Deforestation

With all other surfaces cleared last night, there was only one left: my face.

Eyebrow waxing is an imperative luxury for me. I had a girl in Placentia (where we lived before Vtown) that did a great job. She took my brows from “Okay” to “Nice!” But in the process of making things “nice,” biology took over. The adage, “Pull a hair and two more will grow back” came true and my natural brows went from “Okay” to “Yikes!” Unfortunately for me, achieving “Yikes!” status coincided with moving to Vtown where the corners are peppered with trees, not nail shops. This required an actual effort to find someone to tame the beasts and it has proven no small feat. I tried for about a year to find someone I liked and in the end, I gave up. My friend, Jenn (a.k.a. JDogg), gets her brows done at Chateau Harrell (her last name is Harrell), and encouraged me to self-manage as well. I don’t have skills though, and I can only take my brows from “Yikes!” to “Hmm.” So today, two years later, I thought I would try again at the new place by my house Hand2Love (Don’t get me started on that name. It bugs.).

Making this venture was scary. Men may scoff, but only we women know the dangers that lurk in a nail shop. They are inevitable because they all swirl around the language barrier. After being there for a while, the technician will likely be talking in another language with a coworker. Often times there are sideways glances and laughter involved, and it is easy to become paranoid that I am the subject of the convo. There are very few times in my life when I wish I had Frank Costanza with me; usually these are the times. But when it’s time to speak English, the workers have such thick accents that it’s impossible for me to truly understand them. I want to be nice and friendly, but every smile-and-nod ends up costing me another five bucks. Suddenly, I’ve gone from a $10 manicure to a $45 hot oil mani/pedi with flowers on my toes! Becka just says No to everything and that usually works for her.

When I was paying today for the best eyebrows I’ve had in three years, the gal started to ask me a question, which she had to repeat two times. I still couldn’t understand, so I did a Becka and said “No, no thanks.” I could tell I made her mad - I still have no idea what she said. Now my conundrum is, do I go back next month and see whether she carries a grudge (thereby making me pencil-in my expressions for the following two months), or do I return to Chateau DeVries and the safety of my “Hmm” brows? Either way, the earth got a little bit warmer today, thanks to me and my fantastic eyebrows.