Ursula (not so) Proper

So, my day at the spa… it was nothing short of decadent.

I arrived at the spa around 10:30 a.m., slipped into a robe and slippers and headed off to the relaxation room where I had a pumpkin muffin and some chai tea. I curled up on a leather couch and read a magazine for a while before Ricardo, the massage therapist, came to get me.

My first treatment was the Vichy Shower. Ricardo started off by scrubbing my entire body with green tea and crushed rice. After the scrub, he applied a heated sea kelp and green tea masque to my entire body and then wrapped me in a plastic sheet and laid a heavy, warm blanket over me. From there I laid in the sheet, marinating like a Thanksgiving turkey, for about 20 minutes in the candle lit shower room. I listened to music for a while, but dozed off after five minutes or so.

When Ricardo came back, he removed the plastic sheet and turned on the Vichy to rinse the masque off my body. There is no way to properly describe the feeling of the Vichy other than to say that it feels like having a jacuzzi from above while laying in bed.

Towels are draped over you the entire time and the weight of the wet, warm towels on one part of your body while another part is being massaged is just heavenly. It’s a feat of synchronicity really… wet towels removed and replaced with warm, dry towels as the shower heads are repositioned over and over to cleanse and massage. In the end a warm coconut lemongrass body mousse was massaged all over my body.

After the Vichy I headed back to the relaxation room for strawberries and lime water. I tried to snuggle up on the couch with a magazine again, but another patron insisted on quizzing me all about the Vichy as she was on her way in for the first time. She was nice enough, but I wasn’t in a talkative mood - I wanted to cocoon inside myself for a while.

Eventually Ricardo came back to retrieve me and take me into a massage room for an hour long Swedish massage. It wasn’t long before I was drifting in and out of conciousness as Ricardo massaged away at my neck and back. The best part of the massage was, when I flipped over on my back, Ricardo positioned the table to that my head was raised and my knees where elevated - much like lying in a recliner. It was nothing extraordinary, but it was a position I had never experienced in a massage before and it was actually quite nice. No stress on the back at all because I wasn’t lying flat on a table.

And the hand massage… oh, the hand massage. Spending 12 hours a day typing and clicking away at a mouse really does a number on my hands. Having your hands flexed and manipulated and rubbed is so, so nice.

After the massage I headed back, again, to the relaxation room and found it empty for the first time all day. I curled up in a chair and tried to read again, but I was just too out of it by that point and time. So instead I just closed my eyes (and mostly likely drooled) until the facialist came out to get me.

The facial rooms, like every other room at the Om Spa, are candle lit and have “spa” music piped in. The effect is nothing short of being in your mother’s womb, I imagine. So, coupled with my two hours of massage prior to the facial, I was like jelly and was finding it hard to carry on a conversation with the tech. Luckily she seemed to get the idea and stayed quiet for the most part.

The facial included a face, neck, shoulder, arm and hand massage (the third time in as many hours that these parts had been massaged) and soon I found myself back asleep. So, there we were - the tech scrubbing away at my face - and me half asleep. I’d wake myself up every so often as I would catch myself starting to snore.

The facialist woke me up and sent me back to the relaxation room where I found chatty Cathy again. I asked her how she had enjoyed her first Vichy and she gave me a disappointing, “Eh. It was okay.” I would say I was shocked as I have never known a woman not to fall in love with the Vichy at Om, but I was too out of it to muster a shocked emotion.

Lastly I headed to the nail salon for a pedicure. I had to start by explaining to the nail tech why I had exactly one toe nail painted. I’ve been wearing the fake toenails for a while as I haven’t had time for a pedicure, but one fell off - so I painted the toe to match. When I took off the fake nails in anticipation of my pedi today, I was left with one painted toe nail and no polish remover to do anything about it. So, one painted toe it was.

The pedicure chairs at Om aren’t like other nail salons where you are laid up in an over-sized massaging recliner. Instead they are big cushy thrones with throw pillows. I always feel like the Princess and the Pea there as my legs are so short that my feet barely reach the soaker tubs.

The pedicure did a nice job of waking me up so that I could actually drive home. The nail tech was super friendly and chatty and I had a nice time talking to her… though hours later I couldn’t tell you exactly what we talked about as my brain still wasn’t functioning properly. She managed to get my feet looking nice, which is a near impossible feat, and feeling smooth as a baby’s bottom.

