The Fixer-Upper

If you've known me for any length of time, you know the joy I feel at discovering a wall that needs painting or a dilapidated bathroom needing new fixtures. I love taking something shabby and making it sparkle.

Today, I went to have a pedicure (darn it, Jennifer... you have ruined me for life) and as I sat in the massage chair and put my feet into the warm, swirly water, I could swear that I saw the same look of glee on the face of my pedicurist.

As she rubbed sea salt on my feet and legs, she kept glancing at my fingers dangling over the ends of the armrests, shaking her head and clucking quietly to herself. She finally looked up at me and told me, "You have manicure too!"

My hands are inherited from my father. They're big and square and not very feminine. They are mostly utilitarian. I have never had a manicure in my life. When I agreed, she took my hands in hers and examined them, still clucking. "See dead skin? No good! No more chewing thumbs-very bad. I fix!" As my feet softened inside parafin wax covered by plastic bags and booties, she attacked my hands. She pulled and pummeled and rubbed. Then she got out those funny little scissors and started on my cuticles. By the time she finished, there was a small mountain of dead cuticle on top of them, which she pointed to and said "See???" She painted my nails with clear polish before resuming the pedicure, but I had a feeling she wasn't done with me yet.

Sure enough, I felt her scrutiny again. When I got up the nerve to meet her eyes, she asked about eyebrow waxing.

I'm a natural blonde. I also don't see as well up close as I used to. I have had my eyebrows waxed once a year for the last three years, which has always been enough. I have to draw my eyebrows on everyday because you can't see them otherwise, and I usually just color in the lines of my eyebrow hair. Judging from the clown eyebrows I gave myself the other day, it was probably time to do it again, so I agreed.

Pedicure finished, she led me over to the waxing chair. First the hair under the eyebrows - RIP! It looked like she'd pulled a couple of caterpillars out of there. Then the hair over the eyebrows. More caterpillars. Did I really have eyebrows taking over my entire forehead?

Then she asked about my moustache. I have a moustache? Since I hadn't been wearing makeup for quite a while, I hadn't noticed it going on funny, but she apparently could see a fuzzy upper lip so I agreed. I never waxed my upper lip before. I think I need to come up with a new word for that particular pain.

Not to mention the emotional trauma of realizing that she wasn't just covering my upper lip with wax, but down the sides of my mouth as well. Apparently I was growing a Fu Manchu moustache.

Thanks to a lovely little asian woman, today I have manicured hands, pedicured feet, and a lot less hair on my face.

And the next time my pedicurist's face lights up with that zealous glee of fixing up a house, I may just run.