Showing posts with label massage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label massage. Show all posts

Thursday, January 24, 2008

The Wisdom of the Rooms

So apparently I didn’t get the memo, but there was an Ultimate Fighting Championship in the McLean Condo last night, so please forgive if my thoughts are a wee discombobulated this morning. And I’m still kind of reeling over the death of Heath Ledger, star of one of my all-time favorite movies, Brokeback Mountain. I just can’t believe it.

It occurred to me that it has been all baby-baby-baby-pregs-baby-sick-baby-pregs-baby-sick-kosher dills on this blog all the time, and I realized I have not updated you on my career and the massive shiftage thereof.

I had to quit doing massage, people. I had been thinking about quitting and doing something else for awhile since it was really bothering me that there was not a lot of brain activity on the job. Don’t get me wrong – I am not saying people who do it are dummies. They are doing a huge, selfless service to humankind, especially the ones who do it well, and a nice pregnancy massage recently saved my ass when I was really hurting from carrying around the McLean Condo and these giant bazooms.

But once you have been through massage school, the job itself is all intuitive -- feeling where someone hurts, a lot of quiet, then changing the sheets and doing it again. About the time I was having these feelings, I started to get a lot of, shall we say, hygienically-challenged individuals on my table. People who would come in for a massage, covered in sweat, straight from a full workout at the gym next door. People with active outbreaks of infectious skin diseases. People who had never heard of the concept of washing one’s feet after a day of flip-flop wearing. Now, aside from the fact that a pregnant person has an overdeveloped sense of smell, visions of staph infections and contracting God-knows-what from these people while in a state of compromised immunity started to tear at my psyche continually. It’s bad enough feeling like a sitting duck for every random cold and flu cootie out on the playground, but the stress of not knowing what I was exposing myself and my baby to became too much, and I had to quit.

So what’s a pregnant person to do with nearly four months of working ability left before squeezing out the wee bairn? I started looking at part time job listings and came across this man who wrote this book and needed some help with the marketing of this book and the editing of his next one. I started reading the book last night for research purposes, and OMG you guys, I was so blown away.

How is it that no one thought of this idea before? He has taken years of quotes and wisdom learned in 12-step meetings, and put them into a book. But the beauty of it is, you don’t need to be involved in a 12-step program to appreciate the profound nature of what is contained in the pages. Anyone struggling with ANY kind of addiction, or anyone who loves someone who is, needs this book. Anyone who has ever repeatedly banged their head against the wall and fallen into the same patterns in life over and over needs this book. Anyone who refuses to define God in limited, dogma-laden terms and seeks a relationship with God on their own spiritual path, needs this book. Anyone who needs to be reminded of universal truths told from a highly personal perspective needs this book.

Have you ever heard someone speak or read something in a book and felt like what you were hearing/reading was meant just for you? Like that person was speaking directly to you? That’s what every page of this book so far was like for me. I can’t wait to read the rest of it and explore the thought-provoking questions asked with each section. And no matter what happens with getting the job or not, I am grateful I came across the information in this book, and simply had to share it with you.

I’ll keep you posted.


Wisdom of the Rooms

Friday, September 22, 2006

At Least I Didn't Get Dumped

So my FINAL night of deep tissue class last night actually turned out so nice. I will get to have a life again during the week. My Tuesdays and Thursdays will be free for me to squander as I choose. Yay! I got to have a lot of work done on my neck and head, which I love. I didn't get home too late and then slept all night (woo hoo!). John, my awesome teacher made us brownies and carrot cake and they were unbelieeeeeeevable. It was such a nice end to the whole experience of having to re-take that class.

And to cap off the night and make me so grateful I don't have to come back to that dump, I went to my car alone on the bottom level of the ghetto craptastic dungeon underground parking lot where there are always homeless people and weirdos about, and there was this totally shady guy standing right by the stairs with his back turned, looking like he might turn around and shank a cracker any second. I speed-stealthed to my car, thinking if he did attack me, I could pummel him in the head with my pillowcase full of sheets. Look man, I’m badass. I’ve got a case full of Ross discount special twin-size sateen sheets, man. You don’t wanna eff with me, man. I slammed the car door, locked it and squeeeeeee! burned rubber out of there, thankful I didn't have to open up a bag of smackdown, and realized as I drove past him that he was cracked out of his mind and was likely having a bad high or something and was trying not to be noticed.

This whole scene came fresh on the heels of my being told by one of the girls in my class that recently she got on the elevator and someone had actually taken a dump in it. Yeah. A dump. She doesn’t take the elevator anymore.

Has the westside always been this gross, or am I just spoiled now that I live in the valley?