Photo February - Day Four

The Fix-Up

In the words of any self-respecting five-year-old, everything is made better with glitter.

Case in point was this weekend's pedicure. Jonella, Teddie and I try and go for manicure and pedicure every six weeks or so. We frequent a nail bar in Camberwell where for the princely sum of $30 we treat ourselves to a hot oil mani/pedi. It's a friendly place, clean and hygenic and not a franchine chain nail bar that features so often on the sensationalist foot-in-the-door news magazine shows that are on after then new of an evening.

The lay of the land states that we go in, choose our colours (I'm normally pretty decisive, Jonella takes a bit more time and Teddy really has to think long and hard about her colours) then we sit down and wait to get pampered. We talk about the colours of the OPI range - how "Barefoot in Barcelona" is the best nude - better than "Chocolate Mousse" any day - or how the Bond Range, with it's "You Only Live Twice" and " the Spy Who Loved Me" reds are fantastic. Jonella has only just got out of the mindset that your toenails and fingernails have to be the same colour. Until a few visits ago she swore she could not have toes and fingers that didn't match - me I've always liked being a bit different - and I soup up the colour on my toes and let my fingers be a bit more restrained. The more garish my toenail polish the better.

This weekends mani/pedi saw me have "Midnight in Moscow" applied to my toenails and "Vodka and Caviar" to my fingers. As per usual, the girl doing my toes complained about how short my toenails were. As per usual, I explained that I do a lot of exercise and long toenails in sneakers have a tendency to break off - which is not fun or pleasant.

They do a good job at our nail bar.

And in my next life I want to have a job where I name nail polishes and lipsticks. I reckon that would be fun.

Everything  went well for our mani / pedis. The problem  came an hour or so later, after a coffee and a cake at Brunettis. On the way back to Teddie's, we also went shoe shopping - popping in at the Mountfords sale. This seems to be another part of our mani/pedi day rituals - nails, coffee and cake, shoe shopping. Girlie heaven.

(Reading this, I realise that I am more of a girlie-girl than I ever give myself credit for.)

I've been in need of a pair of black flat work shoes. My old ones, magnificently comfortable and wonderfully flat were not just dead but about to stage their own zombie apocalypse. They were scuffed, no matter how much polish I put on them. They had a couple of holes in the bottom. Their pungent scent could walk them out of the room at their own volition. Time for the bin.

After a quick browse, I found a bargain - a pair of Geox flats in black leather with a snazzy buckle on the toe. $75 down form something over $200.

Perfect.

I asked for my size and a pair of stockings to try them on. These shoes were a great fit. Soft leather inside and out and the buckle dressed them up a bit - just wonderful - and unlike my other pair, unlikely to scream for brains or run a marathon on their stench.

The only problem - I smudged my toenail polish while trying them on.

Quelle horreur! #firstworldproblems. It was worse than breaking the yoke of your poached egg while you cook them.

Teddie came to the rescue. She's a nail varnish junkie. She recommended another coat or two of top coat when I got home should fix it she said.

I went one better.

OPI's "The Living Daylights" was applied to my smudged red/black toenails.

(Photo thanks to Polished Criminals - http://www.polishedcriminails.com/2012/10/swatch-series-opi-skyfall-collection_18.html)

My Saturday crisis was over.

And it appears there is some truth to what the five-year-olds believe - everything is made better with glitter.

___________________________________

FeNoWriMo total - 6000 words