Nailing the Lockdown

 

This quarantine is getting tiresome.

I understand there’s a virus out there and we definitely need to be careful and my heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones but forcing people to NOT go to work and make a living can’t continue. If a food server, bartender, hairdresser, or a nail tech is working to put food on a table and to have a place to live, that’s ESSENTIAL!

And in these professions, people rely on tips. That $1,200 “bailout” isn’t going to help for long and I hear it’s next to impossible to reach the unemployment office to get something set up there.

The UNEMPLOYMENT office doesn’t EMPLOY enough people to handle the onslaught of new cases that they KNEW was coming.

Ironic, isn’t it?

And it kinda makes me wish I was a man. For the women, with most of us dining on take-out and delivery while the gray in our hair takes on a life of its own and our acrylic or gel nails grow into claws…the gym, the nail and hair salons ARE ESSENTIAL!

Oh sure…I’ve seen the social media posts from those smug “low maintenance” women who are bragging that they don’t color their hair or have “fake nails” and I say yay for you all. I’m happy for you.

But I am NOT low maintenance.

I am a LOT of work. And I NEED that work.

Right now Alex Haley is looking for me to star in his new movie, “Roots…The Gray Years.” And I COULD! My head looks like I have a pet gray squirrel riding on it. I have a gray streak that could make a silverback gorilla GREEN with envy. And my nails? Good grief!

At the beginning of this “pandemic” when we started moving toward closing the country, I went to my nail tech and we did the “natural look” or “pink and white” as they call it in the biz. That was a good move on both our parts because as the natural nail grows, a “ridge” forms between the end of the gel nail and the cuticle.

That ridge is unpainted nail and if you have color on it, there’s a huge gap in the “store-bought” nail color and your regular nail so to avoid that, I opted for the “pink and white” and it’s actually worked out quite well.

Till now.

Over the weekend, I realized my nails have grown so fast they are beginning to impede my daily activities so I got the polish out and decided to give myself a manicure and pedicure.

I now have a deep and abiding respect for nail technicians.

At the beginning of the shut down, or what I like to call “The Insanity,” I had ordered a nail kit for “natural nails.” It came with a white marker for the tips, little adhesive half-moon shaped “guides” so the white tips wouldn’t “bleed” into the pink nail bed and of course, that “natural” pink polish. The ad said I had “everything I needed for the perfect DIY nails.”

The ad lied.

I did NOT have everything I needed. What I REALLY needed was my NAIL TECH!

First of all, the white pen had to be pressed HARD to get the white polish out. If you press it as hard as you needed to, you could practically PUNCTURE your finger. And those nifty little guides? USELESS! The “half moons” turned out to be extremely sticky so as you tried to get one off and on the nail you’re working on, FIVE come off…and NEVER on your nail tips but stuck on your fingers! By the time you meticulously peel the five off your fingers and get them replaced on the backing then the white tip pen has gone dry and you have to press it and start the entire process over. Only now you have five fingers with wobbly halfmoons on them and of course the half-moons do NOT stop the white from “bleeding” into the pink polish. Which is now GLOBBED on my nails because I was trying to “fill in” that bald spot on each nail and…well…it just didn’t work out the way I envisioned it would.

Suffice it to say I will NOT be pursuing a career in a nail salon.

And that was my LEFT hand. I’m right handed so you don’t even want to KNOW about trying to do my right hand.

Or my toes. The same thing was going on there with the toe nail growing out and having that space of uncolored nail sticking out. My toes are painted in “eggplant” or a very dark purple… don’t judge…so of course the grown out part is reeeaalllly noticeable in sandals. I figured I could just slap a coat of polish on each toe and be done with it.

Nope.

With each brush full of polish, I managed to miss the nail and hit the genuine toe. I was wearing my reader glasses so I could actually SEEEE my feet but readers are for… well…reading. Not pedicures. The results were NOT pretty. Now my toes look like I gave my bottle of nail polish to a two-year-old on a sugar high and told the child to “go crazy.” And with the new coat of overlaying “eggplant” polish that somehow encompasses half my toes, my toe nails now look freakishly LONG. Or like I’ve contracted some grievous disease like gangrene and they are minutes from just falling off.

But I did teach myself a lesson…my feet are just TOO FAR away from my eyes for me to be doing home pedicures. And I never want to see a sticky half-moon “guide” again!

I’m just saying…