Hands and Feet

I decided to treat my feet to a pedicure today since I haven’t been able to reach them in 5 weeks -- not to cut my toenails, not to clean between my toes, not to apply lotion.

I returned to Capitol Nails, where my friend and I had enjoyed manicures and pedicures last summer and then gone out for a drink afterwards.

It seemed so long ago and so much has happened in the months since then. My friend has removed herself from my life, or me from hers; we’ve had a change in the administration; the economy has gone belly up; and I broke my hip and got a new one.

From the outside the nail salon was the same old place. But inside as I had my pedicure, I wasn’t conversing with someone sitting next to me and my technician wasn’t chattering in Vietnamese with the technician at the next chair. Mostly because we were the only ones in the place for the first half hour. It was not quite the same fully booked nail salon as the last time I had visited.

What a luxury for my poor neglected feet to be trimmed and pumiced and massaged with a warm water bath in between each step. I opted for no polish, just the many other parts of the pedicure and thoroughly enjoyed every one of them.

Then I decided I might as well treat my hands as well since they work hard for me too. So I had a similar treatment, with no polish once again but buffing instead.

It will not take me so long to visit Amy again, my technician who actually remembered me from my one and only visit last summer. We learned little more than each other’s name because of her discomfort with English. But her skill with hands and feet more than made up for her lack of communication.

Lunch out afterwards with my husband and friends was a nice way to celebrate a beautiful almost Spring day.