town, and why I was getting a manicure and pedicure. I told her that I was going to my friends wedding. She looked up and scrutinized my face. "You want eyebrow wax?" she asked. I balked at this, having a fear of losing my eyebrows that has followed me since my middle school days when I stupidly put a bandaid on my face which inadvertantly plucked a bald spot in my eyebrow when I ripped it off. I stuttered for a moment and said "oh, do I need it?" Knowing the answer was "yes" but asking to buy time. The woman moved her head so she could compare my eyebrows and said "you really do. yeah. don't you want to look pretty at the wedding?" Jeez, I thought, if I look that busted I'd better do it. "Well ok I said, if you say I need it, then I must." She left to prepare the waxing room.

I'm not sure which was worse, the foot shaving or the excessive waxing and tweezing that this woman felt was necessary to tame the hairy beast. For the better part of a half hour, I sat in a glorified desk chair with my head tilted back so far I couldn't swallow while she waxed, waxed again, waxed a third time and then tweezed and tweezed and tweezed. The whole time I thought "there go my eyebrows" which I will admit, were never really evenly plucked or shaped anyways. I figured if she messed up and made them really thin or waxed them off, at least I'd be able to start over.

When I did finally sit up, I was shocked to see my diminished eyebrows. I like them now, and I think I will have to get used to them, but all in all I feel pretty. Actually I feel myself becoming addicted to manicures, pedicures, and eyebrow wax. Uh-oh ;)