Since my last post many of my Shellac Sisters have come forth with a crucial piece of information:  in order to get the magical Shellac polish off my nails I will need to make another manicure appointment. 

I suppose it makes sense.  If the stuff on my nails is strong enough not to chip it stands to reason that it won’t come off with a simple nail polish remover.  And therein lies the rub.  In order to get this stuff off my nails once it grows out I’ll have to go in for another manicure where they will, of course, convince me to have the Shellac applied again and suddenly I’m trapped in an evil Shellac cycle which I can’t get out of. 

D’oh! 

I rarely get manicures because they never last. Usually the polish smudges within hours of leaving the nail place and I’ve never gone more than a day before getting chips.  However I got one last week and it still looks great. 

There’s a bit of outgrowth at the bottom and close analysis may reveal some wear at the tips, but miraculously there are NO CHIPS!  

I owe this miraculous manicure to the lady at SpaLuxe who convinced me to use Shellac Polish.  It took some convincing to get me to try it.  I scoffed at first figuring it was over-priced nail polish.  All nail polishes claim to be chip-free right?  “That’s OK,” I said “I’ll just take the standard polish.”  I spent the next fifteen minutes listening to the wonders of Shellac while the manicurist clipped my cuticles and filed my nails.  Finally I gave in and I’ve been amazed with the result ever since. 

Applying Shellac nail polish is, admittedly more involved than the traditional stuff.  It’s thicker than normal nail polish, almost like a gel, and prone to air bubbles when applying.  You also need to “cure” the freshly painted nail under a UV light.  The amazing thing is that it dries almost instantly.  After I removed my hand from the UV light the manicurist shined my newly polished nails with a soft cloth soaked in alcohol.  I gasped in horror at such a thing until she showed me there were NO SMUDGES!  Amazing! 

Most of my appreciation for this long lasting manicure goes out to the attorney I work with who gave me the SpaLuxe gift card for Christmas.  I immediately scheduled the appointment for the first work day after New Years so I could have a little post-holiday pick me up.   I am lucky enough to work for a company that closes the week between Christmas and New Years and coming to work after a week off is always hard.  For some reason I didn’t have the back-to-work-blues as bad this year and I’m wondering if my magical Shellac manicure helped?  

The other day my friend Kathryn posed the following question to her Facebook friends for comment and discussion: 

What historical event occurred when you were a child that made an impression on you and why? 

I didn’t participate in the discussion but I did think about the question and was reminded of the Watergate scandal and President Nixon’s subsequent resignation from office.  I was only 8 years old at the time of this event and clueless to the fact that political history was being made.  All I knew was that there was nothing on TV that night. 

I was in the back of the house in the bedroom we had designated as the “toy room” when my friend Lisa, who was staying for dinner that night filled me in on the significance of what was going on and why the president was hogging all four channels of the television.  She told me that we were getting a new president because the old one, Nixon, was a bad man.  The new president was Mr. Ford.  And while it was already clearly established that Lisa, also age 8, was way smarter than me, she did qualify her information with “My dad told me.” 

I responded back with something along the lines of “Good! I hate Nixon.” 

This was my first political discussion.  I’m still annoyed about missing The Waltons.