28 December 2007

Painfully Beautiful

Today, I went to the stylist for a manicure and pedicure. This was, contrary to my prior experience, quite a painful process.. First, I settled in for the pedicure. I'm used to soaking my feet in hot, soapy water, but at this place they were trying a radical new approach. I had to soak my feet in ice water with colored lights shining in it.

The part with my feet being exfoliated was particularly embarrassing, because I'm ticklish, and while this was happening my friend was telling my pedicurist about her old fiance leaving her. I managed not to laugh, though. After my feet had been properly tortured, came the manicure.

Do you know how many different ways there are for a woman to draw your blood while technically giving a manicure?

I do.

And this woman (I think her name was Psarah the Psychotic Pstylist, or psomething like that) used all of them on me. I suppose it's my own fault for allowing a super centigenarian near my skin with power tools. In case you haven't had acrylic nails applied, there's a lot of sanding involved, and although the sanding should be on fingernails, skin often becomes an innocent bystander.

The regular, old-fashioned nail file gave me the biggest cut. In order to stop the bleeding, Psarah had to apply a styptic (yes, she had it handy, so you know she's done this before) to the wound. The cut hurt. The styptic hurt more. Like, just a little less than acute appendicitis.

In the end, though, all was well. Only four of my fingers bled, only one needed medical attention, and all of my nails look pretty. Maybe too pretty. It's hard for an engineer to keep her fingernails looking good, and typing is a real challenge with nails that stick out at all, but let's see how long this lasts.

I just hope there weren't any nasty diseases on that unsterilized nail file. You can't sterilize those things.

By the way... Men, if you ever wonder why women get so upset about breaking a nail... it's because of the agony we have to go through to get it fixed. And we do it all for you.

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