how should i preface this?
i’m a lazy girl. i’m a vain girl. i’m a lazy, vain girl. but i’m also, dare i say….. cheap?
let me explain.
it’s not my nature to fork over my hard-earned cash for someone to wash my feet and hands every week, when i can paint my toes for free.
i do see a professional every month or so for cuticle overhaul and {let’s be honest} THE foot rub, but my nail haunts are of the drop-in type; never the same place twice, the kind where the technician always asks my ethnicity, and then debates my answer, convinced my japanese father is really a vietnamese liar.
tissue-paper thin nail beds {a result of the gel craze}, and a nasty nick to my thumb, has only compounded my at-home polishing skills and conviction to save money .
another area where i find it difficult to spend whence i can do it at home for free is my eyebrows:
pluck, pluck, trim, trim, pluck, trim, pluck.
easy.
it’s tedious, a little time-consuming, but come on? if i can brew my own coffee, i can groom my own, silly eyebrows.
yet, of late, i’ll admit, the brows haven’t been getting the attention they’ve needed.
unruly is an understatement. try disorderly and drunken. my eyebrows have been violating city ordinances left and right.
the thing is, tweezers involve dexterity, and like i stated earlier: i’m a lazy girl!
at the end of the day flossing feels like brain surgery. add tweezers? aaaaaaaah!!
early saturday evening i was driving home to my darling, most handsome husband. my hands at ten and two, i glanced down at what looked like an episode of intervention:Â my nails were riddled with chips and cracks, as if i, myself, had been smoking the crack. not wanting to look ugly betty for hunkiest, i u-turned polly into the first nail salon i saw: “Top of Nails Salon.”
i swear to god that’s what the sign says. the grammar alone should have been my first clue warning.
all i wanted was a polish change. my intentions were good. no wash, no massage, no flower. i even had my own polish. but, no i couldn’t leave well enough alone. inspired by the sharpie drawn eyebrows of my nail tech, i casually asked if  “top of nails” also offered eyebrow waxing. her hesitation should have been my second clue warning.
palms in the air as my top coat dried, i shuffled into a back room where another sharpie-browed lass slathered molten lava wax on my baby brows, after which she left the room to watch her version of a telanovela. at least that’s how long it felt. i was tempted to pull the lava strips off myself, but seeing as she was the “professional” i kept them there and waited.
and waited, and waited.
when she finally returned the heat had subsided as did any feeling in my face. but upon ripping the wax off, along with three layers of skin, the feeling came back, as did my fluency in profanity.
thinking/hoping the scalding was more just a feeling rather than an actual look, although i WAS suspicious when medusa didn’t offer me a mirror to show me her finished product, i paid the lousy $6 bucks, and hightailed it out of the fancy “sah-lohn”.
much to my sadness, although 100% deserving, it looked just as bad as it felt. actually worse. where there was one set of brows, there are now two: one black, one cherry red. kind of like licorice.
i officially hate licorice.
i look RIDICULOUS!!! and it’s all my fault. i am lazy, i am vain, i am cheap.
i am also in a ton of pain. these are deep burns. i am in a constant state of aloe vera application. i’ve researched, and aloe vera seems to be the call for the quickest, safest, no-scar healing antidote.
how excited will the director of this week’s commercial be when he sees this hot mess walk on to set? not exactly the zen vision he hired. thank god for concealer.
any other beauty horror stories out there you care to share?
i think we can all agree this one’s pretty awesome!!!
monday happy to you m’loves!
Oh…. That is horrible!! But, to shed a ray of sunshine, the brow shape itself, once I am able to look beyond the initial RED brow, is very clean and neat. Once your burning wound heals, they will look very nice.
I'm cheap with manicure/pedicures – I do my own all the time because I'm so fussy with how they shape my nails – although my two college roomies are coming in two weeks and I will be treating myself to a mani/pedi – since my toes right now have about five inches of re-applied nail polish because I'm too lazy to take it off.
OUCH on the eye brows – shape looks great but I'm trying to figure out who those red lines are so far down. What was she thinking? OMG ouch, ouch, ouch. Ok do tell me those eyebrows were that low LOL!
ouch! hope this goes away stat. i'm with you, i can't bear to pay for these weekly grooming sessions mostly because i'm not in position to use money on that right now, but even if i were, i don't know if i would.
While I cannot go with eyebrow waxing expert Misha Nesselrod, or nail techs extraordinaire at The Nail Lounge; I can, and DO skip the "who-ha wax." Childbirth was less painful, (There are drugs for that!) and I literally had to bite on a towel to keep from screaming. It hurt so mutha-f'n bad!! I tried for about six months, then realized that any "beauty service" that required a Xanex to endure it, was not going to be part of my routine, (unless they offer an epidural with the bikini wax.) 😉
i do recall a story of a bikini wax done in an office chair somewhere in Oklahoma.
eye spy something painful. damn wax pro wannabe…seriously wtf? trust me, i am so lazy that nails, brows and down under are all handled by yours truly, or perhaps it is all about control issues?!?!
sorry hon. your still easy on the eyes! 😉
oh you poor thing! i always considered myself lazy because i didn't do those things myself — manis, pedis, brow waxes. hopefully the wounds heal soon. keep up with the aloe!
Oh Katie–those eyebrow burns–ouch! I had been so lazy in that dept that a few months I forced myself into a brow bar as I left Ouida in Santa Monica only to be worked on by 2 different girls who each gave me the hard sell on product and then when I didn't buy enough — (I thought $56 in bobbie brown product was quite enough) they all glared at me on my way out. Luckily no burns other than the scorching dirty looks.
Hope your skin repairs quickly!
xo Mary Jo
Oh Katiekins! My friend, I don't go asking the transients to lead me in a spin class- much as you should NEVER trust a dirty, nasty nail shop to do your eyebrows (or nails for that matter). I understand that you could spend your dough more wisely, but think of it this way. You won't need to spend any extra money on aloe vera or neosporin if you get the brows done safely and correctly the 1st time. I'll even throw the 1st one in for free.
As for my horror story, I've had a few. It's a 3 way tie between having my hair melted off my a perm that was wrapped to tight, the mullet of 2002, and being burned by laser hair removal and having blood blisters all over my underarms and crotch- lovely!