How my most recent toenail painting taught me to always just be myself!

 

 

A few weeks ago I was preparing for my first writer’s conference the ACFW: American Christian Fiction Writers. The night before I was running around in circles trying to get everything done, there was the typing, printing off samples and packing to say the least.  My stress level was above the norm; I am not the most practical person when there is panic involved, so of course I decided this would be the perfect time to paint my toenails! Apparently, my mind enjoyed having a billion and one things to do or perhaps procrastination had gotten the best of me.

 I borrowed my sister-in-law’s fancy new polish that promised to fade my nails from light to dark in three simple steps. Not wanting just a silver color, I painted my natural toenails bright red first for a splash of color. Believe it or not I’m actually not one that normally paints her toes. However, I was pulling out all the stops for the weekend and wanted to be perfect. HA!

After a short time, I called my red coat dry and followed step one: I painted my toenails with the first light silver color. Holding my toes as far apart as possible I stomped back to my printer to add more paper. Then step two: I painted half my nails with a darker shade. I repeated the add paper to the printer process and added unsticking my fourth left toe from its pinky partner because the wet paint had fused them together. Finally step three: I painted a fourth of the nail with the darkest glittery shade. As I waited for them to dry, I walked on my heels to my bedroom where I threw the remainder of my clothes from my bed into my gigantic suitcase.

I got a breather and took time to check out my pedicure. Not only was it not me, it looked awful! The promised perfect fade appeared cheesy and remember that splash of color I wanted? Well, yeah it was there however, it was only visible along the edges. So it looked like my toes were bleeding. I was tired and I had spent all that extra time painting them, I was keeping them that way! So I went to bed.

Do you know what sheets do to ugly toes? They sabotage them! Ok, perhaps it was the four layers of paint and the lack of drying time. Either way they ruined my dreadful pedicure. That’s what I get for trying to be fancy. I hopped out of bed and scraped off the wrinkled up paint and went to the bathroom and grabbed the nail polish remover. Guess what? I only had a teeny tiny amount in the bottle. Of course I did! So I rubbed off my hard work as well as possible. But I couldn’t get all the stupid red off my toes. Grrr! Fine! I looked in the back of the cabinet and found my trusty old dark reddish color and coated my toe nails in a few swift moves. The paint was so old I had to hold the bottle sideways to get its contents, the thick goopy stuff, to land on the brush. When finished I studied my toes. They were plain and imperfect, but it was me!

 I promised myself I would just be ME the whole weekend, no matter what. The vow worked out well.  And as an added bonus, no one the whole weekend looked at my toe nails and rolled their eyes. It’s always better to be yourself! Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not.  And sometimes it’s better to be yourself in boots rather than sandals!