Adventures in South Dakota

All weekends go by too quickly, and all Mondays generally suck. However, one could convincingly argue that weekends when your long distance boyfriend is in town fly by extra quickly and Mondays when you're traveling to Sioux Falls, South Dakota extra suck. And by "one" I mean "I."

So, at about 7:30pm today I found myself in the Courtyard Marriott of Sioux Falls, SD....which looks strikingly similar to the Courtyard Marriott in Peoria, IL. Fun fact: both are located in mall parking lots. Once checking into my hotel, I decided to get wild in South Dakota. Aka get a pedicure.

I usually don't get mani/pedis because I think they're a waste of time - but it turns out, when I'm in South Dakota, wasting time is exactly what I'm going for.

I wandered into the Sioux Falls mall and immediately saw the aptly named "Nails Time" storefront -- as if God himself was thinking of me when he laid out this generic middle-American suburban shopping center.

Thirty seconds into my Nails Time adventure, I remembered another reason I don't like getting my nails did on the reg -- all the workers are chatting it up in a foreign tongue and I have no idea what they're saying. Since I'm both self-absorbed and paranoid, I usually imagine they're discussing how ugly my feet are, which makes me want to drink acetone.

One time I was getting a pedi in Dayton with my also-tall twin sister, and the lady kept holding up her hand high in the air making the "tall" motion, if you will, while yipping away to her co-worker in an unidentified language. To which I responded "Yep, we're tall." They both seemed shocked! Um, hello. I am fluent in hand gestures. And notably not blind.

Back to Sioux Falls. I was happy to find that Nails Time had time for me. As I was sitting in the massaging chair, I came to the realization that not only was I the only customer in the nail salon under 50, but also the only one not getting something "Red, white, and blue...fun for the 4th of July!"

This made me feel oddly mature. Not a sensation I'm accustomed to.

One special touch about Nails Time was that I was always seated near the entrance so I experienced the joy of listening to two different radios simultaneously. The mall hallway random-90's radio (think: Fergie and the Pussy Cat Dolls) combined with the Nails Time John Tesh radio show. (think: Elton John and "how you can control your road rage by thinking positively.")

So...when do they tour together, P-Diddy?

In addition to the double dose of glorious music and real-life advice ("remember, sometimes you forget to turn off your high beams too."), X-Men was playing on the TV, muted. So I kept trying to read the subtitles, listen to two songs at once, and understand Kevin's thick accent as he told me to "relax my hands" 30 times in a row. He apparently didn't notice how distracting the Fergie, Elton John, and Hugh Jackman combination was. 

Overall, a fairly successful SD night. I don't think I caught any diseases from the tools used at Nails Time (bonus!), and Kevin, my manicurist with disturbingly long fingernails, told me I have really nice nail beds. There's one for the resume!

I know what you're thinking "OMG Joyce why don't you post a filtered instagram pic of you're new mani and pedi!!" The answer is simple - I would rather bathe in a pool of rubbing alcohol and razor blades than post a picture of my feet on here. So I'm going to go with baby otters instead:

I want to propose this solution: any girl, in any state, when you're considering posting a pedicure picture to any form of social media, instead, post a baby otter picture.

Happy Monday, happier Tuesday, homies.