I’ve started painting my nails.
Which is to say, I’ve kept my fingernails painted for two whole weeks! Two! I very rairly paint my fingernails (black for Halloween, that is it) and I haven’t painted my toenails in at least a decade*.
Polish on my toenails feels horrible. Polish on my fingernails feels odd, but I’m doing this in an effort to not chew my cuticles. As a life long nervous habit collector I’ve decided it is time, after nearly 3 decades on this planet, to get a grip, stop attacking my hands, and do a bit of growing up already.
The succession goes like this:
AGE:
12: start biting nails
19: stop biting nails, start chewing cuticles
20: stop chewing cuticles, start smoking
20.5: decide ugly cuticles better than lung cancer; stop smoking, back to cuticle chewing
21-26: do both intermittently off and on
26: start chewing inside of cheek
27: Sweet Jebus is that a wrinkle on my cheek? From pursing my mouth to chew the inside of my cheek? AUGHGHEHGHGHGHGH
27: chew chew chew the cuticles, try to stop biting cheek
27.5: HATE NEW WRINKLE
27.6: HATE NEW WRINKLE SO MUCH
27.8: OH MY GOB I HAVE FOREHEAD WRINKLES TOO, AUGHGHGHGHGHE
27.9: try myriad of face creams/retina A/clarisonic, nothing works. chew cuticles
28: Damn stupid wrinkles. Damn stupid ugly cuticles. Time to save for laser peel. Why am I almost 30 and still so damn poor?
28.1: Time to paint nails to stop attacking my cuticles. Decide to wait another decade for botox to see if the stuff is actually safe or if it seeps into brain and causes irreparable damage as I suspect is more likely the case. Buy stupid expensive face cream that makes my skin orange (damn vitamin C).
28.2: commence obsessive gum chewing
So far the polish has worked. I’m using a good cuticle cream, keeping things groomed, and avoiding attacking my hands. I haven’t bloodied my cuticles in days now! Yay me! Yay for adulthood and growing up and leaving the nervous habits of youth behind!
This nail polish stuff is TEH CRAP though. My nails reject all polish, whether it be OPI or Wet N Wild. Even with a base coat, 3 coats of color, and a super top coat, the stuff peels almost immediately. I think it is just my natural nail oils or something. I find I have to touch it up nearly daily, and apply glitter polish on top of the base color because that holds things together better. That said, even with 10 layers of tough polish held by glitter my nails are still weak and break and I can’t keep them long anyway since my job is labor intensive. Hell, I can hardly type with my nails past my finger tips.
I’m sure in another couple of weeks I’ll have to strip the stuff completely off and leave my nails bare again. The upkeep is retarded and it can’t be good to suffocate my nails. How do women do this? How do they keep their nails painted? The only conclusion I can come up with is that their nails don’t reject polish like mine do. And yes, I clean my nails then wipe on polish remover to remove oils before I put on the base coat, so I do read internet advice.
So that, oh internet, is my boring bit of news. Nail painting. Breaking the habit of cuticle chewing. What is new with you?
*yet ironically own about 60 bottles of nail polish. Enough to paint the entire rainbow across my ten nails. Invite me to your next slumber party, manicures on me!
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1 comment:
Just to be a contrarian, your nails might be rejecting the poish because they're too dry. That's the problem with my fingernails when I add polish. My hands are in water and messes and so much that my nails are chronically dry. (I explained this to the last idiot to give me a manicure and she said, "No, that can't be the problem," and swiped the remover across my nails and sure enough, the polish was rippling and wrinkling a couple of hours later. I should have gone back and demanded a free re-do, but I didn't want to deal with her again, so I contented myself with just telling everyone I knew to not go to her.)
If dry nails is an issue (and the cuticles suggest it might be) all of that extra oil-removing stuff may be adding to the problem. Instead, try this: get some OPI avocado oil and rub it into your clean fingernails the next time you give yourself a manicure. Let it hang out there for several minutes, then wipe it off with some kleenex. Get the majority of it off your fingernails, they shouldn't be greasy when you've finished wiping them off. Then apply a good basecoat, color and a strong topcoat. The polish should stay better
I learned this from an esthetician at one of the top salon/spas in North America, when I told her about my dryness problem, and I've never had an issue since (except for with stupid people, see above, re: idiot). So perhaps it will work for you.
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