Saturday 2 July 2016

SHIT HAPPENS AT THE SPA - WHY AM I SO AWKWARD?

I have just come home from an Endota spa treatment and I can’t believe how fucking awkward I am.  This is the second such experience in the past year.
In August last year, I decided to have my 1 hour massage on my birthday.  This sounds like a great idea but it was only months after my father passed away and being my first birthday without him, I discovered as I sat in the waiting room filling in the sheet and ticking the “no talking’ box that I was feeling teary and sad.  We started with a foot bath and I felt like I was going to cry so I started to talk.  I didn’t stop babbling until the whole hour was up and I realised that I had completely fucked up the experience.  I basically wasted my one hour massage because I talked through the whole thing.  The poor girl working on me must have been so confused and weirded out.  I am sure it must be noted on my file somewhere and that they draw straws when my name comes up for a treatment.  After today, there’s possibly a red flag.
So today I decided to use my foot treatment well before any occasions that could ruin it. Before any such treatment, one goes a little stir crazy in the bathroom.  Considering I was getting a foot treatment with a pedicure, you’d think I’d just turn up and let them do their thing.  No, I waxed and plucked every visible hair on my legs (and those three Maria hairs on my big toes), removed my nail polish which had been there for 2 months and had resulted in a discolouration stain on my nails, cut the nails and almost took an angle grinder to them to ensure she didn’t think I had horse hooves in my shoes.  Finally, I was ready.  I had convinced myself that I can actually turn up to the spa and relax and enjoy the treatment without being weird…I was wrong.
From the get go, it was awkward because it involves me.  I turn up at the exact time of my booking, even though I was asked to turn up 5 minutes early.  Some old bag driving a roller skate for a car pulled out of a side street and almost collected the car in front of me and we all slammed on our brakes.  She managed to see him seconds before impact but this was a sweat inducing incident for me because I am currently in a loan car from the panel-beating workshop who is fixing my dinged-up car at the moment.  We then had to wait for the bloke to get out of his car and give old Blue Rinse a piece of his mind.  His point was moot (or mute?) because she was a deaf as a post and all but put a trumpet to her ear after winding her window down at the pace of a weed smoking snail.  I could hear her from my car saying “Pardon?  What’s that?”  I watched him gesticulating in front of the woman, agitatedly tapping his toe on the asphalt and clenching his butt cheeks in an effort to control his ire.  She was nodding at him, like she understood, but I’m reasonably sure none of it went into her head because she’s extremely old and shouldn’t be on the road – she should be sitting in a wing chair knitting scarves and crocheting doilies.  The guy eventually gave up because she was nodding when she should have been answering his questions, so he got in his car and did a burn out when he took off.  This took about seven minutes out of my life that I will never get back.  By the time I parked and walked to the spa, the five minute early arrival was gone.  The cheery girl behind the counter greets me with, “Oh hello Donna, thank you for coming in early.”
Instead of politely nodding at her, I feel the need to state, “I didn’t come in early, I am at the exact time of my treatment.”  This was supposed to be an apology but I fear it came out as a correction because she started stuttering and blushing and I wanted to panic yell at her “Wait a sec, I’ll just start that again” and then run outside and re-enter the premises and say absolutely NOTHING.  Jesus.  I decide to just shut the fuck up and let her do her job but it’s too late, she’s giggling to cover whatever I made her feel.  Awwww man, I want to go home already.
She leads me into the waiting area and tells me my consultant/therapist (I don’t remember what her title is because I fail to notice the small things) will be with me soon.  There are two other people in there and it is silent except for the ’babbling brook in a glade’ music getting piped in and the scratching of the pen as the woman sitting to my left fills out her form.  She is so relaxed and in the zone that she is almost laying across the couch and I feel spa etiquette envy.  I want to talk to fill the void but remember that I am in a spa and I’m supposed to just shut up so I awkwardly sit perched on the end of the long lounge, which has too many cushions so I can’t sit back and look cool, and I have to sit on the end looking like I’m ready to take off at a sprint at any moment…like I spook easily.  My consultant (that’s what I’ve decided her title is) comes into the room and introduces herself, but of course I don’t retain her name because I’m stupid.  She asks if I have chosen a colour and points at the array of nail colours on display on the wall in front of me. I want to slap my forehead because I haven’t noticed them.  I didn’t know I was supposed to choose a colour because the poor girl who was supposed to tell me got all flustered because I did the weird shit when I first entered the establishment.  I am embarrassed that I am wasting her time and alerting everyone in the waiting room that there is a fuckwit in their midst so I feel the need to tell my consultant that this is my first time…like I’m a fucking virgin and she’s about to pop my cherry.  I am only thinking this but my face lights up and I almost give myself awkward burn when I leap up and my bag falls off my lap and lands with a loud splat on the floor.  This is the exact opposite of how one should conduct one’s self in a spa waiting area.  Oh my fucking God.  Then, instead of just picking a colour, I peruse the display like I’m choosing a new car colour.  My brain screams at me to hurry the fuck up so I reach out and grab a dark maroon colour and knock two other colours off and onto the floor in the process.  They’re all looking at me and I nearly set fire to my hair with my face…because it’s so hot with embarrassment.  She apologetically advises me that we’re upstairs.  I don’t give a flying fuck where we go, just get me the hell out of this room with all of these people witnessing and listening to my weird.
