Come Hither, My Little Flipper-Babies

This past Thursday was my first Spa Massage "class," and it was absolutely nothing like what I'd expected. First off, it's not really a "class" per se (hence the quotation marks). Apparently we spend only the first five weeks learning about 5 different spa massage techniques which we will spend the next 10 weeks using on paying clients that sign up for appointments through the clinic. So no grades, but I'm finding myself a wee bit terrified at the prospect of being thrown in with actual living non-students that I basically will have the opportunity to a) scald, b) fuck up, or c) stone to death. Yes, mildly intimidating. We do get to keep tips though, which rocks. And we don't get graded, which also rocks.

I ordered myself a new set of scrubs for the occasion, mostly after our instructor looked around at everybody while discussing cleanliness and scrubs and all that and stated that we "looked ok, for the most part." Always the paranoid one, I assumed that the "for the most part" was intended for me, seeing as my white scrubs top is not quite so white anymore and was kinda scraggly to begin with. So woot woot to new tie-in-the-back and bell-bottomed neutral beige scrubs. *Waving hands in the air like I just don't care*

This week we learned how to do hand/foot paraffin waxes. It basically consists of having your hands and feet dipped into 120-140° hot wax and then sitting around for a while and watching it coagulate and make your hands look like you have creepy mime-mittens on. Upon receiving my hand and foot paraffin wax, I felt the urge to wave my waxy white hands around erratically and make monsterly noises a la House of Wax while lurching around the room, but then I realized there weren't really any monsters in that movie, per se, at least ones that make monsterly noises, so really, I'd have to be mute and sit motionless like the people in the movie who get made into wax figures if I really wanted to do an accurate impression, and that just seemed kind of pointless. So instead I just sat there for 1/2 an hour or so trying not to fall asleep.

I was initially a bit disgruntled because I thought paraffin was not vegan, but woot-double-woot, apparently that ain't the case. Thank god. Initially I wasn't all that impressed with the whole experience. My hands just felt softy afterwards, kinda like if I had put lotion on them, but without the lotion. Being that I'm not a spa-massage kinda gal (I'm more interested in medical-massage--massaging rich, vain folks don't do that much for me) I kinda scoffed. But on my drive home, I rubbed my cheek with my hand to alleviate an itch, and found myself thinking DAMN IS MY FACE DRY. But then I realized that it wasn't that my skin was suddenly dry, it was that my hands were suddenly 3x as sensitive as they had been earlier in the day. I spent the rest of the night touching stuff just to feel what it REALLY feels like when your hands are at maximum sensitivity-capacity. I never in a million years would spend money on one of these things (it's called a pot and a stove and some wax, folks) but hey, if you dig that kinda shit, you should definitely check it out.

And you can do so by signing up to be spa-ified by me on a Thursday night between 6 and 10 if you so choose (though not until November). You will have to pay, of course, but apparently our spa services are only a 1/3 of the price of the equivalent spa-services at actual spas, so perhaps that isn't TOO terrible of an idea for some of you. And I of course will not expect (or accept) tips from ya. What I'll be learning (and what I can inflict upon you) will be paraffin waxes (hand, foot, or full body (!!)), full-body herbal wraps (which apparently consists of a kinda sweat-inducing wrap with heating pads, a heated blanket, and some blankets soaked in kick-ass smelling herbs), reflexology (I poke-ah da feets and da hands), aromatherapy, and hot stone massages (this and reflexology are the two I'm actually looking most forward to learning about). So if you're interested, gimme a holler and I'll send you more details.

And for the record, if you come in for a hand paraffin wax, you get to wear little footies on your hands, which means you'll get to look and feel like a little Thalidomide flipper-baby! How can you turn THAT shit down???