Jingle.

I am absolutely incapable of getting a manicure and not messing it up immediately. That's no metaphor, though I suppose it could be. I literally can't not screw it up. I guess that's why I don't get that many manicures, because it's so frustrating. I sit there like a bourgeoisie wench for an hour, paying these sweet, hairless, well kept, Korean ladies to deal with the absolute mess I make of my nails and the wreckage that is my cuticles - particularly my right thumb, which bears the brunt of my emotions and always has.  Then I stand up, slap on those temporary flip flops and go about my business, which, apparently, is exceedingly hard on the surfaces of my nails. 

There's a mystery for you. Someone who's as bad at sports as I am and with my level of party dress obsession should be dainty and patient enough to 1) wait for the damn polish to dry and 2) go easy on the hand swinging, bag slinging, and other dangerous behavior. It's a dastardly combination of absolutely loving the way short, shiny, red nails look holding a flute of champagne and the inability to maintain them. C'est la contradiction. 

So in case anyone was keeping score, this is the difference between delicate-girly and awesome-girly. Because yeah, my hand eye coordination is limited. And I love Titanic. And every December I hear the first bar of a Christmas song and suddenly get an inexplicable, Pavlovian need for patent leather shoes, a new dress (preferably taffeta), and tickets to The Nutcracker. And team sports that aren't the Red Sox bore the hell out of me and the only reason the Red Sox don't is because my Pavlovian reaction to them is a need for Stellas and Boston, and frankly, what's better than that? But at least I'm no delicate fool. 

Delicate fools would probably not have been running around Beverly Hills wearing those paper thin pedicure flip flops on the wrong feet trying to change for an office party in the office bathroom while leaving time to tone down the tranny eye makeup that the dude with braces at Nars proclaimed "fierce". My fault for trusting an adult with braces. I should have known better. 

Even so, there is this lovely service that Barney's in Beverly Hills has where you go in, buy mascara and let one of the desperate-for-a-Hollywood-gig make up artists do your makeup for a party. They actually will pour their heart and soul and yes, a lot of glitter into the job. Which is a lot of fun, once you take the eye sparkle down a couple of pegs afterward because this isn't Halloween and I cannot justify eye-shadow up to my eyebrows, I simply cannot. 

Yes, I get a true kick out of December in the Los Angeles but I am so ready for my Massachusetts reality check. Last I kept thinking about how if I were sprinting around in paper thin flip flops on December 12th in Boston instead of Beverly Hills, I would probably be writing this today as a frostbitten amputee. Weather patters and tangible seasons keep people real and as much as the spot in my heart that thinks this place is pretty okay may or may not be spreading, it is going to be so good to be home.