NAILED

What an intrusive day. I had my annual checkup this morning, so was prodded, poked, scraped, smashed, and questioned. I am such a good patient. I do not flinch, leap, pass out, or whine. I do all the proper exams, I exercise and eat right, don’t really drink, no drugs, no smoke, no nothing. Goddamn, I RULE! The best part was that the doctor’s scale made me weigh 4 pounds less than home, which is UNHEARD OF. I will put up with the Pancake-ing of the Breasteses for that, oh yes.

After stopping at Starbucks for breakfast to actually break my fast because I had a blood draw, I took A Child to the dentist and then went to get my nails done. I cannot recall the last time I was in a nail shop where the technicians were not Asian. This is not a novel observation of course – the episode of Seinfeld where Mr. Constanza starts speaking Korean in the nail shop is vurrry funny. But I do wonder why it is. I always imagine that the women doing my nails were once doctors and engineers and lawyers but cannot get work in the US doing that, so they do nails. I stopped wondering what they are talking about to each other, though. I hope it is catty and funny. If I were a lawyer living in a foreign country, couldn’t speak the language, and had to pick out nasty stuff from women’s toes all day to make a living, I would really need to just slam on clients in incomprehensible-to-them English nonstop, pretty much. You can’t blame anyone for that.

The girl I had today was cuticle obsessed – she picked and poked and clipped them with an intensity that was impressive. I zoned out while she oiled and filed and soaked and all, until she pointed at the top of my right hand, and said with a concerned voice, “Oh! OK?” She had noticed that I had burnt my hand. I told her I was fine, and smiled. She put some lotion on my hands, gently, then got a warm white towel, clasped my hands together, wrapped the towel around them, then wrapped her hands around mine. I looked up at her, and she looked at me and said, brokenly, “I hope your hand and inside heal better,” and smiled.

Well.

She painted my nails a lovely deep pink, and waved goodbye to me as I left the shop.