Prissy Hissy

My grandma has always told me that I have nice hands, and that I should enjoy them before my veins get ropy and liverspots appear. To this day, anytime I see my grandma, she grabs my hands. So, painting my nails has been a priority that transcends aesthetics, but means more to me, almost like a responsibility to enjoy what others no longer have. That being said, I have a peeve about women who have these chipped, have-eaten nail polish jobs that they don’t take care of. I’m a purist; they are either all painted or all unpainted, as the occasion may call for. But I’m also a workin woman; I don’t have a lot of time to donate to this endeavor. This has lead to me spending an extraordinary amount of money on high-end nail products, such as OPI. It’s good polish that you can only find in certain boutiques (Sally’s isn’t one of them). What I like is that you can spend an hour painting your nails on Sunday and not have to worry about chips and such for at least the next 5 days. And though I’m reticent to admit this, there are two main problems w/this polish:

1.) Freakin’ expensive. At $7.00 per bottle, you buy 4 colors and you’re in about thirty dollars. Being that I’m a woman with ever-changing tastes, I’ve got to have ‘round about 30-40 colors in my collection, which brings my tab up b/w $250-$300, and that’s w/me restraining myself
2.) OPI has a very stylized bottle, and through marketing or tradition, the biggest problem w/these bottles is that they often get stuck shut. You can try warm water and coating the outside w/remover, but my favored method is to sternly throw them on a hard surface (ground) in order to wedge those puppies open

When I first got to my apt, the time came to paint my nails, and the requisite “I can’t get this open!” issue reared its ugly head. Not wanting to piss of the downstairs neighbors, I went out to the CEMENT balcony in order to lightly, but firmly, throw the bottle down in order to open and apply it to my nude, awaiting nails. But something went wrong. A brand new set of physical laws presented themselves, and I must have used a little too much vigor and ended up just smashing that bottle to hell, which is something that doesn’t upset me due to no longer having that color, just that there are now shards of glass littering the floor which is encased in my screened-in balcony.

And TONIGHT, after a really shitty day at work, I STEP on a shard that I was not able to see when I originally cleaned up the debacle, causing me to slice open the ball of my foot and trapping me outside (I didn’t want to get blood on the carpet so I had to wait until it stopped.). Of course, I come from a long line of proficient clotters, so it only took about 3 minutes of pressure, but still- I need to rethink this whole time and money investment, which is why I present...

To Paint:

Or Not to Paint:

Feel free to opine.