It’s hard to write a newsletter, especially a newsletter about the minutiae of life, when everything is terrible. On the other hand, everything will probably be terrible for quite a while, so at some point you’re going to have to read about my Mexico trip. I’m sorry, those are the rules.

We went to Mexico City. Thanks to the pandemic plus work and life, it was our first real vacation in seven years. Henry couldn’t come, as he didn’t have enough vacation days accrued in his new-ish job. Then my brother-in-law and his girlfriend asked us to go on vacation with them, and we were like, NO you come on vacation with US, and we dragged them along.

I’m not going to lie: it was fun. I’m not really going to write about the trip, though. I won’t tell you about the food (amazing), or the museums (large and varied). No, I want to talk about two misadventures: one was before the trip, and one during.

Before

The night before we left for the airport, Scott was racing to meet a deadline, and I was … sitting around. I had cleaned the house, I had packed. I had nothing to do. So the following thought swam into my head: “Why not try those press-on nails I bought?” I don’t know why. I never do anything with my nails. I’ve had these press-on nails in my bathroom cabinet for years. I’ve never used them. I don’t … do that. I don’t know! I just thought, Mexico City is a sophisticated metropolis, and I have to look fancy for it. Fancy nails are a good idea, I thought.

So I pulled them out of my cabinet and looked them over. There were two options: I could use a stick-on film to affix the press-ons to each nail, or I could use glue. “Well, obviously, glue,” I thought. “Because that will last longer.” And I followed the directions, as I do. I watched the tutorial video. How hard can it be?

And then I began the painstaking process of gluing my fingers together.

I wasn’t trying to glue my fingers together; I was trying to put the nails on, but YOU try putting a tiny dab of glue on a tiny little ovoid shape that you then use your meaty fingers to press (at a 45-degree angle?!) to your nail. Glue gets everywhere. Every time you pick up one of these plastic press-ons, also, you somehow manage to fling it across the room. Then you find it before the dog does and shove it on before the glue dries but while you’re applying pressure to your nail you’re realizing you’ve also managed to get glue on top of your nails and so when you release pressure the press-on is more stuck to the bottom of the opposite finger than the finger it was meant for. And while trying to remove that nail from the bottom of one finger you’ve suddenly stuck another finger to that original finger.

The nails I did manage to get on me, well, they looked weird. The nails were longer than I anticipated. And pointier. I have never in my life had long, pointy nails. But I had committed to the project, and so I forged ahead.

I finished my left hand, sort of, and then I got to the right, which meant I had to use a) my non-dominant hand and b) a hand that now had POINTY NAILS ALL OVER IT to put the rest of the nails on. It did not go well. There was cursing. Some of the nails were crooked. I didn’t realize how crooked until they were apparently soldered on, because I couldn’t adjust them for shit. I looked insane. I showed them to Scott. Those look weird, he observed.

I looked up “how to remove glue-on nails.” The company whose nails I had purchased had a breezy video about it. “Simply soak your hands for 30 seconds in hot soapy water,” it advised. “Add a little cuticle oil if you need to.”

Soapy water! Ha ha. I had no “cuticle oil,” I don’t even know what that IS, so I dumped some olive in there. And I soaked. And soaked and soaked.

After that didn’t work, I gave up. This would be my punishment. I would now have crooked pointy press-on nails and glue all over my fingers and I would look insane.

Then one of the nails spontaneously popped off. Maybe they needed time to loosen, I thought! I tried to remove some of the others. No dice. Now I had one naked stump of a nail and nine pointy dragon-lady ones.

I googled “glue-on nails won’t come off,” and the advice i gleaned was: soak your fingernails for fifteen full minutes in acetone. That’s a long time, it turns out! Your fingers really won’t like it! And fifteen minutes later, I still had nine pristine nails that absolutely would not move at all from their posts. So did the only thing I could think of, and I re-glued the one that popped off.

But clearly the acetone HAD loosened things, because throughout the trip, more nails popped off. One a day. Always only one, for maximum crazy-looking effect.

During

We visited a store that sold handmade artisanal crafts. There was a sign. The sign said (in English, because it was meant for me), “These are handmade artisanal crafts and if any moron breaks anything that’s here, they will have to buy it.”

Who would DO that, I thought. Honestly! Treats these artisanal crafts with some respect!

We were admiring the artisans’ handiwork when I spied a small pineapple. It was brown. Just a small, brown pineapple. “Huh,” I thought. “I don’t like that.” And then for no reason I can possibly discern, I picked it up. As you do with things you don’t like. “That’s unnattractive—time for me to take a closer look.” “There’s a homely little tchotchke; think I’ll get my pointy-fingered mitts on it.”

So I did, I picked it up, whereupon I learned it was not one piece, but two. Why? It was too small to contain anything. And yet. The top, naturally, fell right off, and bing-bonged from one shelf to the next until it landed on the ground and a big chunk of it chipped right off.

“It’s OK,” the man running the shop said, which I interpreted to mean. “You don’t REALLY have to buy it.”

“I’ll wrap it for you,” he added. Ah. I see. Gracias, señor. Gracias.

Anyway

Now we own a small brown pineapple but I don’t hate it? I even kind of like it, it’s cute. It’s cuter than my nails, which are all covered in glue that will never come off. And I learned two lessons: don’t try something new and glue-related just as you’re departing for the airport, and also take the signs seriously.