I bought a Ped Egg. I'm sure you've seen the
infomercial. If not, let me briefly describe this torture device to you.

Shaped like an egg to fool your senses into thinking it is safe for human use, this glorified cheese grater shaves off the top 45 layers of your skin with ease. Corns? Callouses? Extra toes? The Ped Egg can remove nearly anything!

I stopped at Walgreens one night to pick up diaper wipes, because we are always out of them. They had the Ped Egg on sale for $9.99. What a steal! I couldn't pass it up. I wear flip flops all the time, and by all the time I mean nothing else. My feet have to be pretty, you know? Anyway, I kept thinking about the infomercial where they rub it against a balloon and the balloon doesn't pop, so I thought, "How can I possibly injure myself with this?"

I have a bad history with my feet. I hate having them touched, so professional pedicures are a no-no in my world. I struggle through trying to maintain my foot grooming on my own. The last implememnt of torture I bought was a callous shaver. It's basically a razor blade with a handle, and it did not have a warning label. I nearly cut off my big toe with that damn thing, and I limped for a week. The Ped Egg seemed like a good idea to me. If it won't pop a balloon, then there's no way I could injure myself with it, right?

What they fail to mention in that infomercial is that the balloon was created by rocket scientists of a flexible material that is the secret love child of plastic and steel. It's like the Superman balloon, minus the whole "vulnerable to kryptonite" thing. Unpoppable.

So I take my Ped Egg home, excited about the beautiful heels that are sure to come as a result of my purchase. I put it together and scraped the top layers of skin right off my heels, with nary a nick or scratch. Success! The worst part of my experience that night was when my husband witnessed me emptying the secret chamber of dead skin snow into the toilet.

"OH MY GOD did that come from your FEET? EWWWWWWWWWWW!"

Achieving beauty is an ugly process.

I became addicted to the Ped Egg. Every time I walked into my bathroom, I was checking my feet for any sign of removeable skin. I told everyone I knew how much I loved the Ped Egg. I was like the Ped Egg poster child. Seriously. It was at a point where I was kicking myself (with perfectly smooth feet) for not having taken "before" pictures so I could tell the world about my success.

My husband hid it. He won't admit it, but I know he did. It just dissapeared one day. I know I needed to take a break from it, but damn. He stole my fun. Yes, I know I need a life. I went two weeks without the egg. I found it last night far underneath the bathroom sink, hidden behind the tampons and Windex. Don't panic - I wasn't cleaning. I was looking for the source of the pantiliners that my daughter was sticking to the living room walls. After I found it, I had to use it.

I guess I got a little over enthusiastic with the Ped Egg. I scraped and scrubbed and filed away the dead skin in a quest for perfectly touchable (be myself only, of course) feet. Little spots of blood appeared in a streak across my heel.

Uh oh.

I quickly checked the other foot and saw the telltale open raw spots on the ball of my foot. Oh, hell no.

Over enthusiastic might not have been the right terminology. Masochistic is a better fit.

I'm sure I'll be hobbling for a few days. Thank goodness I don't have any major walking to do anytime this week.

I hope the Ped Egg is having fun partying it up with the tampons, because it will be there for a while. If it comes down to a standoff between them, there's no doubt that the Ped Egg will win that fight. It can spit foot snow at them to blind them and scrape off their protective wrappers before they can organize their army. My tampons (and my feet) will never be the same.