Troll toes

Over a month ago, my friend Kara called me on the telephone and asked me, "What do you have going on November 26th at 9am?" As I looked on my calendar and found nothing scheduled, she said, "Good, I just made appointments for us to get pedicures!" What a surprise! It wasn't that long ago that we had talked about me having a gift certificate for Spa-D'Athena that I had never used. I received the $50 gift certificate for my birthday, from my friend Jodie, when I was babysitting her kids, Ben and Emily. This was over 3 years ago! Thankfully the gift certificate didn't expire until 2011. However, at the rate I was going, it would have expired before I took the opportunity to use it. Coincidentally, Kara also had a gift certificate with an unused balance.

I have never had a pedicure before. I have never had a manicure either. I did have a gift certificate to this place from another friend (apparently my friends thought I was due for some pampering!) around the same time, which I had already used. I used it to surprise Scott and scheduled a couples massage. I really didn't like it that much. I guess I'm not much into romance? Anyway, I thought the massage was a bit painful and I didn't really like the fact that a stranger was touching me!

Kara picked me up this morning and we went to the spa for pedicures. It's a pretty fancy place and has actually been expanded onto since I was there last and is a very nice place. They offered us drinks, which I politely refused, when we arrived. Kara's glass of water contained a frozen strawberry! Fancy shmancy! I guess I should have taken advantage of such fancy water! :-)

We had to wait several minutes before they were ready for us, and when we got back to the room they told us to roll up our pants. I had a sudden feeling of panic. As you all know, I'm a very "low maintenance" kind of person, and during the cold weather, when I'm always wearing long pants, I tend to not shave my legs very often. Sometimes a stretch of a few months might fall between shavings. I couldn't remember if I had shaven my legs or not. When I was pulling my pants up to just above my ankles, the lady told me I needed to roll them up above my knees, or they would get wet. As I sat in the chair and slowly pulled my pant legs up to my knees, I stole a quick glance at my legs and was relieved to see that I had actually shaved them in the past couple of days. Whew! I think I would have completely bailed on the whole operation if I had not shaven my legs, as the hairs were probably at a length that they could have been braided. I could definitely be mistaken for a "granola girl", or a lady from France, by looking at my legs during the colder winter months.

Of course I brought my camera along just in case I needed it. You can definitely tell we are both scrapbookers, because Kara had her camera as well. As Kara sat in her spa/pedicure chair, her gal got straight to work. Kara must have made a comment about her toes and being embarrassed or something because the next thing I know I hear them talking about troll toes. I think this gal is definitely a "true blonde" as she was very ditzy. She asked Kara what a troll was. Hmmm...............her parents apparently didn't read the classic children's story "The Three Billy-Goats Gruff", which could also explain why she was "such a blonde"!

Kara's comment about her toes struck up interesting conversation. The ladies were talking about peoples' toes and actually told Kara that her "toenail tag" was very common and most people have it. They guessed this to be true for about 4 out of 10 people. I didn't see what exactly it was Kara was talking about with her baby toe, but I asked her if it was something like a dew claw? LOL!

Then, as my lady was working on my feet, she was commenting on MY toes! Apparently my toes are even more rare! She said that my baby toenail was very much "normal" and was the same size as my other toenails and this happens in about 2 out of 10 people. Apparently it is rare enough that the lady working on Kara's feet had to steal a glance! Thanks for documenting this for me on film Kara!!! :-)

Kara sits back and relaxes while enjoying her pedicure.

Once I had discovered that I had actually shaved my legs, I was able to relax a little and enjoy my spa treatment. As I said before, I have never had a pedicure before. There was quite a bit of dry skin around my heel and on the balls of my feet that she filed right off. I think I may have to find one of those files to use on myself in the future! I certainly won't be snagging my feet on the sheets now!

I didn't realize a pedicure also involved a little massage of the calf muscles as well, and you can't believe how relieved I was that I didn't have a forest growing on my legs for someone to actually see AND touch! I am a big believer in things happening for a reason, and apparently this was why I felt compelled to actually take the time to shave them the other day.

I picked a bright sparkly red color for my nails.

Look at those beautiful NORMAL toes! They even put a pair of disposable flip flops on your feet so you don't mess the nail polish up with your shoes when you leave. Thankfully Kara has done this before, so she told me to bring flip flops with me, so I didn't have to actually wear these foam flip flops outside.

I think I like Kara's color of polish a little more than my own, but since I'm not the one going to Mexico, to spend Thanksgiving on the beach, no one is going to be seeing my beautiful toes anyway.

After having our pedicures, we went to this room to put our toes under a dryer to speed up the process a little bit before heading out into the frigid North Dakota morning!

I enjoyed my "spa day" with you Kara! Thanks for taking the initiative and making the appointments, as I'm sure my gift certificate would have expired before I took the time to do actually do it!

It was back to reality after Kara dropped me off at home. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

DU let out of work early today for the Thanksgiving holiday. I decided to wait until after I picked the kids up and Scott got home so we could all go to the grocery store together to get the thing we need for our Thanksgiving dinner. Let me tell you, going to the grocery store at 4:45 Thanksgiving eve is a BAD IDEA! OMG! I have NEVER seen that many cars in the parking lot at Dan's at one time, and there were so many more coming into the parking lot that it was a ZOO! Thankfully we didn't have to get TONS of stuff, so we weren't in there that long, but I was getting cart rage in the short amount of time we were in there. It didn't help that I had kids hanging off the cart causing me to be unable to push it, let alone steer it. I saw one of the school secretaries there and she and I both said at the same time, "This was a really bad idea!"

The kids and I watched The Journey to the Center of the Earth tonight. I got the movie from Netflix. Gage has several pairs of 3-D glasses, but I don't think the DVD version is 3-D? Either that, or Gage's glasses weren't very good?

Grus was totally unimpressed with the quality of these 3-D glasses. None of us kept them on during the movie since they didn't seem to enhance the quality of the movie.