My World is Blue......Part 2

It was my brave attempt to be contemporary that created the problem.  I wanted to be au courant alongside younger, prettier, and fancier women than I for a formal dinner party.  It seemed like a terrific idea at the time.  I did not have the time nor the inclination to get my hair done and to arrange a manicure.  That having been said, it does not mean that I did not want to look lovely.  In a move that I later regretted, I opted to go BLUE.  My daughter gave me a nail polish manufactured for Sephora.  It was the blue of the Adriatic Ocean(as I imagine it, at least).  

I did my whole nail routine -- shape, file, remove cuticles etc.. Then, with the small brush that came with the bottle, I applied not one, but two coats of blue.  It looked smashing, I was told.  In fact, at dinner we joked that I was a virgin to blue nails and what a memorable night it was for me.  

It was memorable.  The nail polish had staying power, I can say that.  It hardly chipped and after one week, I decided to take it off because I was tired of it, more than it no longer looking fresh.  I used an acetone-free nail polish remover to do the job.  Almost immediately, I recognized that there was going to be a problem.  After removing the blue nail polish, my nails remained blue. It was as if they absorbed the pigment.  Think back to seventh grade science when you may have put celery in a cup of water colored with blue food dye.  When you returned the next day, TA DA, the celery was blue. My nails were the color of a cadaver’s nails that I saw once.  No worries, I tried alcohol, Goo-gone, and yet more nail polish remover. All to no effect.  Then, I thought I must need an abrasive, so I went for a good quality foot scrub.  Maybe something was happening?  Maybe. By then, my fingers and nails were so dried out from the chemicals, I applied nail oil.  Now my nails glistened in blue.  Then a light went off in my head. I dug through my drawer to locate a special emery board I recently purchased.  It is designed to buff and polish fingernails. My rationale was that I might achieve success if I could remove the top layer of the nails.  Success!  It was a slow-moving process.  It took about twenty minutes of sanding and buffing to lift off the blue.  When I removed 95% of the blue, I stopped.  I didn’t want to weaken my nails by abrading too many layers.  

Pink...at last.

It was as I was looking at the slight pink hue of my fingernails returning to normal that I flashed back on the incident when Scooter, our dog, ran under a rain of blue clothing dye.  http://dawnings-anewdawn.blogspot.com/2012/02/my-world-is-blue-part-1.html   All of our best efforts were not successful in returning him to his pristine white color.  It was when I was giving him his third bath in a week that I discovered that his skin has actually been dyed blue as well.  Apparently, there are some things that only time can cure.