When You Know You’re Being Had By The Nail Lady
And You Just Let It Happen Anyway
I’m not the kind of woman who spends too much time pampering herself. Like, the last time I had a massage was at the spa at the Westin Hotel in Maui. In 2003. It’s not that I don’t enjoy massages and such, I do. It’s just that, since my divorce over a decade ago, I rarely have on hand the kind of disposable income that allows me to splurge much on self-indulgent luxuries.
I was fine swapping $180 cut and color salon visits for box dye and Floyd’s, but the one thing I couldn’t forgo, though, were pedicures.
I’m not talking about fancy, hot towels infused with lavender wrapped around your aching calves as your feet soak in a hammered copper basin of perfectly temperate water strewn with rose petals kind of pedicure. I’m talking about your basic strip mall nail joint where clients sit in the equivalent of glorified desk chairs as your feet soak in a plastic wrapped tub of water that’s either too hot or too cold, but you don’t care because the end result is the same and the foot massage is often on par with the fancy nail spa and it’s only seventeen bucks and, even after a twenty percent tip, you still have money left over for a latte.
I’m on my feet for ten hours a day walking dogs, so having my feet pampered once a month or so, is heavenly. Nothing better than a Sunday morning pedicure that includes a Starbucks dark roast, the L.A. Times crossword, and whatever gossip rags the nail salon has lying around.
Unfortunately, the pandemic effectively put the kibosh on having my tootsies tickled as the majority of personal services were shut down for months on end, which meant I’d have to be the one to clip and file my toe nails. Me.
I don’t know about you, but contorting my body to reach my toes is no easy feat for this middle-aged woman. My lower back has not much give in certain positions and my boobs inevitably get in the way. I gotta work around them in order to access my toes.
If I trim my toenails in a standing position with one leg bent at the knee on say, a chair, I gotta work around that knee and my boobs, and I gotta be quick about it, because inevitably, my belly will completely cut off my air flow. I’ve got to take periodic stretch breaks from the clipping and filing so I don’t pass out. And forget about doing my cuticles. I don’t have that kind of stamina.
My abysmally mismanaged toes ruined several pairs of socks due to my big toe’s nails poking through and my jagged little toenail edges tore a hole in one of my flat sheets. Once the personal services sector reopened for business, all I had to do was carve out some time, which, some how, I never seemed to have.
One afternoon, as I was walking a Labrador retriever, I could feel my left big toe pushing aggressively against the tip of my sneaker, and I was like, okay, it’s time for professional intervention. ASAP.
It was half past 5 by the time I finished the walk, so it’d be after 6 by the time I got back to the Valley, but come hell or high water, I was getting a pedicure. I texted my daughter. You’re on your own for dinner. I have an important matter to attend to. I did a quick Google search. The nail place down the street from my house was open until 7:30. I got this.
I made it back to Burbank by 6:45. I drove by the salon. I could see there was only one customer in there. Fantastic. I waltzed in. A woman motioned me to one of those electric spa chairs. “Pick a color,” she instructed. I didn’t want a color. “Oh, this will be easy,” she replied, to no one in particular.
I grabbed an Us magazine and a People and settled in and soaked. She worked at quite a brisk pace, clipping and filing. Then she asked if I wanted my callouses removed for “ten dollars more, so it will be forty dollars.” Forty dollars for a no nonsense pedicure?
I looked her right in the eye. “Are my feet that bad?” She looked right back at me and nodded, tersely. A seconds long standoff ensued. I knew she knew that I knew that she knew my callouses did not need extra TLC. This was some B.S. My toes were the issue, not my heels, but, since it’d been almost two years since my last pedicure, I caved.
And you know what that extra ten dollar treatment got me? A slapdash of lotion on the bottom of each foot, a half-assed pumice scrub, and a cursory rinse. The whole procedure took about two minutes. Ten bucks for two minutes. What a sucker I am.
Any pedicure I’ve ever had typically lasts for as long as it takes me to get through two People magazines and one Us. This forty dollar pedicure was over and done with by the time I finished the Us. So much for the People. I still can’t believe I paid forty bucks for a twenty minute so-so service that didn’t even include polishing my nails.
Yeah, well, just wait ‘til they see my Yelp review.
Next time I need my toes did, I’m making an appointment at the nail spa that has the hot towels infused with lavender. They’ve got a pedicure option that includes an extended reflexology foot massage and a Dead Sea salt scrub. It’s their most expensive package. Wanna know the best part? It’s only forty dollars.
