A strange thing happened to my fingernails in New Orleans. They turned gray.
I washed and washed them, but they got grayer and grayer as the days passed. By the time I came home on Tuesday, they looked filthy. I was so ashamed of them, I kept my fingers bent to keep the nails tucked into the palm.
On Wednesday morning at home, I brushed them with an old toothbrush and super whitening toothpaste, and they got almost clean. (If that hadn't done it, I was prepared to use bleach, even if it would make them brittle. Better gone than ugly....)
Then I ran my fingers through my hair. I run my fingers through my hair a lot - it's a habit. My fingernails immediately turned gray again! Whatever crud was causing it was in my hair!
When I was travelling with The Company, in NYC I'd get grit on the scalp, and have to brush my hair hard every evening. In Chicago, it was an oily deposit, and I'd have to wash my hair every other day (as opposed to my usual 3-5 days between washings). It's been at least a decade since I'd spent any time in a city, and I'd forgotten how bad the air can be. The New Orleans gunk seems to be like soot. Yuck!
It explains why I started sneezing as soon as I got off the plane, and didn't stop until I got home. I sneezed two or three times an hour the whole time I was in N.O. I'm not normally a sneezer.
To think people actually breathe that gunk, all day every day, and don't even notice! (And this is coming from a smoker!)
I guess I'm a country mouse.
~~ Silk
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