So for my handfasting I had the nail lady put on those acrylic nails since I'd managed to break a few of my own. I wanted to have pretty graceful fingers since the focus was on the hands for a good part of the ceremony. I'd never had nails that long. They also put that gel stuff on them so that I could get a pretty french manicure. Everything looked great.
By the end of the evening my hands were in such pain. Each fingertip ached. It took me a while to realize why. I have an allergy to most adhesives. The kind of allergy that makes me break out in rashes for bandaids, develop blisters, etc. They had used superglue stuff to attach the acrylic nails and my fingertips were screaming protests.
A couple of days later my hands were better. I think the natural nails had grown out enough to keep the glue away from my skin. I thought things might be better and even considered keeping the nails. I even had them shortened and filled the next week. Bad idea.
I'm no fluffy girl. I don't wear pink more than maybe once a year. I think I'm allergic to ruffles and having to spend more than 5 minutes on hair and make-up is intolerable. Apparently even though my hands looked fabulous they had become useless appendages.
I developed a short list of things you can't do easily with long nails.
1. type - too much noise and it slows me down.
2. open soda cans - you have to use "tools" to tip the little tab up
3. pick up coins - I tried and it wasn't pretty. Had to get help.
4. peel address labels - it's part of my job and no matter how careful I was stuff would go crazy and end up sticking to my hands or the wrong thing.
5. play the piano - same as typing and your hand position is wrong
In an effort to see the bright side of things I developed an equally short list of things you can do better with long nails.
1. poke someone's eye out
2. poke your own eye out
3. finally able to scratch that itch on my back
4. inadvertantly scratch everyone in my immediate surroundings
5. get stuff stuck under the nails that you look at with questions (perhaps eye goo)
Okay, so it should be obvious at this point that I am not a long fake nail person. After about 2 weeks of torture I took my clippers out and did away with them. I am now sporting some really freaky nails as the gel stuff makes the tips of them really thick and there is a band of "virgin" nail bed at the base of each finger. I figure it will take about a month to be rid of it all. I suppose I could overpay someone to sand off the gel stuff, but since I'm not vain enough to be bothered with it I'll keep the money.