We finally make it up the narrow, steep staircase and into the designated room.  A relaxing aroma fills my senses and I am finally ready to chill in this dimly lit room.  It is warm and comfortable and I am excited for my foot spa treatment.  She advises me to take my socks and shoes off and put all of my stuff in the basket on the shelf.  The first thing I do is put my handbag in the basket, which is too small for the suitcase-esque bag I use, and the whole lot falls to the floor with a thump.  I giggle because I can’t believe I just did that and because I feel like a dick.  I quickly bend over and try to cover my embarrassment with words.  I am wondering why she is lingering in the room when they usually go outside while I undress so I whip my shoes and socks off and drop the socks into the basket (hovered my shoes over the basket before I realised they should go on the floor – I really shouldn’t be allowed outside of the house).  Then I went to my special place…and started removing my jeans.  I got them all the way to my knees, with my Bridget Jones style leopard print knickered arse up in the air before she declares in a panic, “Oh, you don’t need to take your jeans off.”  Of course I don’t need to take my jeans off, she’s doing my feet.  What a fuckwit!  I giggle again like I’m five and hoick my jeans up and wriggle my arse into them.  A Play School song pops into my head – something about jelly “…wibble, wobble, wibble, wobble, jelly on a plate…”  All the while she is nervously giggling beside me whilst I jiggle my arse back into my jeans.  Fucking hell! She asks me to take a seat so I do, with both of my feet splayed either side of the giant bowl of water in front of me.  It is actually hurting my knees to have my feet at this absurd angle but I don’t want to do anything without her advice because I’m just a walking blunder at the moment.  She sits before me and looks at my splayed feet, then back up at me expectantly.  I giggle again and I can tell she thinks I’m out there…like fucking Pluto!  She reaches for my feet and submerges them.
She wets my feet and applies an exfoliate, then rinses them off.  I want to groan in pleasure because her warm hands are magic on my tense feet.  I think “Wow this is relaxing” but the words that come out of my mouth are “Wow, that’s making me feel all floppy.”  Wait, what?  Why the fuck did I just say that?  She looks up at me like she thinks I’m a nut bag and I am looking back at her…because I am a nut bag and she says “Well that’s good, I guess.”  I watch her finish rubbing and rinsing my feet then choose that time to close my eyes and relax.  A nano-second later she dries my feet and I have to get up again.
She tells me to lie down on the bed face up, and she tells me where to put my feet.  I guess she does that because I have proven how fucked in the head I am and will more than likely lay face down with my jeans around my ankles. She asks if I am cold but I reply that I’m not too quickly because I’m suddenly nervous.  She walks around the side of the bed that I am lying on and asks if I would mind removing my glasses as she wants to apply a lavender-scented towel over my eyes.  I whip them off and hand them to her, belting her in the stomach with them as she tries to pass me.  She makes an “Oooof!” sound because I just punched her in the guts, and I start babbling an apology and the girl is flat out laughing.  She is astounded at my fuckwitism  I start to giggle too because I am embarrassed by my fuckwitism and can’t believe this shit is happening.  She applies the towel to my eyes and I sigh in relief and admonish myself, choosing to shut the fuck up from this moment forward.   She starts to wedge something between my toes and I am waiting for the pain of hyper extended toes because toe separators are a form of torture.  Applying them hurts like a bitch but removing them after the nails are dry evokes painful “ooh, aah” sounds from me when the toes are allowed to return to their natural space; the dints take hours to disappear.  I don’t feel any pain and think that my nails will rub and smudge because she hasn’t taken the proper precautions. 
