Every spring and summer, after the warm weather hits and my feet wake up from hibernating in their cocoon of socks and Danskos, I treat myself to a pedicure. This is my latest, done earlier this month when I took advantage of a Groupon deal at my favorite salon. That’s OPI’s “Meet Me On the Star Ferry” gracing my toes. And for anyone who’s interested, that’s Mother Nature’s “Meet Me on the Dry, Scaly, Crocodile Skin Ferry” gracing my legs.

It’s only the second week of May and the snow has been gone for only a couple of weeks but this is already my second pedicure. My first one took place in mid-April, the night before we were due to leave for our trip down south and was the result of running out of time and common sense and anything remotely resembling good decision making skills. I’d like to lump it all under the guise of trying to be spontaneous but those who know me best know that the last time I was spontaneous, I was an embryo.

That first pedicure took place at a local salon that I had not visited before and will never visit again. I do not know why I stayed for the full pedicure. I’d like to say that I was simply trying to be polite and not cause a scene because that’s how I roll but those same people who know me best would collapse to the floor in a fit of hysterical laughter.

My first inkling  that perhaps the pedicure wasn’t meant to be was when I pulled into the parking lot at 7:05 p.m., on a whim, only to discover they had closed five minutes prior.

My second inkling was when I tried to drive away and had to slam on the breaks to avoid killing the short, animated, Asian woman who came flying out the front door and flung her body onto my windshield while yelling YOU WANT MANICURE? PEDICURE? WE OPEN! NO DRIVE AWAY! WE OPEN! COME IN!

My first flat-out clue that all was not going to go well was when I was directed to soak my feet in lukewarm water, after which I was promptly forgotten about for almost thirty minutes.

My second was when a nail technician finally came over to work on me and she did not wear gloves, causing every germaphobic fiber of my being to break out into a cold sweat.

My first Holy shit, woman … get the hell out of here moment was when she took a pink nylon scrubby sponge thing from a drawer, used it to furiously exfoliate the sole of my left foot right down to its subcutaneous fat layer, and then touched the side and back of my foot with it, ripping off a few layers of skin on my ankle bone and heel, after which she apologized and then dunked my bleeding foot back into the water.

My second Run while you still have feet to run with moment was when she did the same exact thing to my right foot.

My final moment of overwhelming colossal stupidity for staying longer than thirty seconds in that place was when she took that pink nylon scrubby sponge thing, the same one that had come into contact with my dead skin and live blood, and quickly rinsed it in the same water my bleeding feet were soaking in and then returned it back to the drawer from which she found it.

I should have listened to my gut instinct, the one that was screaming YOU ARE A MORON. IF YOU DON’T LEAVE RIGHT NOW, YOU DESERVE TO WALK OUT OF HERE THE WALKING PERSONIFICATION OF A STAPH INFECTION. WHEN YOU DIE OF MRSA WITHIN A WEEK, DON’T COME CRYING TO ME.

I have no idea why I didn’t follow my instincts and rip that nail technician up one side and down the other before getting the hell out of Dodge. None whatsoever. It’s so completely, totally and utterly unlike me not to make an enormous stink about something like this. This will come back to bite me in the ass the next time time I yell at my kids because they didn’t take the laundry upstairs the seventeenth time I asked them to. Oh sure. You get mad at your own flesh and blood over some stupid underwear but you’ll let a complete stranger practically skin you alive and not say a word. What kind of mom are you?

Have you ever had a bad experience at a salon? How did you handle it?

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Who knows what color analysis is?

If you answered It’s the process of finding colors of clothing and makeup to best suit a person’s natural complexion, you drop-dead gorgeous blogger, you’re right! And darned observant to boot! Congratulations!

If you said It’s the analysis of color, duh, you’re my mouthy sarcastic teenager! Congratulations! Now go clean your room.

A couple of months ago I won a free color analysis from A New Hue on Facebook and I did what I always do when I win something which is to holler OH MY GOD, I WON SOMETHING! I NEVER WIN ANYTHING! And then I immediately forget all about whatever it is that I won and instead, I go buy lottery tickets for the next two weeks straight and never win a cent and then I do what I always do whenever I don’t win the lottery which is to holler LIFE SUCKS! I NEVER WIN ANYTHING! And then I cry like a baby and resign myself to the fact that we will never, ever, ever afford hardwoods throughout our house and somehow that leads to my decision that grocery shopping and laundry and general housekeeping isn’t worth doing whatsoever if we’re stuck with rugs that always look like shit and then we wind up living in squalor with filthy, stained carpets for the next few months until I get over myself.

