30 Things to Do Before I Turn 30

Date of completion: January 2011 & May 2011

It blows people’s minds when I tell them I’ve never had a manicure or a pedicure. I’m twenty-six years old and fairly vain, and yet, I’ve somehow never managed to enter a nail salon.

To be fair, I think I might have had a manicure when I was six at a birthday party at the local cosmetology school, but that doesn’t really count.

I decided a professional massage was something I also needed to experience in my life, so I tacked that on to the end to make sure I’d do it. Ironically, that was the part of this “task” I accomplished first. I snagged a half-off Groupon in early January and took a day off work to do absolutely nothing except get a message and relax. (I’m not good at relaxing). It was nice, even though I have far too many self-esteem issues for some stranger to be touching my skin in all the parts I don’t like to look at in the mirror.

The mani/pedi just hung out in the back of my mind as probably the easiest thing to knock off the list, but there are so many other things I’d rather spend my money on. Bad haircuts, shoes, coffee, books.

So when my friend scheduled us all an appointment to get our nails done before her wedding, I was excited and oddly a bit anxious. I don’t know the etiquette or protocol for having one’s nails done, and I was a bit concerned that I was going to look like an idiot. I’m a big advocate of the “fake it til you make it” philosophy.

The ladies at the salon were as astonished as everyone else that I’ve made it this far in my life without having either of the ‘cures, but they were very nice and it was very relaxing and I couldn’t stop staring at my nails when I was done. They looked like they belonged in a nail polish ad.

To be fair, I barely made it out of the salon before I smudged one of them up. Check that, I didn’t even get out of the salon before I messed one of them up. (This is why I can’t have nice things). Even so, I was enamored with how they looked and for the days after the wedding, planned my outfits accordingly so they would match my dark fuchsia nails. Then, inevitably, life happened, and they chipped, and I had to remove the metric ton of polish from my fingernails and go back to life with boring nails.

My toes still look good, though.