A Confession, Some Nudity, and a Break

The last time I posted an actual nails of the day entry was July 4th. There's nothing unusual about that; it typically takes me at least a few days to get photos out of my camera and into an entry. But you may have noticed that it's been a quite while since I posted even a recent nails of the day entry. Since late September, I've been working off my backlog of swatches, as I had to put my nails in rehab due to an unfortunate incident: my first ripped nail in I don't know how long. Peelies are pretty much a constant battle for me, but I'd been having really good luck with not getting rips and tears. Until a few weeks back, when I felt a nail catch on my clothes and instead of the hangnail I expected to find when I looked at the snaggy hand, I saw a rip in one of my nails. When I took off my polish (well, most of it), this is what I found on my left middle finger:



I was tempted to try and patch over the rip with a silk wrap or teabag, but as I recall that gets tedious to keep up, and besides earlier that week I'd been reaching for something without looking and jammed my right hand into a wooden railing, with this result on the middle finger on my right hand (this is after I filed back the part that was completely destroyed):



With two nails really struggling and a few others showing signs of Mr. Peelies, I decided it was best to just cut them all down to shorties and do a treatment week. Given how stained my nails were, I was somewhat chagrined to think of going out in public with nothing but clear coat between them and the world, but I reminded myself that I don't work at a beauty supply store, I work with computer geeks, most of whom pay absolutely no attention to my nails whatsoever. Here's my left hand, pre-rehab; it gets the worst of the staining because it's where I try out all the colors:



And here's that hand, freshly trimmed and treated with OPI Nail Envy Sensitive & Peeling, which I decided to try instead of my usual Orly Nailtrition or Nail Defense since those aren't completely making the peelies go away. My nails look so strange to me here, even though I used to keep them at this length or even shorter all the time.



I spent the next week applying another coat of Nail Envy every other day, per package directions. At the end of that week, here's how they'd progressed. My index finger was actually worse, but that damage was no doubt already done before I started rehab and just lurking, waiting to show itself.



I followed that with another week of Nail Envy, adding a new coat a couple of times during the week. After that week, here's what my nails looked like naked. Not at all pretty, I must say, though I guess the staining is better since I cut much of it off and some of the rest peeled away. I know it takes weeks for nails to grow out and the damage I'm seeing here is just going to take time to get past, but it's still discouraging.



At this point, I could not stand one more day of having nothing but treatment on my nails, but that's a story for another entry, which I will write after I get back from one of my periodic mini-breaks. I'll be spending next week mostly offline, getting reconnected with people who don't live in my computer or work in my office and refreshing my brain. I'll be back on the 24th or 25th, most likely. See you then!