You may recall that I stayed put for Spring Break while my husband and four children headed south to frolic in the sand and surf of Florida’s west coast. To help numb the sting of being abandoned for tropical paradise, I decided to treat myself to a day of beauty, or more precisely, an hour of cheap “fixes.”

First up, my god-awful nails.  I have rather sausage-like fingers with flat, dry nail beds, so I usually try to keep them on the down low. I also hate the expense of a manicure when I inevitably chip the enamel within ten minutes of leaving the salon. But something had to be done; I’m a teacher who spends half my day pointing at numbers on a board. For the sake of the children, then, I opted for a more practical solution. Plastic press-ons, of course.

So I popped into CVS to peruse their offerings and finally decided on a $6 set of Perfectly Perfect French in “really-short”. But I’ll be damned if those little suckers were easy to apply!  Between gluing pieces of my skin together and eliminating air bubbles under the nail, I wasted a solid 45 minutes trying to get my hands to look “normal.” Eventually, my persistence did pay off. My fingers look longer, my nails look healthy and clean, and I find myself rat-tat-tatting on every solid surface I come into contact with. I haven’t figured out how to remove them yet (the directions were somewhat sketchy), but so far I love my potentially-permanent fake talons.

First problem semi-solved, I decided to next tackle my pasty-white Ginger skin. Back in the 80s, four visits to a tanning bed would have fixed me right up, but now that I’m older, I can’t possibly risk, as my Mama would say, “Gettin’ the cancer” (though I do miss the warm embrace of imitation UVA!). So I opted for a spray tan, and as luck would have it, my visit was free thanks to an April special. Was I overwhelmed and confused as a lovely 20-something explained the application order of lotions followed by the  four different “spray” stances so as to achieve maximum coverage and color? A tad. Did I briefly have skin in an Oompa-Loompish shade of orange? Affirmative. And are my palms five times darker than my shins? Unfortunately, yes.  But can anyone now mistake me for an Irish vampire? No ma,am! Or at least not for the next five to seven days.

In the end, my one hour of beauty did wonders for my appearance, and more importantly, my attitude. Peace out.