Bachelorette party

Technically, my friend is no longer a bachelorette; she got married in a small civil ceremony in January. Still, yesterday we drove to the spa in the cold to celebrate. First I got a massage, during which the Israeli masseuse informed me [does it count as informing if you already know?], over and over again, that my back is so very tenze. She "cupped" me [is that the verb form of "cupping"?], forty-five minutes of silicone suctioning the muscles in my back and shoulders. My muscles appreciated the release, but, in truth, part of me felt disappointed to be touched by silicone instead of human hands. Afterward she said, please drink lots of vater after this. She said, please come back in a few veeks. She said, your back is so very very tenze.

Next I got the first manicure of my life. I picked a color that I liked; incidentally, it was similar to the color on the nails of one of the contestants on this season of the Bachelor, which I had noticed a few weeks ago while she was on that week's group date with Ben. I am not usually wont to notice things like nail polish, so I thought it might be a sign, given that I noticed and appreciated said color of nail polish only a few weeks prior to getting the first manicure of my life. I selected the color with confidence and endured the manicurist filing my nails, the sound and the feel of it a mild form of torture. After that we got pedicures. I have only had four pedicures in my life and I can't say that this was the best, or even the second best, but there wasn't anything inherently wrong with it; it simply was not the best or even the second best pedicure that I've ever received in my life, but it was nice enough.

Because I have had four pedicures in my life, and because I had girlfriends in middle school, I am relatively familiar with having nail polish on my toe nails, and looking down to see ten dots of color gripping the floor at the edges of my feet, or swaddling them inside a winter sock, doesn't phase me much. What has required an adjustment in the 27 hours since I've left the spa is looking down at my hands and seeing perfectly painted and preserved dots of color at the edge of each of my fingers. On any given glance at my hands there is a fifty percent chance that I will think, hot damn those look good, and a fifty percent chance that I will think, what in the hell is that, get it off of me. I took a walk in the snow and was startled, upon entering the local CVS, where I stopped to buy toilet paper, to discover perfectly manicured hands sliding out of my mittens. I appreciated my manicured hands then, but perhaps partly because it did not at first seem to me that they were my hands. Instead it felt as if I was observing a different woman, one who is always well put together and consistently tends to the details of her character and appearance--including, but certainly not limited to, the condition of her hands--and I thought, my, that woman is so well put together, even here in this CVS in the middle of winter.