Who Did Your Nails?

My last three weeks have been off kilter — a couple of vacations interspersed with everyone else’s schedules changing and I about completely forgot my own name.

So my 16-year-old niece — who’s been my part-time minion in charge of keeping the polishes dusted for the last four years — hasn’t been around on her regular schedule for some time. I hadn’t seen her in about three-and-a-half weeks.

She tends to take her nails off during the summer and have me put them back on when school starts, but this year I was out of town when she was scheduled to be here. So we did some creative rescheduling — which is much harder with your own niece when she spends half her time with her mom and stepdad and half her time with her dad and stepmom and she doesn’t drive yet. But we got it figured out and did her nails.

And then I didn’t see her for three-and-a-half weeks. Or maybe two-and-a-half weeks. My brain is so addled these days I can’t even read my calendar right anymore! Point is, I saw her this weekend at the usual family bbq stuff and while I was getting filled in on the details of her new boyfriend (it’s official now, the last time I talked to her they were “just talking”), I noticed her nails.

Ummm...

“When did she get her nails done?” “Did someone take her to some other nail salon?” “Who did those?” I thought these things to myself as I stared at the light green gel-polish and 3-D daisies while she prattled on about the boyfriend who’s “the cutest thing ever.”

Something about those 3-D daisies seemed familiar. A tiny corner in the very way-back of my brain started to itch a little.

“Who else even does those type of 3-D flowers in this town?”

And then I realized that I’M the one who did those nails! “Oh! That’s right! Because she wanted polish that matched her phone case. And she wanted daisies — with long petals, not just white flowers like I normally do.”

Do you know how often I do something like that? All the time. I see clients out of the salon and everything is totally out of context. I don’t even recognize my own work!

The good news is… a lot of times I really like the nails I thought someone else did.