God, winning stuff is just so mentally exhausting. I try not to do it very often.

Julie Allen, owner of A New Hue, contacted me and we set up an appointment to get my colors done and I asked her if she had time for sad story and before she could run screaming for the hills, I told her that the last time I had my colors done was almost twenty-five years ago when I wound up chasing a 300 pound shoplifting heifer around the mall and through the parking lot and I testified at her trial and for my trouble, the store owner offered me a free color analysis and a kelp shake. OHMYGODTHANKYOUSOMUCH. As a twenty-year old single woman at the time, it was a tremendous relief to know that if I wanted to look my best when I was gunned down in a drive-by shooting by a herd of pissed-off heifer cousins, I should wear a deep, rich, jewel toned blouse to bring out the luster of my dead skin and that the scarlet blood oozing from my gaping head wound would coordinate nicely with the bright yellow police tape.

Then I told Julie that I vomited up the kelp shake in the parking lot and ruined my favorite shoes and this pretty much traumatized me for life and for the next quarter century, I wore either black or white tops only and, starting in my forties, paired them with my faded, old, stretched out, aqua-colored yoga pants from the eighties that I now wear almost daily around the house, the same ones I happened to be wearing right at that moment, as a matter of fact!

Julie said something about mine being a very sad story indeed and then she told me that both of her toilets had stopped working that morning. That made me put things in perspective so I stopped feeling sorry for myself, threw my fashioned challenged ass in the car and drove it to her shop. I decided not to stuff it into my faded, old, stretched out, aqua-colored yoga pants beforehand because honestly, two backed-up toilets was already more suffering than any one human should endure.

Twenty-five years ago, the color consultant threw a few swatches of material on me and called it a day. The whole thing lasted about ten minutes, just long enough to confirm that I was young, single and hot and could not possibly have cared less about what color I was wearing so long as it was short, looked good with hooker heels and scored me free drinks.

Now I’m almost 44, married and ten degrees below tepid and the last time I got a free drink was when I budged the little kid out of the way to get the last orange juice sample from Wegmans. I can fully appreciate the benefits of a comprehensive color analysis now because with age comes wisdom. And bipolar skin that doesn’t know what the hell it’s supposed to do anymore other than hang out on my skeleton, pucker and try to keep my bones from falling out of my body and making a mess on the floor.

Color analysis has come a long way in the last twenty-five years. The photo above shows all the color swatches Julie tried on me. Between those and the makeup consultation, I was in her shop for over an hour. That’s sixty minutes of attention paid solely to me. That’s about fifty-nine more minutes than I’m used to.

If I look a little nervous here, it’s only because Julie had just finished telling me that this color made me look as if menopause had crawled up my neck and was busy making out with my face.

Julie tells it like it is!

In fact, she’s probably telling me to shut the hell up at the moment.

She’s spunky!

For someone who wears black and/or white 99.99% of the time, I was quite surprised by how much a little color around my face could completely change my whole outlook on life. Julie would drape a little olive green on me and I’d be all LET’S GO SKYDIVING! A splash of deep purple and I was all LET’S TAKE STRIPPER POLE LESSONS! A touch of cobalt blue and suddenly, I was all HELL YEAH, PORK CHOPS DON’T SUCK ASS! BET I CAN FINALLY COOK ONE THAT WON’T SUCK EVERY DROP OF SPIT OUT OF YOUR MOUTH! WHO’S WITH  ME?

That last photo? I was telling Julie that the red made me want to go Lady GaGa everywhere and belt out Born This Way atop her table and Julie was closing her eyes and probably wondering why she ever had a Facebook contest in the first place.

I have that effect on people.

It’s a gift, really.

OH MY GOD, GUESS WHAT?

According to Julie’s color analysis chart, I’m actually warm and muted and soft!

Not frigid and loud and hard as nails, like everyone,Nate some have suspected all these years.

Julie also developed her own makeup line for her business, including foundation, eyeshadow, mascara, blush, lipstick and this eyebrow wax pencil thing that I think was made out of unicorn dung and I mean that in a good way. That thing worked like magic.

She took quite a bit of time with me, patiently showing me how to apply foundation and eyeshadow and blush, explaining which colors best accentuated my features and which ones to avoid because they made me look like three day old road kill.

Surprisingly, the three day old road kill look is not as sexy as it sounds.

Although it seems to work for Russell Brand.

I walked out of my session with my own personal color booklet. In it are all the shades that look best on me.

For the record, white and black are not included in my color palette.

When Julie told me that, I had to sit down and re-evaluate my entire existence.

