I have ugly hands.
I mean, they're not hideous looking, or bony, or sausage finger-y. But from the top knuckle up, they're a trainwreck, and there really isn't much I can do to fix them.
Let's start with my nails. My nails are oddly shaped. They have a very short nailbed, and they are oddly shaped at the base. Some of my nails have a nice round shape to the nail bed, like my thumbs and pinkies, or could. Some of them are more triangular, and no amount of work on my cuticles could cause them to retain a normal around shape. Because of this, I don't paint my nails. I don't bother manicuring or shaping them, since most of the time I keep them short for work (it's hard to play piano with long nails!) I don't like to draw attention to them. And I usually spend a lot of time either biting or pulling back the tips of my nails.
The only time I ever like the way that my nails look is when I put acrylic french tips on them. The stuff used to bond the tip and the nail is enough to hold back the hideous cuticles of doom, and then they look nice.
My other problem is the skin around my nails - I like to pull on it. Most of the time it's dead skin and it peels away cleanly, but right now I have some nasty looking scabs around my right thumb, from where I have pulled too hard. This is mostly a nervous habit, something that I do when I am feeling anxious, or like I need to be doing something with my hands. Right now it's not so bad, since it's confined to one finger, but it's been much worse.
The best cure for that problem that I've found is to have the french tips put on, since I'm less likely to pick when my nails look nice. Unfortunately, it's an expensive habit to keep up, since I can't go longer than 2 weeks between fills or I start to pop them off, and I can't wear tips at work because of the whole piano thing (botches my wrist posture and aggravates my supposed case of carpel tunnel).
