I grew up poor, so things like getting my nails done was never something I could afford. I also figured why pay someone else to do it when I can just do my own nails? So I've gone through my entire life until today never having a manicure. For my prom or any other special event, I've generally done my own nails, except when my aunts did them sometimes when I was little.<\/p>\n
Today, I had a busy Saturday. Started out at the gym, then ran a few errands. On the way home, I decided to stop into one of the nail places nearby. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I like to do unusual things. Last year, I traveled for nearly two hours by subway, spent ten minutes awaiting an elevator that got stuck, and finally seeing my boyfriend for a grand total of about 20 minutes before I had to leave. Today, I tried a different kind of spontaneity.<\/p>\n
I walked into the place clueless about how the whole thing worked. I was told to pick a color, so I chose a dark, metallic red. No surprises there, since red is my favorite color, and I'd even been wearing red lipstick today and carrying a red bag. I sat down in front of the focused-looking young Asian woman. She asked me what shape I'd like my nails cut into, so I told her to square them off. She did that, filed, buffed, and evened them out before applying cream, a base coat, and finally, the lovely red. <\/p>\n
She applied the color in really short, careful strokes. The whole process was so intimate and definitely different from the many applications I've done. I've read to do nails in three broad strokes at a time, and that's always been my technique, but she was putting an initial drop in the center, then pushing the color very carefully out from there. I'll have to try that in the future whenever I apply my own polish again.<\/p>\n
During the application of the second coat, I looked away for a moment and nearly smacked the tip of my right middle finger into the nail of my ring finger. The manicurist gave me a sort of stern admonishment. Lo and behold, afterward, right before spending time under the dryer, I smudged the polish on my right middle finger. On my way home, I'd smudge three more. Luckily, I have a similar enough color here and I patched them up a bit.<\/p>\n
I paid her right before she applied the color, but figured I'd tip her afterward, like with waiters. I had no idea how this all worked, and after my nails were set to dry later, I couldn't find her. Oops. I unintentionally stiffed my nail girl. I still feel guilty. It was really down to my inexperience, so next time I know to tip around the same time.<\/p>\n
It's funny, how a small thing like this can feel so dramatically different. I had uneven, slightly dry nails yesterday and today, they're a glamorous red, my cuticles are down, and I simply feel prettier in some way. I'm sure the novelty has something to do with it, but I did enjoy the experience and my nails do look better than when I do the job. I think I will be doing this now and then from here on out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I grew up poor, so things like getting my nails done was never something I could afford. I also figured why pay someone else to do it when I can just do my own nails? So I've gone through my entire life until today never having a manicure. For my prom or any other special […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[150],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-manicure"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2nVuU-1q","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinagonzalez.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}