Then Julie offered me a donut.

For the record, donuts make even the worst news bearable.

My booklet comes in this cute little zippered pouch. I always have it in my purse so whenever I’m shopping, I can easily whip it out and immediately determine whether a particular color will look good on me. Take it from me, this is much easier than texting a photo to Tim Gunn and asking his opinion, only to have him text me back with WHO THE HELL ARE YOU AND WHY DO YOU KEEP TEXTING ME? STOP IT.

I also walked out of there with this face which is totally different than the face I walked in with and if I had been on my game, I’d have a “before” shot to share with you but I wasn’t on my game because my game got canceled about fifteen years ago due to lack of attendance.

Just know that I liked my face when I walked out of A New Hue and it’s been a long time since I liked my face with my eyes open.

In addition to makeup and color analysis, Julie also offers accessories like earrings, scarves, necklaces and pashminas.

Did you ever watch that episode of Friends where Rachel’s sister visits? The one where she goes shopping against Rachel’s advice and Ross tries to cover for her and takes responsibility for buying a pashmina? And Rachel calls him on it and asks Ross what a pashmina is? And Ross says it’s a rug and everyone is super skinny except Phoebe and Joey is a man whore?

Everything I ever needed to know about life I learned in kindergarten or on Friends.

This is Julie, owner of A New Hue. She’s funny and smart and knows her stuff. In a little over an hour, she made me laugh and feel comfortable in my own skin and convinced me that I was actually worthy of a little personal attention, a concept that often falls to the wayside and very nearly topples off a cliff when you’re a mom.

And as of last week, these are hanging in my closet! And by hanging in my closet, I mean they’re on my dresser because I’m lazy. I’ll hang them up when I get a minute, which should be right around the time the current season of Real Housewives of Orange County wraps up and I can drag myself off the couch and away from the TV without worrying that I missed some spectacular, skankified, botoxed, boobed-out smackdown extravaganza that everyone will be talking about on Twitter under the hashtag #AndyMissesAllTheGoodShit.

I used my handy dandy personal color swatch booklet to buy these shirts! And it’s been a whole week and I haven’t yet returned them! And just yesterday I cut the tags off of them! And best of all, they make me look alive and healthy and not so much like a perimenopausal vampire!

Thanks, Julie! You are totally responsible for my enthusiastic overindulgence with the exclamation point today!

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I have a To-Do list so long I could probably hang the moon as a Christmas ornament from the earth with it. Up until yesterday, Get Eyebrows Threaded was at #31 but then I glanced in the mirror and was surprised to discover that a pair of stark white caterpillars had set up house on my forehead when I wasn’t looking.

Get Eyebrows Threaded has now moved up to #1, followed by #2: Now dye those suckers brown before people start asking you if you’re a natural albino.

I leave you with a post I wrote last year when I first started getting my eyebrows threaded and discovered a whole new world of face deforestation.

Happy Sunday, everyone!

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I had my eyebrows threaded.

It’s the closest I’ve come to sewing since 8th grade home economics.

(originally published on November 10, 2009)

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On the very long list of things that bother me about my body, I’d say my eyebrows probably rank at #17, ahead of my gnarly knuckles which are so big, you can see them from space even without binoculars, but behind my thighs which, while ugly, are at least useful in a HEY, MOM, CAN YOU RUB YOUR THIGHS TOGETHER? WE WANT TO ROAST MARSHMALLOWS AND DINGBAT HERE FORGOT THE MATCHES kind of way.

When I was young, my eyebrows were fine. Actually, I could insert any number of body parts in that sentence and it would still ring true. Even if I italicized the “fine” so as to give each body part that nice OOOOOOOH, BABY, THAT’S SMOKIN’ HOT factor.

Something happened after I turned forty. Everything that was once smoking hot on me just went up in flames. Some smoldered for years prior, like my waist which ran away from home after my first baby and never once sent a postcard to let me know it was alive and living in sin with my thick, glossy hair, and others spontaneously exploded, like my skin which was once smooth and clear and then seemingly overnight, turned into crepe paper.

Over the past several years, my eyebrows have become bipolar. Sometimes they’re calm and rational and sometimes they’re completely manic, as if they just swallowed a bottle of tobasco sauce. More often than not, they’re unpredictable and unruly, just like my children. And no matter what I do to them or how much I scream at them or pluck them or tweeze them or wax them or yank them up by their ankles and try to shake the piss and vinegar out of them, they ignore me.

