Tuesday, June 28, 2011

My Life In Nail Polish

First a brief history:

The Egyptians used nail color to signify social order with Red being worn only by royalty and pastels by women in lesser social circles.  The Chou Dynasty chose gold and silver in 600 BC.  The Incas decorated their fingernails with pictures of eagles…..As for me.  Currently it is Essie Plumberry with a discoball overlay because I’m not allowed to wear Stepford Wife pink anymore.


My friend Julie and I have a bit of a sickness about nail polish.  For me I don’t know if it is the creative play on words or the tiny bottles filled with candy colored liquid that I like most.  At times just looking at the display makes my heart grow three sizes like the Grinch at Christmas.  It also makes me wonder what this obsession is with the myriad of colors that I wear on my fingernails.  Here is a bit of a surprising fact.  The primary ingredient in nail polish is nitrocellulose cotton.  This flammable and explosive ingredient is also used in making dynamite.
I had to think about that for a bit.  Basically I’m walking around with the equivalent of a bad Looney Tunes cartoon in the making on my fingers.  But I think they are pretty so I continue to buy bottles of nitrocellulose and plasticizer mixed the pigment.   Yes I know the truth will never catch on. 
What does catch on for me are the painstaking hours of mixing the perfect red or the most soothing of pink.  Even after that more hours of coming up with the perfect name, Like Susie Loves Cowboys or I’m Not Really a Waitress.  By the way the people at OPI are amazing.  It doesn’t stop there though.  They have to make girls like me want to buy that perfect red or most soothing pink. 
We sell ourselves every day in packages of our own construction.  Lately mine has been pretty shitty as I have tried to move from one life to another.  I’m ready to end this phase and move on to something more suited for me.
 I’ve never been one to plan for a future.  Yes I have always wanted to know what happens, but plan something?  Dear God I don’t know where I am going to be in 5 hours let alone 5 years, but for the first time ever I know what I want and I’m making a path to get there.  It is part of my perfect red

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