When I finally got ready to leave the spa around 3:00 I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they had instituted a points system since my last visit and that all my prior visits had been converted to points. So, on top of the gift certificate I had from Bryan, I had another $15 in freebies from the spa. Adding the money my dad sent me for my birthday, I ended up spending a whopping $60 for an entire day at the spa.

Amazing, amazing day…

My only afternoon meeting for the day was canceled just as I was about ready to leave work. So, I decided to stay home today.

Tomorrow I spend 5 hours at the Om Day Spa getting a Thai body scrub/Vichy shower, a swedish massage, a facial and a pedicure.

Goodbye to the craptastic month of July, hello beautiful August!

While standing outside work today a man walked by me and started talking on his cell phone ear piece… one of the old ones with the wire that goes from the phone to the ear piece.

“Yeah,” he started as he walked closer to me. “Who would’ve thought that this time last year I’d be the world’s most successful gospel singer?” He glanced over at me as he put emphasis on the last few words of his sentence.

He then turned around and walked by me again as he began to sing some hymn at the top of his lungs.

He walked by me a third time. “Yep. I’m gonna buy that mansion in Phoenix like we were talking about,” he said.

Of course I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure this conversation was taking place between him and a silent cell phone strictly for my benefit. And I admit I was secretly wishing that he’d get a real phone call in the middle of his pretend phone call just to blow his scheme to hell.

“If you only knew,” I thought to myself. “Joke’s on you. The last way to try to pick up this girl is by claiming to be a gospel singer.” You know, waffling between the Atheism and Agnosticism as I do.

But I give him props for creativity. Rarely a day goes by that I’m not propositioned in one way or another while hanging around outside theNonprofit. I’ve had marriage proposals, back-handed compliments and offers of straight-out sex, but rarely has anyone claimed to be the world’s MOST SUCCESSFUL GOSPEL SINGER… as he waits for a city bus… using his incredibly outdated cell phone.

The locale of theNonprofit certainly lends itself to some great entertainment.

Honestly, folks, I’m a bit sick of the Democrats v. Republicans debate. So I hesitated to post this because I don’t want to jump on any particular political bandwagon at the moment (shocker). But I just couldn’t pass this up.  It’s about stupidity folks, not politics…

“I believe 9/11 could have been prevented if we’d had a Republican president at the time,” Meehan said Wednesday on CNN’s “American Morning.” [Source]

Many thanks for all the wonderful comments, phone calls and emails. Your thoughts and well-wishes are so appreciated. I am oddly at peace and relieved tonight. While I am sad, of course, I am happy that it is over. I knew he wasn’t coming home from the hospital - he had been butchered beyond repair - and am taking solace in the fact that the inevitable took place so quickly.

My Grandfather was a hard man to like in some ways, but I loved him always.

He loved a good argument and he relished in pulling people’s triggers - which is what made him hard to like. He wore green coveralls and a straw hat nearly every day of my life. You knew it was a special occasion when he broke out the blue, short-sleeve, coveralls.

I spent many a summer riding all over Colorado and Wyoming in his motor home - camping, fishing and exploring. He took me to Mount Rushmore for the first time, was never shy with an extra dollar, took my brother and I for root beer floats any time we asked and French onion soup at the “fancy” restaurant every Friday night we stayed with him and bought my first bra for me.

He was a good Grandpa to grow up with.

I woke up this morning and the first thought that popped into my head was, “I’m not going to work today. My grandfather took a turn for the worse last night.” I don’t know why I thought it… maybe I was just trying to make up some excuse in my head as to why I didn’t want to go to work today. But I shoved the thought out of my head because I have far too much going on at work right now to take a day off.

I let the dog out in the back yard and kept thinking, “I’m not going to work today because my grandfather took a turn for the worse last night.” By the time the dog made his way back in, I walked to the front porch, sat down and said to myself, “I’m not going to work today. My grandfather passed away this morning.”

And it wasn’t 30 seconds later that the phone rang. The caller ID said it was my father and I knew… “Your grandfather took a turn for the worse last night,” he said. “And he died this morning.” And I wasn’t the least bit shocked or surprised, because I already knew what he was going to say.