What Kind of Spa is This?!

"There is nothing more frightful
than ignorance in action."
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe~

When I have a bad day, a bad week, a bad moment...I like to be kind to myself. Sometimes it's coffee and a newspaper (reserved for weekends only), sometimes it's picking up a fresh bouquet at the local Greenhouse, and other times I book myself in for a spa treatment.

Keep in mind, when I'm excited about an event, a date or, let's say a vacation, I also book myself in for a spa treatment. Generally I stick to pedicures, the mandatory clandestine waxing or the ever mundane manicure.

I stay away from too many manicures because I hate to see such a pretty set of fingernails chewed up doing housework only hours after the luxury of a manicure. Facials are a treat unto themselves, but make me break out so much that I can only schedule those when I have absolutely no where to go for the next week.

After a couple of impromptu meetings, and a weekend of housework (which I must confess I actually enjoy), I decided that today was a great day to get my little piggies pampered.  They way I timed it, after work I could get to the appointment just in time. If I made my appointment on time, and I took the short cut home, I could pick up my son before the mandatory time and make it to my early class at the gym. Perfect.

So, I got to my appointment, and was seated in the famous massage chair.  I wrapped my pashmina around my back and snuggled in. My bare feet were soaking in a lovely warm foot spa, and I managed to snag this month's Vancouver edition of a fashion rag. Perfect. Lovely. Just what the doctor ordered. That and the Valium I popped last night.

I've yet to find "the" pedicure gal at this spa. I've managed to find the quintessential waxing gal. She does a bang up job. Bad turn of phrase I suppose, but her waxing technique is second to none. She pulls fast and in the right direction and angle. She also does not cheap out on the very special technique of putting pressure on the newly bald area so that the sting disappears. Then she finishes up with a great clean up, and ta-da!!! I'm a smooth machine.

Because I had not requested anyone specific for my manicure, I was not surprised when an aesthetician I had never met took her position on the little stool at my feet.  I was seated in the chair closest to the door. The world was good. As it should be. Then the door opened. A cold, ten-degrees-below-anything-civilized blew across my wet legs.  Crap.

The pedicure continued, but as time wore on I realized that this must be a new aesthetician.  I sorted through the deep dark recesses of my teeny little brain, and came to the conclusion that I had never seen her before. Usually I don't look up from my trash reading at the spa.  After all that's the only time I indulge in reading girly smut, and a key factor in the ambiance of spa-girldom.  I found myself watching this woman go about the pedicure, putting lotion on, exfoliating and buffing in the wrong order. No worries. She was doing ok, and heck...even a mediocre pedicure was better than the last two days. This was taking longer than I had planned, and I might have to forfeit my eyebrow waxing. I was getting a little impatient about time, but I wasn't going to say anything. Despite the cold air from the door sweeping across my legs, I was happy.

The woman one chair over was obnoxiously loud about getting just the right shape to her nails, and yapping like a small house dog about the kind of crap that I was reading about. I kinda wish they handed out disposable gags like the disposable toe separators.  This woman had breached just about every etiquette expectation at the spa. Or so I thought. Little did I know that soon I would be plummeting into the depths of poor taste and spa-etiquette hell.  I was determined to remain in my little bliss bubble for just a little while longer, no matter how obnoxious my spa-mate was.

When I was a teenager, the father of one of my friends, a way-too-old-man-to-have-kids-that-age was prompted by our bad behaviour to say, "Believe it or not, there will be a day when you appreciate good manners and the grace of etiquette." Ne'er a truer word was spoketh

You see, there's always something worse that can happen, and as I sat there having my tender tootsies being attended to by an amateur foot gardener, Ms. Too-Loud-Chatty-Princess got up to leave.  Hallelujah. Or not.

You see, when you go for a pedicure, you have to remove your foot gear. Socks, shoes, boots, pantyhose, whatever you happen to be wearing. Now, I know what it's like not to be prepared for the pedicure appointment. I like to have my legs freshly shaved for instance, so that when I get the little five minute massage the stubble doesn't rub against the aesthetician's latex gloves.  That would not lend itself to feeling pretty if you know what I mean.

So, Ms. Chatty pants gets up, talking all the way, and then proceeds, all the while flapping her lips like everyone in the place needed to know her business and her husband's business - every.....flipping.....intimate detail.

AND THEN IT HAPPENED.....

She got her pantyhose out of her purse and proceeded to pull them on right there in front of me. She could have gone to the washroom, but instead, she hiked up her dress so her bare-thonged-rear-end was hanging out about three feet from my face, and almost touching my aesthetician's head, and bent over!!  SHE BENT OVER with nothing between her girly bits but a flipping thong!!!! G-R-O-S-S!!!

As I was recounting this tidbit about my day to my gym comrades, one of them asked me if Ms.Shameless-Bare-Bum-Blabber-Mouth was British. I answered, "No, and she definitely wasn't Brazilian."

God willing I won't have nightmares tonight about being swallowed whole by a  giant,hairy, toe wearing a thong. Ooga-booga!