Put your hands on me

Ahhh! As in spaaaahhh services. What a great gift!

My 70-something mother, who still believes that gift certificates expire, insisted that we use our spa service gift certificates before the year's end. I made appointments for her to have a manicure, facial and makeup application and for a massage and manicure for me.

If this were a mechanic's garage, we'd be coming in for an overhaul...okay, maybe just a tune-up.

I kept my mother busy chatting while we changed into thick, plush terry robes for our services. Robe? for a manicure, facial and makeup?? questioned my mom. I tried to reassure her and tell her that it's not like we'd be heading into the mall for some window-shopping between treatments.

My mom is pretty small in stature, a fact brought home to me when I saw her tottling around in her robe and rubber flipflops. Suddenly our positions had flipped and I was worried about her. Will she like her manicurist? She's never had a facial and she's got sensitive skin! Will she remember to tell the makeup artist that she's allergic to mascara??

With an uneasy smile, she waved and was lead away to her manicure while they put me in a "quiet room" to wait for my massage. They should call it the "nap room" because it was lined with daybeds, each equipped with huge rolled pillows and a fringed throw blanket. I napped for an unknown amount of time, occasionally hearing other clients enter and leave, including, surprisingly, one male spa-goer.

A dark-haired man with a strong eastern European accent soon arrived and called for me to follow him. I thought he was an assistant, but NO! he was my massage therapist. Standing there clad only in a robe, in a small, darkly lit room alone with a man and a bed - - okay, it was a table- - how would this work exactly??

We decided that he would work on the back of the body (his phrasing) so as to concentrate on my sore back and shoulders instead of a full body massage. That's fine, I really wasn't looking forward to some strange fellow (read: not cute) massaging "the front of my body."

Laying on my stomach and putting my face into what seemed to be a small, padded toilet seat, I tried to relax and not laugh as my cheeks got squished and pushed up into my eyeballs with each deep rub.

At one point, my masseur imbedded both thumbs at the base of my cranium and pushed. I'm imagining my head popping off and rolling on the floor like a champagne cork. Biting lip to surpress giggles.

More oil, more pressure points, more wimpering (me, not him) and I'm done after 50 minutes.

He left the room to get some apricot nectar for me (nice!) and then asked if I wanted to shower. Pretty groggy, I said okay and was lead down a small hallway and toward a door between two others labeled "vichy room" and "facial room." He opened the frosted glass door with no lock and showed me what seemed to be the shower from solitary confinement at the local prison.

No, really, it was cute - - if you like brown brick- - with a hubcap sized shower head and half-gallon drums of shampoo, conditioner, shower gels and moisturizer. I took a quick rinse and decided to wash my hair at home later.

Time to get dressed for my manicure and find my mother, whom I hadn't seen in about 2 hours.
She emerged beaming, not only from the positive experience of the spa treatments, but from the unusually dramatic makeup applied by the technician. We're not talking Tammye Faye Baker, but it was a bit much.

All in all, another girls' night out success.