Oct 26, 2022 3 min read

As I’m typing this week’s musings, I’m looking down at my fingernails and am nearly ready to hide them in shame. What a mess they are! Not that it’s anything different than my standard operating procedure.

Between doing projects and work around the house and in the yard, playing golf, buckling and unbuckling ski boots all winter and generally just being hard on my hands, my fingernails are and pretty much always have been a disaster. Being that I work on television, you would think that I would always make sure to have a perfect manicure when I’m pointing at the weather maps. Not so with this gal. I try. I really do. I used to have very strong, thick nails when I was young, but they’ve since evolved into paper-thin, splitting, chipping, weak little nubs.

Through the years, I have tried everything to make my nails stronger from vitamin supplements to massaging moisturizer into the nails and cuticles. I use different types of polish and brush on hardener, but they simply chip off as soon as I look at my nails cross-eyed. I look at some of the celebrities today with those extremely long, almost scary looking spiky artificial nails and I always wonder how they function with those claws? I mean, how do they wash dishes or button their shirt? I guess there’s a technique to it, but I don’t think I could manage daily life with two-inch-long nails.

Many of my coworkers, girlfriends and relatives have used artificial nails through the years and I’ve tried them a few times. The most recent was for my wedding this past summer and they were amazing. The technician used some special powder and liquid along with acrylic nail tips that congealed into perfect little light-pink nails, which lasted all the way through scuba diving on our honeymoon and even a few weeks afterward. I was transformed and decided to keep up with the “dip powder” nails once a month. That lasted two months before I got sick of making an appointment and paying the bill. I began to wonder what this stuff was doing to my natural nails underneath all of the goo.

I started to let them grow out, soaked them in acetone and filed away at them every few days, but parts of the acrylic tips were so stubborn they just wouldn’t budge. Finally, they’re gone and one of my girlfriends turned me on to fake press-on nails. These days, those little gems are brilliant! The adhesive is so strong that I didn’t even need nail glue and they still stayed in place for almost three weeks. Best of all, they only cost $6 per box, and you just pop them off when you want a change. That’s my idea of easy peasy lemon squeezy beauty!

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.