Thursday, December 22, 2005

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.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

On the road again

A friend once told me, "You know, if you had a reason to stay home (i.e. boyfriend, husband), you wouldn't be traveling so much."

I'm not sure if that was an attempt to identify my apparently socially crippling status as a 40-year-old single woman or just a statement of the incredibly obvious. Either way, I'm very happy and excited about my upcoming trips in 2006.

So there!

In January, Firecracker will be working in Connecticut and invited me to meet her in New York to hang out in the Big Apple one weekend. How fun will this be?!?!? Hotel in Times Square and a Broadway show!

Nothing in February...so far.

March for me means SPRING TRAINING. For one weekend, I get to escape the damp, bone-chilling cold that is Chicago in spring and make a break for it. How does this sound? Cold beer, hot sun and baseball? Firecracker and I will be cheering on our Cubs (and celebrating her birthday) in Arizona for one weekend in March.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I attended two weddings in Europe last summer. (Cha-ching!!) Another wedding is on the books, but it's local...sorta. A former colleague of mine ran off to a Justice of the Peace (how totally cute is that!), but the formal wedding celebration will be in April. I originally thought it would be in Chattanooga, Tennessee (where the bride is from), but rumor has it, the weekend will take place in North Carolina (where the bride's grandmother lives).

Oh, another minor complication to the April wedding celebration is the fact that the first day of it (April 7) is also the Chicago Cubs' home opener against the rat-bastard St. Louis Cardinals. Is it just me or am I a magnet for strange situations like this?

That brings me to May, which is almost SUMMER!!!!!! No need to go anywhere during summer in Chicago. Everything you'd want is right here - - warm weather, baseball, street fairs, music festivals, etc!!

Let's go '06!

Monday, December 19, 2005

Mission accomplished...sort of

I'm feeling much more in control of my holiday gift-giving now, having secured nine- - count 'em NINE- -Christmas presents in a little under two hours of shopping on Saturday!

Feel free to be impressed.

I'm a good shopper. By that I mean, I decide what to buy, go into the store and buy it, and GET OUT! None of this lollygagging around the mall, hoping the perfect gift idea will jump out and bite me in the ass!!

I also try to get pretty good value for my money. That's not to say that I won't spend quite a bit of money on Christmas gifts. I always do that. I also attempt to balance my desire to have a very happy recipient with my need not to go broke!

One Christmas present that was purchased on Saturday has definitely met the "good value" requirement, but may also end up being a royal pain in my backside. Let me explain:

With several gifts already purchased, I came upon a very pretty cashmere sweater that I thought would be perfect for my sister-in-law. She and my brother have been married since I was in grammar school, so I've never felt that we were close buddies what with the difference in age and life experiences and all.

Anyway, the sweater was almost $100 (out of price range), but the 30% off sale slipped it right under the radar and onto the cashier's counter. This is where it gets interesting. The cashier announced that she had an extra discount card that she had just scanned and I would receive an extra $50 off!!! The wonderfully soft and luxurious $100 sweater would end up costing me a bit over TEN DOLLARS!!!

Great, right!?!?!

Think this through with me.

It's Christmas Eve and my sister-in-law opens the gift (yes, we open most stuff on Christmas Eve, I don't know why) and decides she doesn't like the color or it doesn't fit or she's allergic to cashmere. For whatever reason, she decides to return it. Walking up to the customer service department after Christmas, she is told that she will receive a TEN DOLLAR CREDIT.

Please!! For my sake, let's all say a little prayer that she loves the sweater and it fits!!!