Take time to smell the nail polish

For as long as I can remember, whenever someone asked what I liked most about myself (physically) my response has been: 1) my hair and 2) my nails.

If you ask me today, I’ll give you the same answer. For the majority of my life I’ve had long hair; however, most days now I’m rocking the mom-cut. Every few years I take the time to grow it out long just so I can chop it off to donate. Next time I just need to remember to put the cut off tail in a bag right away (note to those considering this charitable action: cats think cut off ponytails are extremely fun toys…)

I still love my hair, but… something funky happened after those crazy pregnancy hormones. I have some sort of weird ‘flip’ (because it’s not even enough to be called a curl) that happens at the end of my hair, mostly in the back. When it’s long, it shows up in the form of a wave—in one spot, on the back of my neck, trying to make people believe I didn’t brush it after I woke up. For someone who has always had stick-straight hair, this is just difficult to deal with. I stopped blow-drying my hair years ago when I had hormone induced temperature control problems, but even when I did blow-dry it the flip/wave would not go away.

I’ve just had to learn to live with the flip.

Back around the time I stopped blow-drying my hair, I stopped just about everything—I no longer use cute hair clips, headbands, or stylish ponytails (however this last one is kind of hard with a mom cut). I just wash, comb, and done. When I do get a wild hair (love the pun?) to do something cute with it, I end up feeling like it looks silly and take it out.

Now on to my nails. Thanks to my childhood friend Robyn, I have to have long nails. If one breaks and I have to cut it short, I feel like I can’t touch anything. I hate it. Kids are always pulling on them to see if they’re real. My cat loves to use them to scratch her face. I’m a permanent back-scratcher for my husband and daughter. I can open cellophane with ease, start an orange with one puncture of the nail, scrape things off objects they’re not supposed to be on.

Man, I love my nails. Except when one gets bent back or breaks… those are the not so good times to have long nails.

I used to paint them frequently. I was so good at it, they looked like professionally done fake nails. But I stopped back in the days when I was heavy into scrapbooking. You might be wondering why painted nails have anything to do with scrapbooking. You see, when I would move my hand around the pages to adhere the photos and paper, my painted nails would leave streaks of color.

The result was no more pained nails. As the years passed and I turned more to digital scrapbooking, I was so out of the habit of painting my nails that I just didn’t think about doing it. The days when I would take the time to paint them, I’d get frustrated because the paint would be chipping off by the next day. I no longer have time to keep painted nails looking nice!

Tomorrow is my daughter’s first day of third grade. She wanted fancy nails to go with her fancy outfit. Of course, she wanted mom to have fancy nails too. On Christmas, two years ago, Santa left us a Jamberry nail kit in our stockings… and it took me until today to finally use them. The process took some time—because I’d never done them before and because I was doing two sets of nails.

But my fingers sure do look pretty! They are ready to start typing the second half of that third novel after the bus rolls away tomorrow morning. If these babies can stay looking nice for at least a week, I think I’ll be a new fan for life. I even took the time to paint my toenails to match! (the color, not the design) I just hope my husband doesn’t mind that the dishes won’t get washed this week unless he does them.

Today I learned that I need to take time for me, especially on the things that I love. Now I just need to figure out how to give a little TLC back to my hair. I mean, it hasn’t gone gray yet so it deserves a little reward now and again!

So remember to take some time to smell the nail polish once in awhile (just don’t do it so often you get a buzz…)