Saturday I went to get a pedicure. I had my Fourth Wedding Of Five that evening and I thought I’d try to get a little more spruced up than usual. I figured I’d had a tough-ish week and that I deserved some sort of a treat, right. When “some sort of treat” for me became “getting a pedicure” is unclear to me.
I spent a huge (to me) sum on The Spa Pedicure, which is when the tiny exquisite pedicurist sits you in front of a foot bath and dips your feet in and out of the water and rubs things on your monstrous cankles and wraps your gigantic feet…it’s like I have paint cans attached to flippers over here instead of actual legs…in plastic wrap and heated booties, and you read about Britney’s engagement which you don’t find all that enjoyable even in a train-wrecky way. You pick out a nail color called Kinki In Helsinki but even that can’t distract you from the fact that you’re paying actual money to have a stranger push back your cuticles and stroke varnish on your toenails. Money that you could have put toward the double rent you’re paying this month, or toward your Amazon wish list, or towards an over-the-toilet thing to hold all your bathroom crap in your new bathroom, or a massage, or your student loans, or a fantastic brunch at Macrina?
I feel a little gypped here. I’ve now had three pedicures in my life, all within the last two years, and while the first, which took place at this lovely locale was wonderful and took something like eight hours and was conducted in a lovely armchair with really good magazines and several of my friends nearby, the second and third have really not lived up to those standards. My second pedicure was over Christmas, when I was home in Miami, and was at this scary empty outdoor mall pedicure place where the pedicurist talked to me for hours about her personal life, and shared with me her dreams for her wedding. (The theme will be “butterflies” and she’s already bought some of the favors for it even though she is not engaged). And, to dry my polish? She picked up my foot and blew on my toes. With her mouth. (Manya is reading this right now and screaming aloud at the thought, as are all people with any sense of decorum, which group clearly does not include me as I didn’t instantly demand my money back as well as all the brain space now dedicated to her future wedding plans but instead just stared at her dumbfounded while she did this to not one but both of my flipper-feet).
So you can see there’s quite a range, in terms of Varying Quality Of My Pedicure Experiences. This one was in the middle, I guess. My toes came out fine. Kinki In Helsinki is a little too eighties’ magenta for me but there is no way I’m going to take it off after all the money I paid. I am just going to have to wait until it chips off all trashy-like and then go back to my usual hastily and sloppily self-applied silver or sparkly pink or whatever’s in my medicine cabinet. I am wearing sandals today and am sort of freaking myself out every time I look down, and there they are! Kinki in Helsinki! Otherwise known as Eighties Magenta! Which maybe counts as kinky for some people in Iceland! Tomorrow I am going to wear closed toe shoes and look forward to the time where I spend my money not on “treating myself” but on things that are actually good.