She gets to work on my toenails filing (and I resist the urge to pull my foot away when the pinky is filed), pfaffs with the cuticles and cleans the bastards right up.  I am sure that if I remove the lavender cloth covering my eyes and sit up, I will hear Angels sing and see a warm glowing radiance surrounding my toes.  Next comes the massage.  Oh my God it feels sooooo damn good.  I have to physically stop myself from groaning in ecstasy as she firmly runs her thumbs up the underside of my foot, making me sink into the bed like a dead horse.  As she squeezes and pulls my toes, a ‘gdkt’ sound like cracking knuckles as she squeezes the ends of my toes.  It feels almost painful until the ‘gdkt’ and its ecstasy again.  She pulls on my feet and it tugs up to my hip joints and I’m sure I will be 4 inches taller when it’s over; it feels amazing.  Then she scrubs the shit out of them as she prepares to paint them.  Apart from the croaking frogs and singing crickets in the rain-forest that is piped into the room, there is silence as she bends over my toes and paints them.  I get an insane itch on my knee but cannot touch it lest I ruin the pain job.  It is all I can do not to twitch and I feel a film of sweat break out on my forehead.  I am thinking ‘Stupid, itchy knee” then I have to stifle a giggle because it sounds like I’m counting in Japanese.  Then something rolls from somewhere (wasn’t me, I am the epitome of a statue on the bed) but it makes a loud noise in the silence and I get such a fright, that I jerk and almost kick her in the mouth.  I felt her breath on my toes when I jumped so I know how close I got giving her a fat lip.  I am trying to stifle a nervous giggle and I can feel myself shaking with the effort.  I feel her hands still and I know she is looking up at me with a “What the fuck?” look.  I bite my lip and pretend to be normal, it doesn’t come naturally to me.  After an eternity, my nails are complete, she removes the cloth covering my eyes and I am allowed to sit up, s-l-o-w-l-y.  I am allergic to this pace and almost belt her in the face with my forehead because I sit up fast.  She tells me she will meet me downstairs but asks if I could please remain in the room (downstairs??) for five minutes before coming out to reception.
She leaves and I swing my legs over and make my way over to the basket to retrieve my shit.  I have brought thongs along so I won’t fuck up my nails but when I look down, the toes are separated by a cloth of some sort and I don’t know what to do.  She didn’t mention the cloth and I’m not sure if my nails are dry enough to remove the cloth so I stand awkwardly near the door wondering what to do.  Was I supposed to wait here for five minutes or downstairs?  I don’t fucking know so I poke my head outside of the door and look left and right a few times (I possibly look like Forrest Gump when I do this).  The door next to me opens and the consultant exits and nearly bounces off my face with her boobs.  I get such a fright at her unexpected arrival on the landing that I try to pull my head in and close the door at the same time and nearly rip my own ears off.  She puts a hand to her beating heart, she got a fright too, and asks if I’m okay.  I say “she told me to meet her downs stairs but to wait five minutes before going into reception and I don’t know if I’m waiting here or downstairs.”  She frowns at me and does that downward turn of the mouth thing that conveys “how the fuck should I know?”  I make a decision, tell her I’m going to wait down stairs and she nods, like “fine, just get the fuck out of my face.”  So I walk down stairs bare foot with the fucking material shit still woven between my toes.  I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do. I get downstairs and there is a pregnant woman in the waiting room and she looks at my feet and back up at me then smiles and offers me a tea.  I assume she is wondering about my woven toes so I just play it cool and pretend it’s normal to be sitting downstairs with your bag and boots on your lap.  The polish on my toes looks like gel and I am loving the shit out of them.  I read a pamphlet to keep up my ‘cool’ persona and notice the polish is for sale.  Gonna get me some of that shit, I decide. 
I wait ten minutes and she doesn’t show so I unwind my toes and slide the thongs on and go out to greet her at reception.  I can’t see a bin so I shove the material things in my bag.  My consultant is not there.  The same poor bitch is on reception and she gets flustered before I even open my mouth.  I tell her I want to purchase the colour used on my toes and she’s asking me what colour it was.  How the fuck would I know?  I tell her it’s still upstairs in the room.  A light bulb goes off in her head and she looks at her screen and finds the colour.  She turns around to the rack behind her and is picking up every colour but the one on my toes.  I tell her it’s the one on the end but she acts like I didn’t speak.  I say again. “It’s the one on the end. The far end…the opposite end.”  Dumb fuck must need a hearing aid because she’s still up the wrong end.  My consultant comes out and plucks the colour from the far end of the rack, like I fucking told her, and hands it to her.  Her face is flaming but I haven’t said anything so I shut up until she tells me to pay.
I walk back to the parking lot and have to sit through 2 sets of lights because even though there were a dozen people waiting when I got there, nobody thought to press the button.  Dicks!  Some bloke in a wheel chairs does a Kamikaze and zooms across the street when our walk sign should have happened.  He yells at us all standing there like stupefied cows that we have to press the button.  I want to agree with him but I’m part of the pack and have to shut up and eat shit silently.

When I get to my car, I use the blipper to open it but when I try to open the door, it doesn’t open.  The fuck?  I try again then spy my car four across.  What a tool.  I note that some arsehole has parked so close on the driver’s side that I’m going to need a can opener to get into the vehicle.  I manage to wiggle, gyrate and squeeze in and almost tear my tits and arse off in the process (bum, titty, bum, titty, bum, bum, bum), then it takes an eternity to get out without grazing the cars parked tightly next to me.  I go home and straight upstairs and Miss Marvelous has to endure my giggles as I relay the events.  She shakes her head and me and says “What the shit is wrong with you?”  I don’t know but shit sure does happen to me a lot.