Yes, I’d Like the Cucumber Eye Wrap, But Please Don’t Kill Me

Saturday was one of those days that I pleasured-delayed for so long because I was really looking forward to it. I had carrot and sesame body buff at Bliss Spa and it was truly amazing.

But let us look beyond the pleasurable parts the and take a closer look at the awkward/bizarre parts. I am lead into a tiled room with drains in the floor, not unlike the autopsy/dissection rooms you see on TV. In the center is a table that is lined with some sort of plastic-y wrap and aluminum foil. I realize that I will b wrapped up like a giant burrito. I am given the smallest pair of underwear that I have very seen and told to strip down, put on the tiny undies and lay on the table. So I am mostly naked, on a table, in a tiled room with drains on the floor, waiting for some woman I paid to come in a rub carrot mulch all over my body and wrap me like a burrito.

The woman was very nice, but very talkative, and I like to sort of chill during these sort of things and not feel pressured to make small talk while someone is folding down the blanket covering my breasts and rubbing hot oil on my chest. She told me, among other things, that I should grow my hair out because it would be “so awesome” long; asked if I was Southern when I told her my children’s names and three times asked me about my husband, to which I politely inserted “well, actually, I have a girlfriend, not a husband.” I am pretty certain she thinks that I am raising my babies with a friend of mine who happens to be a girl. I didn’t know how to be much clearer without drawing a diagram. Thanks, society, for leaving me without proper pronouns and titles.

Turns out it is rubdowns I love, not massages. So I loved this treatment. Massages hurt and force muscles and bones around in a way that is not very pleasing. But rub downs are amazing. Absolutely amazing. The best part was the Vichy shower at the end, which is basically a shower you take laying down. Five shower heads appear over my body and wash me clean of all the carrots and salt and oil and honey and milk. A shower while laying down, it felt oh so Jetsons.

There was one point when she placed a cucumber mask over my eyes, which was refreshingly pleasing, but then I started having all sorts of nightmares like “What if she tries to kill me?” and “She could just stab me in the stomach and no one would here my screams over the Muzak piped into the rooms.” I actually removed the mask for a second, such was my fear, and looked at her and she was wearing a giant white apron, like the kind butchers wear but vinyl. Seriously, my brain as in overdrive. But in the end, I actually was lulled to sleep while I was wrapped and I enjoyed every over moment of the event.

Afterwards I walked up to here and picked up a chocolate pizza for my visiting niece from this amazing place I will definitely be visiting that place in the fall and winter.

The weekend was lovely but short, which is my weekly complaint. It ended on a rough nighttime note: For some reason, Maddie woke up after being put down and screamed. Then Avery was started and woke too. She usually always sleeps through Maddie’s scream fests, so we know Avery was upset. We tried various methods and permutations (me with Maddie in the living room while Nicole was with Avery in the bedroom, etc) and switched babies and locations in an attempt to calm them, which we did and then put the in their beds (which made them scream again).

It ended with the four of us on our bed and the girls were laughing at each other, making dolphin noises back and forth and in general being the cutest that I have ever seen them be. It was as if they just discovered for the first time that they had a sister. Such a metaphor for life, I said to Nicole. Here were are going through this hellish night and not able to see a light at the end of this sleepless tunnel. I was cursing our luck, and lamenting the loss of my free time this night. And it ended on such a beautiful note. First, all that laying on the couch with a baby on my chest gave me much needed quiet time, time without the distractions of talk or TV or internet. Time to just think. And then that lovely family interlude with all of us on the bed. That is a memory that will far outlast the restless babies night image. But for that hour before, I was all doom-and-gloom and fume. Once again, life shows me that I have this image and plan and idea and this silly thought that I have control over anything. And life takes a turn and while it seems like this is all wrong in the moment, in the end it proves to be all right.

Pictured above, my little partners in crime.