Tinting time

After my New York girl time experiences I was all set to face similar issues when getting my eye lashes tinted here, however it seems it’s not such a rare occurrence and the first salon I saw in our neighbourhood does it. However they do it public style sitting up, just like New York – this time it was in a busy hair salon and really freaky.

It’s like taking some activity that’s totally private (oh I don’t know, perhaps stuff like cleaning your ears, pulling a wad of knickers from your butt, picking your nose, plucking/tweezing/waxing, bawling like a baby, picking your toenails) right out in to a public space. It took every ounce of will power (and I have a lot of that) and a whole lot of adrenaline (yuck clammy hands) to not open my eyes. Sounds simple right? Keep your eyes closed? I can’t even do that in a yoga class of 6 where I’ve been going for 3 years let alone in a busy salon, right by their waiting area, with my face pointing towards the people waiting and reflected in every mirror for people getting their hair cut to see! It’s not even that I wasn’t supposed to open my eyes, like yoga or eclipses or flashing epileptic rock band lights, it’s actually don’t open them in manner of Vampire Eric (my fav) going out into the sun light – searing burning pain the consequences of which would’ve been far more embarrassing than sitting there with eyes closed having a treatment that’s on their salon menu so everyone probably knew what was going on and was ignoring it anyway … well not that I could see!

The woman I had was very patient, she talked me through what she was doing, even though she knew I’d been doing this for quite a few years, and stayed nearby the whole time – I just bowed my head and squeezed each of my fingertips in turn in my lap and tried to visualise what each of my fingernails looked like (am not much of a visualizer either, way too practical, hence the choice of strange things to visualise) and it worked – after what felt like half an hour my eyelids stopped fluttering and I stopped sweating. I might not wear ridiculous high-heeled shoes or anything that causes blisters or stupid pinching clothes or scratchy zippers but in an act of vanity (and to stop all the comments about how tired I look) I’ll continue to put myself through this!