I have the perfect outfit in mind for you: A supple linen blazer, three sizes too big, with the shoulder pads cut out. A cabbage-colored knit tank top. Figure-demolishing wide-leg trousers in a tofu color. The pièce de résistance: a strappy pair of faux-crocodile, kitten heel sandals. Here—you can borrow mine, I wear a size 14 extra wide, extra flat, but you can just wear them with an insole and—

Wait. Hold the phone. What’s that? What’s that about your feet? They’re… “busted,” you say? That’s fine. Thank you for your candor. Hmm. Well, in your defense, feet aren’t meant to be pretty. If they were, they’d just be hands. That’s why we invented shoes. The good news is we have the weekend to fix that. C’mon. You’re already a day late and a dollar short and we haven’t a moment to waste.

T-minus 48 hours until Monday: Give yourself a car wash

At first blush, this scrub mat looks pretty tortuous and kinky. Like a tickle device used by professional chefs. It’s actually a car wash for your feet. Let me explain. First, you stick it to the floor of your shower with the suction cups. Then squirt some body wash into it. I use this salicylic acid body wash (designed to humiliate people with bacne in the checkout aisle of CVS) for extra exfoliation. There are curved-up bristles to hit the sides of your feet, and there’s also a built-in pumice stone to do a quick loosening of heel plaque.

T-minus 36 hours until Monday: Bust out the file

It’s time for a sanding party. Put on a foot-grating playlist. Cut open a Trader Joe’s bag so it lays flat, and place it on the ground beneath you. This is to catch the shocking amount of dust that's about to fall. You can either go manual, or, if you’re a techie, you can go electric. Either way, I stick with a gritty file rather than a metal one because it causes me to worry less about mortally wounding myself. Scrape away at any problem areas and don’t forget your toe knuckles. I tend to leave a bit of callus behind because you need some protection from your shoes. Like, I once used Baby Foot and was rubbed raw from my Tevas, ruining yet another trip to Coney Island. Oh, and never file a wet foot. That’s all I’ll say on the matter.

T-minus 24 hours until Monday: Start painting

Paint your toenails with sheer red nail polish. Not milky, not pastel. SHEER. This translucent rose polish adds the faintest tint of color to make your nails look healthy or, at the very least, like they belong to a person that is alive. A single coat is all you need to make your twin trotters look like they’re blushing, like they know a secret. I know—painting your toes regularly is troublesome because your feet are very far away from your eyes, and to do it yourself, you must be very limber. This color, however, doesn’t have that problem because when it does chip off, it’s effectively undetectable. You could really get away with doing this once at the start of the season and not again until the next Marvel movie comes out the following July.

T-minus 12 hours until Monday: Lotion up

And of course, you must moisturize those crusty crusts. I’ve been addicted to using Mother Dirt moisturizer on my hound dogs because the formula (with squalene and linoleic acid) hydrates and spreads like a body oil, but sinks in like a lotion. It’s rich but not slippery. I put a squirt or two on my soles and (since I’m weird about touching feet), I rub them together like Birdman. I call this perverse gesture “cricketing.” The formula absorbs in no time, so you won’t end up with crumbs and cat hair stuck to your fancy prancers while you do high kicks like a Rockette. Whoopsadaisy! You kicked your shoe off and your bare, silken foot is exposed? I guess worse things have happened. :-)

—Or Gotham

Photo via Getty