As a fellow nail polish failure who found your journal through a mutual interest search, is it all right if I add you to my circle?

Sorry this is out of nowhere but I felt a pang of empathy before looking down at the giant gaping cracks on my nails.

Definitely! I think maybe we nail polish failures ought to stick together. (Your poor nails! Mine aren't responding all that well to my sudden interest in painting them, so I sympathize. They're bare right now and gasping rather desperately for clean air, I think....) What mutual interest brought you this way?

Mine aren't, either. I took my polish off today because it was so disgustingly thick (where it hadn't chipped, anyway). I'll try again tomorrow.

I searched for "nascar" at random and found your blog! :)

I keep telling myself that I'm keeping my brain flexible by teaching my non-dominant hand how to polish my dominant hand's nails, but it doesn't lessen my complete frustration at having to remove the polish and paint them again (and again and again). ...Which, come to think of it, may be contributing to my nails being so pathetic.

And woohoo for Nascar! Have you been a fan of the sport for long? I have to admit, I only discovered it five or six years ago, and I've done a very bad job keeping up with it. More for lack of time than anything else---it's *definitely* still the only sport I love to watch.

Mine definitely get worse the more frustrated I get. I'm a southpaw so painting my left hand is super-frustrating. I've probably spent three hours and half a bottle applying and removing polish. Swapping brands doesn't seem to help.

I've technically been a NASCAR fan for about 10 years but I went several years in college without watching so I'm just coming back to it. Do you have a favorite driver?

Maybe if we keep practicing...? We'll certainly have to trade techniques if we're so fortunate as to discover any that do us any good. Sigh.

I did have a favorite: Carl Edwards. I'm not sure if he'd be my favorite now, though. I'm so out of the loop. What about you?

Practice makes perfect, or so they say. Staying away from the very edges of the nails does seem to neaten it up a bit, although my greatest difficulty is in getting even a very thin layer of the stuff to dry in an hour.

I don't really have a favorite these days, although I've always had a soft spot for Dale Jr. and Jeff Gordon. My fiance just got into it and seems to be leaning Team Kenseth. Have you been to a race before?

::nods emphatically:: The polish dries relatively quickly, but it takes *hours* to cure completely. Like an obscenely long 12 hours in which sleeping and mushing the polish with my pillow will leave scars.

...It occurs to me suddenly that I may be too much of a perfectionist for this? Hmm. That bears considering...

Anyway, I usually slop polish all over my nail beds, but in the shower the next morning, it sloughs off the skin nicely (whilst staying on the nail, itself).

I have been to a race! My mom used to work for Nationwide, so she attended company events in one of the boxes at the top of Texas Motor Speedway; I've gotten to go with her a few times. (She's also met Carl Edwards, and I'm sure my choosing him as a favorite driver has a lot to do with her assertion that he's a tremendously nice fellow.) Have you taken your fiance to any races? And do you have a preference for live vs. television watching?

Oh, God, I've had that problem, too. A couple of weeks ago I tested my nails for dryness, applied top coat, and went to bed, where the polish on one finger promptly rolled off. :/ I think I may be too much of a perfectionist, too.

Oh, wow! I've never been to Texas but I think it would be a neat track to visit. I haven't taken my fiance to any races yet; but we're day-trip distance from Martinsville so I'm going to take him there in the spring if I've got a job by then. I don't really have a preference, although if I go I like to sit fairly high because of the danger and the fumes. (I have also plucked pieces of rubber out of my face the next morning. Eww...)

I suppose being perfectionists offers some benefits to offset our nail polish failure. Sigh....

I'll definitely keep the rubber-on-face in mind should I ever be so lucky as to attend another Nascar race in future. I've heard about accidents and such happening to people who sit closer to the track, but the fumes and rubber never occurred to me. I enjoy live and television races for different reasons, though the best complement to both is good company, so in that respect, I imagine it would be a lot of fun to day-trip to Martinsville with your fiance. I'll hope hard that you find that job by spring!