Alternate title: Bye, Bye, Love!
I think I am beauty-product challenged. Let me explain.
We had two weddings, two weekends in a row back at the end of September. I conveniently used the excuse of having to be all fancy for the weddings to justify getting acrylic nails.
Then I used the excuse of looking professional to keep them.
See –
Although I never realized that my pointer finger nail was so crooked, I loved my acrylic nails. I loved everything about them. I loved how they look, I loved how they felt, I loved how strong they were.
But, I’ve had to say goodbye to my new love.
It turns out I am allergic to the acrylic. Everytime I would go for a fill, my fingers would itch from the bottom of the nail to my first knuckle for 2-3 days. I mentioned this to the nail tech and she compassionately said, “You’ll get used to it.”
Well, I never “got used to it”.
I posted my plight on Facebook, and one of my friends (who owns her own salon in Indiana) diagnosed my condition as contact dematitis. She also told me that I should go with either silk or gel nails.
That is a really great plan, however, my husband and I have also decided that 2011 is the “year of no spending”. Our goal is to pay down our mortgage as much as possible. So, we are cutting back on everything but the essentials.
Unfortunately, acrylic nails are a non-essential.
However, God knew what He was doing by striking me with contact dermatitis. He knew I was being sorely tempted to keep my nails (that I loved SOOO much) as a businiess expense. It would have been so easy to just keep on going every two weeks for my fills at a cost of about $25 per visit.
But when I actually had to make the decision to get the acrylics off and put silks or gels on, I knew what the right thing to do was.
And off my beloved nails went.
Sigh.
And to add insult to injury, I also had a reaction to my new lip stain.
A few weeks ago, my beautiful sister-in-law and I were Christmas shopping for our daughters at Ulta. And as women often do in beauty supply stores, we each bought ourselves a new lip stain.
Although I loved my acrylic nails more, I was growing fond of the new lip stain, too. Then one day I woke up and my lips were hurting. Hurting like they were severely chapped. Which would make sense living in a dry climate such as Colorado. But it didn’t make sense because when you live in a dry climate like Colorado, you quickly learn that lip balm is your best friend 24/7. There was no way that my lips were simply chapped.
Over the course of the next few days, the entire top layer of my lips peeled off and were very sensitive to spicy food. Because of all the peeling, I didn’t use much of anything but lip balm on my lips.
I was puzzled over the mystery of the peeling lips.
Once all the peeling was done, which left my lips incredibly soft, BTW, I started using my new lip stain again.
And the peeling started all over again. At this rate I will be completely lip-less for the new year. So, bye, bye, Lip Stain.
I know all this is not exactly earth-shattering or life-changing news, but the older I get, the more I need to rely on beauty products to hold myself together. At 46, this is not a great time in my life to become beauty product challenged.
I think the safest way for me to go is to become Amish.
You can see more of what doesn’t work well today at We are THAT Family.
I Throw Like a Girl 