Are we talking about my eyebrows? Or my children? I forget. Did I mention that my mind was one of the first things to skedaddle when I hit the big 40? Actually, it might have been a lot earlier than that. I can’t remember because my memory ran away right around the same time.

So anyway, I decided that I would get them threaded.

We’re definitely talking about my eyebrows now, not my kids! I think.

Eyebrow threading is a hair removal method that simply uses cotton thread to remove unwanted hair. The thread is twisted and rolled along the surface of the skin, entwining the hair and yanking it from its follicles.

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Did you feel that?

That was the gale force wind caused by the men fleeing my blog. All four of them.

Eyebrow threading is popular in large cities like New York City and Los Angeles but I live about three miles north of the middle of nowhere so when I called around for an appointment, I was met with a variety of responses, including: (1) Eyebrow what? Why? Did they fall off?; (2) We don’t have sewing machines here. Is that even legal, what you’re asking?; and my favorite, (3) I think JoAnn Fabrics does it. And you can use their 40% off coupon!

I think eyebrow threading originated in India and the Middle East, but I’m not sure. I’d google it for you but I’m hesitant to set a precedent like that because what’s going to happen if you come to expect that kind of effort from me? I’ll tell you what’ll happen. Everything will go smoothly for awhile and you’ll start thinking I’m one of those really smart people and then you’ll begin to actually depend on me and my plethora of knowledge. Until the day comes when I reveal my true identity as a Google moron and supply you with inaccurate information. So instead of learning how to duct tape a hem and staple on a button so you can get your daughter ready for prom, you’ll unwittingly learn how to hot wire your neighbor’s 1973 Corvette and next thing you know, you’re living in prison, married to some large boned woman named Pete.

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Welcome back, testosteronies! You heard me type 1973 Corvette out loud, right? And there was that faintly whispered implication of women engaging in lesbian sex. Am I right? What is it about owning a y chromosome that makes you so predictable?

So as to avoid the entire prison debacle, I’m going to ignore Google entirely and instead, show you this video where you can be mesmerized by all sorts of threading, including eyebrow, chin and neck:

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That was the sound of testosterone, passing out.

See? Predictable.

Good thing men don’t have babies. We’d simply be a world full of old people.

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This is my “before” picture. See what I mean?? Unruly. Disheveled. Whackadoodle-ish. All over the place. Schizoid. Freaky.

I’m talking about my eyebrows, not my myopic eyes or my blotchy skin or the appalling lack of anything remotely resembling foundation, concealer or mascara.

Just in case there was any confusion.

Let’s deal with one catastrophe at a time, shall we?

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This is about twenty minutes post-op. The redness faded after about an hour. Unfortunately, the myopic eyes and blotchy skin and appalling lack of anything remotely resembling foundation, concealer or mascara still remain. Even now, eight hours later. Listen, I can only deal with change, no matter how infinitesimal, in microscopic increments, OK?

I can’t really say that it hurt. It depends on your threshold of pain. I happen to have a high threshold of pain. Then again, I’ve lived through the eighties, the breakup of Journey, Cop Rock, two c-sections and three perms, not to mention the fact that I’m currently raising two daughters, one of whom is learning fourth grade math and the other of whom is busy being a teenager. With hormones. Add my mom into the mix and I’m pretty sure you could shoot me at point blank range with a canon and I wouldn’t flinch.

It was a little uncomfortable and kind of felt like I was repeatedly stuffing my eyebrow into a miniature electrical socket with a fork. A little sting, a little twinge. A little yank, a little pull. Up and down. Back and forth. Yank and pull. Up and down. Back and forth.

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Sorry, guys. We’re still talking about eyebrow threading.

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That’s what I thought.

I would definitely do it again. It only took five minutes and if I’m going to pay someone to deforest the northern hemisphere of my face, I much prefer to pay for five minutes of mild discomfort with good results than five minutes of HOLY BALLS OF SATAN hell with mediocre results from having hot melted wax smeared on my eyebrows so that they, together with the first two layers of my epidermis, could be ripped off my face in two inch strips.

The eyebrow threading cost me $12 plus tip which, from what I understand, is a little pricey for this service but when you live in East Bumble and count cows as your closest confidants, you take what you can get.

Now, I should clarify … I don’t think this method of hair removal is recommended for regions south of the border. This is where Google can be your friend. Not mine. Don’t entrust the grooming of your lady garden to me and my Google skills because you could wind up with a roller rink or a chia pet down there. If my fingers are feeling particularly dyslexic, you could also find yourself installing a home theater system in your powder room, complete with a 120 foot high definition TV, a pizza oven and a beer fountain.

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Just like clockwork, I swear.

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