Thursday, September 15, 2005

A Week of Celebration: Day 4

Day 4:
The Haircut and Style

I got up this morning earlier than I had all week, my alarm was set for 7:00am. Why so early on my day off? Well it is because I had an appointment for a haircut and style at 9:00am and I had to get ready. Yes, for some reason I felt it was necessary to get up, wash my hair, mousse it, blow dry it, and curl it all before going someplace to have someone wash my hair, cut it, mousse it, blow dry it and curl it.

I have to say that I loved getting my scalp massaged. I loved sitting there getting my hair cut and styled, and afterwards I loved my hair. It was a great time.

The Massage

I went for my very first massage today. I was a little nervous actually, but afterwards I was hooked. I mean it is easy to imagine how a massage would feel good, but it was so much deeper than that. Raylene, the registered massage therapist, found parts on my body that were sore that I didn't even know about. If that sounds a little hokey it isn't. The truth is, I just didn't remember I had been sore. She had me fill out a form where I was able to indicate areas of pain and levels of pain. I left it completely blank. I was certain I had nothing wrong that I would consider worth mentioning. Well as she was massaging I noticed that she was concentrating on this one area that hurt when she pushed on it. The location of the pain immediately reminded me of holding the phone cradled between my shoulder and ear. In fact now I could remember that this area often caused me problems. Not pain, but definitely discomfort. I told her why that part was painful now and she was then able to tell me that given that sort of posture and pain my back would likely be compensating by straining certain muscles on the other side of my back. She then moved to that area and to my surprise was more pain. I was very impressed that she was able to tell me where there would be pain, and then in fact there was pain there. The part I found most interesting though was she said that I was very tense, and after the massage I may find that I am light headed and dizzy. I thought this was a bit strange so I asked her about it. She told me that loosening the muscles increases your circulation. When the muscles are massaged the blood vessels in them are opened up, allowing more areas for blood to flow. Since you only have so much blood, it makes you feel light headed because that blood has more places to flow to and it is spread thinner. After the massage I did feel dizzy for a second or two, but after that I noticed that I felt very different than when I went in.

The Pedicure

I went to Marca for my pedicure and I wasn't very impressed. Marvel is an aesthetics school, and the pedicure was to be done by a student, but I was sure it was going to be great. I was quite excited, as I have never had a pedicure before, but I ended up waiting for 15 minutes after my appointment time before it started. While I waited I saw several pairs of students go to the pedicure room where one of each was to receive a pedicure from the other. I watched as the receivers all began soaking their feet in a cloudy white liquid. They stayed in the water quite a long time, I would say close to ten minutes, then by the time they were getting their townails looked at I was just heading in. My foot soak lasted almost 1 minute so I already knew something was wrong. When the girl was cutting my toenails, she got my skin twice - Ouch! My foot massage was about 10 seconds per foot. After she tested my nails she said I was all dry and ready to go. I stood up and she said "Finally! Now I can go on my break!" As I walked away I noticed that even though I had open toed shoes, there was a little bit of leather extending over the big toe, and I felt my toes sticking to it.

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