Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Sauna Trauma

I must apologise for the start of today's blog as it is little depressing at the beginning, but gets more light hearted as it nears the end.

After saying my last goodbyes to James yesterday, I went to work.  The weather reflected my mood.  It was still really foggy, quite dark and basically overall gloomy and it stayed like that for the rest of the day.  Although I had my music on shuffle in the car, every tune that played also seemed to reflect the sadness I was feeling.  Most songs in my short journey were by The Beautiful South.  It wasn't the words in the songs that mad me cry, just the fact that The Beautiful South are a band that both my kids and I love and used to listen a lot to when they were growing up. So the songs just reminded me of James and made me cry more.

I tried to keep my mind off him leaving but no matter how hard I tried, he was always in the back of my mind.  My hubby called a couple of times throughout the day to check how I was feeling.  He's so sweet, but that made me cry more (I did warn you that  I cry a lot).  I ate far too much at lunch (that's another weakness, over eating when I'm upset).  Half way through the day I read James' blog of the day which started me off again.  

There is a bit of a joke around the office at the moment about being old, fat and/or ugly, and if you're any of these (or all three, god help us), then you have to look out, or you may be out of a job!    As I am one of the oldest in the team, I am usually the centre of the joke which then leads to comments about the menopause (god, shoot me now).  Although its all done in jest, it sometimes starts to get to me.  Yesterday, something happened in the office to start this off again, needless to say, by midday after hearing this 4 or 5 times, I was NOT in the mood.  I had to force myself to keep quiet and smile and not bite someones head.  (hmmm may be menopause has hit....) 

A couple of weeks ago, I purchased two vouchers from Cobone, which included a Moroccan bath, back massage and nail polish renewal and sis-in-law and I went last night. Never having had a Moroccan bath before, I didn't really know what to expect.  I would have liked to have said it was lovely, but sauna trauma is all that comes to mind. 

As soon as we arrived, the large Russian woman handed us a pair of very small paper pants and indicated that we should put them on (her English level was zero).  Paper pants always remind me of magic gloves, you never think you'll ever get them on because they are so small, but then suddenly as if by magic they grow to whatever size your hands (or butts in this case) are, (good job the size of my butt).

I then asked 'Olga' (no idea if that was her name she just looked like an Olga), what we had to wear on out top half.  Nothing, she indicated.  I asked were the dressing gowns were, no response.  I'm not really known as a prude, and I love my sis-in-law to bits but I just didn't want to sit in a steam room in my birthday suit for all and sundry to see, and I'm positive no one wants to see my privates either.  So after a fit of giggles, we decided that we should were our swimsuits.  When Olga came back into the room, she looked disgusted with us, pointed her finger a few times, grunted and walked out of the room.  (we just laughed more).  Olga, brought in another lady who explained that we shouldn't worry and that Olga had seen everything before.  Whereby I explained that she might have seen everything before, but I hadn't.  But it was no good, we lost the battle and we both went into the Sauna of Trauma, wondering if we would ever come out again.

Thankfully, it was extremely steamy and to be honest, we could hardly see our own hands never mind each others bits.  We stood in line whilst, Olga took it in turns to hose us down with a shower (It reminded me of a Sunday morning in the UK when men wash their cars and then rinse them down with a hose pipe ).  Then one by one, she lay us down on the bed and rubbed some awful smelling gunge all over us.   She certainly didn't miss an inch of my body (this time I felt like I was a turkey on Christmas day and she was preparing me really for the oven), that gunge went everywhere. 


We sat there for a while hiding our nipples with our hands whist we chatted, it was like a scene from 'Carry on Camping' when Barbara Windsor is exercising, when suddenly her bra flings off and she's left stood there hiding her boobs in embarrassment.

Then came the exfoliating glove.  Oh my god, it was the most painful thing ever.  Olga scrubbed us from top to bottom with this tiny little grove, it may have looked harmless, but she might as well have been scrubbing us down with a yard brush.  I'm convinced the glove was made of sand paper.  I tried so hard not to scream out in pain, so I just lay there like a slap of meat whilst she scrubbed away.  I honestly thought I would come out of there 3 stone lighter with all the skin she took off (who needs to diet? Just have a Moroccan bath twice a week, that'll do the job).

Whilst, I was being hosed down for the last time, wondered if this was how the women in the concentration camps felt back in the war, Olga would have been Nazi.

Traumatised as I was, I was then dressed in towels and sent to the massage room.  The massage was actually quite relaxing, soft music in the background, heated massage bed and generally an overall nice experience (couldn't have been any worse after Olga).   Afterwards, I waited for my sis-in-law and eventually we left (3 hours later I couldn't be bothered to wait around for the nail polish renewal).

We met our hubbies in McGettigans Irish bar, not far from the parlour for a late dinner.  So overall, I managed to take my mind off James for a while. By then he was on the plane to a new life.





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