Diary #514

On December 2^nd, 1996, I got my nails done professionally for the first time; since then I’ve had them done every three weeks, four at the outside during disasters like Hurricane Katrina.  It has always been something I’ve done religiously, as the visible sign of a covenant with myself.  I’ve always had a tendency to deny myself things my inner nun pronounced “frivolous”, and having my nails done regularly served as a clear refutation of that kind of puritanism, a reminder that self-care is important even when authoritarians declare such hygiene “non-essential”.  So those of you who aren’t blinded by puritanism can probably guess how frustrating April was for me; not only had my nails grown ugly and too long to be practical, they were also starting to lift and break.  And when one is used to nails of a certain length, a broken nail can make that finger so clumsy it’s almost unusable.  But last week I mentioned my irritation to my friend Winnie, and she told me that she knew how to do them and would be happy to do mine.  So yesterday I went to her place and, in the course of a lovely visit, got my fingers back looking like something to be found on a civilized woman’s hands.  Maybe in three weeks I’ll be able to get them done professionally again, and maybe I’ll need to ask Winnie again.  But in either case, it’s good to wrest a little more control over my life back from people I wouldn’t trust to manage my henhouse, much less the affairs of an entire state.