WTF, Blogger?

It just ate a long post.  I'm not rewriting it.  Let me try a synopsis.  Current earworm:  The Overdraft by Warren Zevon.  Nyah, nyah, I saw Bob Marley live and also Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, James Brown, and Frank Sinatra.  Two I regret never seeing:  Warren Zevon and Elvis Presley.  Two singers I used to think were cheesy but now I respect:  Neil Diamond and Tom Jones.  I had a lot of crushes when I was a kid and a teenager, some I still won't confess to.

But here's something else I was thinking about today:  manicures and pedicures.  I have now had a manicure on the weekend three weeks in a row, and had a pedicure a few weeks before that.  This is not always a regular thing for me, but I am really enjoying it.

I had pedicures before I ever had manicures because I am a lifelong nail picker.  It is truly gross and unattractive and I am embarrassed by it.  So it was pedicures first, because I love wearing sandals, and I was terrible at painting my own toenails.  At first, I was somewhat uncomfortable at having my feet washed by an Asian or Mexican woman.  It made me feel like some kind of colonial/bigot/ugly American.  But truly, those women work hard, they're skillful, and I tip well. 

Now, I have had periods of stopping the nail-picking and growing a reasonable set of nails.  Nail grooming is key -- if I've managed to leave them alone for a couple of weeks, I put on clear polish, and graduate to colored polish as they grow in.  Usually I polish them myself.  They never do get too long, partly because they are prone to break or split, and partly because I'm simply not used to having long nails.  And I always felt silly going for a manicure with such relatively short nails.

When I went for my most recent pedicure, the woman asked if I wanted a manicure too.  I had started trying to grow my nails, and while they weren't raggedy, they were not very long.  I told her no, my nails were too short, and showed her.  She said, no, she could do them.  I didn't have them done that day, but I went back two or three weeks later, with longer nails, and she did my nails.  It was really a nice spot of pampering, plus my nails looked nice.  So I've done it now for a few weeks. 

I think the nail-picking may be over, since I'm way too old to still be doing it, and I simply refuse to have a jewelry job with ugly hands.  I need to wear rings and bracelets, and I need nice hands to do that.

I love rocks.  I've been loving Swarovski a lot for a couple of years, but now I'm back to loving rocks.  Crystal was just a fling, but I do use it with rocks now and then for a little accent.  My job is hard and very detailed, and I don't have a lot of time to commune with the beads, but I do get to spend a lot of time with beads and with jewelry, and I get paid for it.  ("Rocks," of course, is what I called beads and stones of any and all natural materials, so rocks do not include crystal or glass or metal, but do pair with pearls).  "Communing with beads" is simply looking at beads and getting jewelry ideas; it's mostly with my own beads, but I used to do it a lot in bead stores.  I used to work near 37th Street and Sixth Avenue, where there are a whole bunch of bead stores, and I went into at least one or two every lunch hour, occasionally buying but mostly just looking at the beads.  So I don't get to commune with beads at work that much, I mean really staring at them and studying them, but I do get to be around them a lot.  And let's face it -- it's just cool to work for someone who's crazy about tourmaline.