The Lady Is A Tramp

(the picture has nothing to do with this post; I just liked laying out lights along our walkway for Christmas)

In honor of National Toxic Housewife Day, my parents sent me some money, which I decided to use NOT at a thrift store.


Instead, I deemed it the perfect opportunity to pay homage to my girly roots by getting a pedicure.  This would work out really well, as I had a coupon for a nail salon that was just down the street from my mechanic.  Since I try to combine my errands for when I'm in the same area of town, I was very pleased to realize that this meant I could drop my car off at the mechanic's and walk over to the pedicurist's, and the car would be ready for pick-up when the pedicure was done.  Brilliant!

The only hiccup in my plan was that the pedicurist is located right on a very busy, four-lane road, and the mechanic is located across the corner of that very busy, four-lane road and another pretty busy, four-lane road.  So, despite the fact that the two business are only about 1500 feet apart, it's 1500 very busy feet.  Since no one else walks (only a vabond would walk!) down that street, a lone pedestrian becomes the focal-point for bored drivers whizzing past or sitting at the stoplight.

I didn't mind, though: there was a crosswalk, and there were sidewalks for most of the trek, and it wasn't one of those bitterly-cold winter days.  I felt, in fact, powerful as I walked between the mechanic's and the pedicurist's: with my hair flowing behind me as I strode through the wind and my boots clicking along the sidewalk with purpose, I imagined all of the hundreds of people on those four lanes whizzing past might glance my way and think, "Wow, that's one classy lady!"

I arrived at the pedicurist's at my appointed time and got to choose my new toenail color.  Still heady from my confidence-boosting power walk, I chose a new-for-me color: a sophisticated purple, so deep and rich as to be nearly black.

The pedicure experience was quite lovely, despite the fact that the pedicurist apparently mistook my feet and calves for a stained cookpot: she scrubbed so hard and viciously that the shade of pink radiating from my skin was one I'd never-before seen (and hope to never again).  But I was quite pleased with the end nail-color, and was tickled with my swag: a stylish set of blue flip-flops, sturdily-made of the best 1/8" foam available from the finest sweatshops of China.

My pleasure was short-lived, however, when the pedicurist firmly admonished me not to wear shoes or socks for at least a few hours.

"You can drive in those slippers, right?" she asked.

"Well, sure," I repsonded, "but I need to walk down the block first to pick up my car."

"Down this block?" she asked, incredulously.

"Umm, maybe I can put on my boots, but not my socks?" I ventured, timidly.

Her obvious scorn led me to believe that -- were I to ruin the pedicure she'd just administered -- I may very well wake in the middle of the night to find her furiously exfoliating my feet again as punishment.

And, besides, I didn't want to ruin my pretty nail polish, either.

Which explains why a furtive-looking hobo-lady was striding along a congested street the last week of December at 3 p.m., chin up with false bravado, lanky hair obnoxiously blowing into her eyes, 1/8" foam slippers slapping softly on the dirty sidewalk, freshly-lotioned feet sliding around on said slippers and feeling every little pebble and piece of grit on the 1500-foot march back to the mechanic's.

Where the staff took the opportunity to scold me for choosing to wear sandals in December.

Car finally collected, I unfortunately still had one more errand to run before I could slink home: I had to exchange an item at Harbor Freight Tools.  What should have been a 10-minute process turned into well over 45, as a key computer system was down and the manufacturer kept putting the store on hold before inevitably hanging up on them.

The whole time, I stood resolutely in my thin-soled footwear, telling anyone who got in line behind me to move on to another cashier if they hoped to be taken care of expeditiously.  To make my point clearer, I even dragged out the scarf I was crocheting for Bee and worked on it unhurriedly as I waited at the register.  Between the shoes better-suited for a craft project, the tangled scarf better-suited for a dumpster, and my tired expression, I'm sure I was a classy sight.

But my toe nails sure looked pretty.