You know, with bright polish on my toes, my feet actually look quite nice -- teeny splashes of hot-pink, contrasting nicely with dark indigo jeans. I am so looking forward to Friday, I can hardly wait. Trying to figure out what to wear, still -- and then I was rummaging around in the bathroom cabinet and came across a Clinique 'free with purchase' ancient cosmetic bag, stuffed full of old bottles of nail polish. I used to regularly get mani-pedis in Brooklyn, and bring in my own colors. But since we moved up here I haven't painted my nails, and honestly pretty much forgot about the idea. It would be nice to have lacquered fingernails, I suppose -- I'll bet anything Dora Maar's hands were always exquisitely done - just so -- but it's too impractical for me, I'd have to be a slave to my manicure, of which I have no interest. I can't very well not be able to seize a passing thought and wish to jot it down -- but rats! my nails are wet! No, that's not for me. Toes, on the other hand -- that's a different story. There I can afford to offer a surprise. I may look like a bit of a church lady with the, I'm afraid, fairly staid-looking outfit I'm thinking of wearing (I simply don't own anything 'hot') -- oh, but when I kick off those low, flattering, cut-out heels -- won't you be surprised at the bright pink glamour 'for eyes only' beneath! What shade is that, I imagine him asking. Oh no I don't -- what red-blooded male would possibly ask such a thing, who cares?! But I imagine such a question - because I don't have a ready answer. You see, the ancient bag of myriad polish -- some of the bottles were glued shut, I would have needed pliers to pry them open -- the long & short is, I wasn't crazy, all these (seven-plus) years later, about any of the shades. So in mad fashion, I started to fiddle with the formulas, mix my own shade, pouring a bit from this Opi bottle, into that Essie...

Coney Island Cotton Candy plus Matterhorn Mauve (think: Raving Raspberry) plus a label-less overly-white cold pale pink... tweaked, poured, from flagon to flagon, and back again, shaken, stirred, tested on one toe then another, considered and compared, has yielded a rich, exciting but not overly LOUD! shade == that I might call --

well, not Botticelli pink -- that was the initial extremely timid shade I started with, in my initial doctorings, my painted nails looking hardly any different from au naturelles -- ah, but in my magical thinking, I am so looking forward to completely losing myself, and giving myself, and giving all, and receiving all -- I am 'making an effort' - by the mere gesture of painting my toes, even if the color hardly registers

Ah - that was just a phase in my little pedi-philic journey this afternoon == I have since abandoned the prim, for a far more vibrant color -- befitting, and perhaps reflecting more accurately - if polished toenails are a reflection of mind -- of my highly libidinous state ---

with all my experimentations & concocting of colors & testing on one pedal digit or another -- my feet are a bit of a colorful mess at the moment -- I realized that, for all my bottles of enamel -- I was out of nail-polish remover -- and so I emailed D, on the road, somewhere, who just valiantly flew up the stairs stating that he'd bought acetone with respect to some carpentry-related...

So -- I will do over my nails, perhaps right after I launch this post. And the name of the fresh, unique, lovely, mellow yet bright sexy color? Perhaps we can call it -- move over, Paris -- Albany April. Sigh!