I seldom look at People magazine or US unless one is sitting tattered and three weeks old in a doctor’s waiting room.  Or I am stranded at an airport. No really, I buy them at airports regularly and weekly at check out lines in the grocery store. It’s a guilty pleasure although I am sad to say as I get older, and the stars get younger, the celebrity news doesn’t thrill me as it used to. Still love the personal stories of the heroes of the Boston Marathon tragedy or appreciate the issue on the parents of the children who perished at Newtown Elementary. The fashion sections of do’s and dont’s are always good for a chuckle as well as the self-indulged star or starlet section in US called “25 Things You Don’t Know Me.”  As I mentioned, I usually don’t know who they are much less care to read a laundry list of the name of their first dog or their favorite food.

But I was thinking, for my purposes in this blog, a little self-disclosure might be fun, since I drone on and on about subjects or events I find interesting or feel may interest you.  Thought perhaps knowing a little more about me would lend that shared information more credibility.

1.  I am mortally fearful of thunderstorms.  Especially while driving.  Don’t know if my fears are based on being trapped in a second floor apartment, tornado sirens blasting out my window in the flatlands of the midwest the first week I was married.  Or perhaps it is just congenital, like it was for our old dog Trey.  (See, I’ve already worked in my dog’s name and didn’t even have to list it.) But dark clouds gathering or the weekly emergency broadcast test signal on TV sends chills down my spine.

2.  I am convinced that the fancy piece of plastic that pretends to keep toilet seats fresh and sanitary only goes in one big circle.  Same dirty cellophane cover, tucked around the lid like a shower cap, just circling the lid for fool after fool, bottom after bottom.  Never sat on them; never will.

3.  In the same germaphobe vein, I don’t drink after others, even my children or grandchildren.  No one, no matter who or how dear or special, do I want to share saliva backwash with.  Same with lip or chap stick.  My lips or no one’s.

4.  I accidentally on purpose wore a friend’s watch home from her house after school in first grade. Mom made me return it to her and apologize to her scornful parents.  Lesson learned.  Never wear a plastic watch with a black rubber band strap again.

5.  I can write my name in cursive or print with my toes.  And a writing utensil, of course.

6.  My brother called me Burl (he combined girl and boy; not sure about his spelling) from childhood well into college.  My dad called me Punkin’.  Dad wins alternate name category.

7.  In high school, I always felt like “Miss Almost.”  Lost cheerleader five times, student council eight and graduated number 11.  Of course the top ten were in the newspaper. A friend at my last high school reunion heard me tell that and said, “Yeah, we should get you a t-shirt.  On the front it should say, Miss Almost.  On the back it should say, Get over it.”

8.  I would leave my husband for Dennis Quaid or Andy Garcia.  At least for a night.  For Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans, maybe a week.

9.  I love birds except those that walk like people.  You know, the ones that step one foot in front of the other instead of adorable birdlike hopping.  i. e. pigeons, mourning doves, grackles, starlings.  One exception might be any shore bird. Never saw a bird on the beach I didn’t like, walking humanlike or hopping.

10.  Sundays give me a sad feeling of longing and I love Fridays.  Just like in college.

11.  My favorite number is three. Except for martinis.

12.  I once contracted scabies ( an icky sort of body lice) after a fateful sit in a cedar hot tub.  I was newly married and when I told my mother she advised me to get rid of them and not tell my husband.   Which I did quietly until he called the next day from a business trip and said he thought he had lymphoma because of all the bumps under his skin.  He welcomed the scabies and his new bride.  I wouldn’t tell Dennis, Andy or Daniel about that though.

13.  I flipped from the back to the front seat of a convertible once in high school when the driver slammed on the brakes. Landed unharmed. Two things.  Should have been the driver since I was the only one not drinking.  And seriously, how did I not make cheerleader?

14.  My husband and I met on a blind date in high school.  We played miniature golf. I nearly aced every hole because it had been a long summer of putt-putt dates. He thought I was athletic and I thought he was the second coming.  Love, like our date, was also blind.

15.  I met Nelson Mandela on a business trip with my husband to South Africa in 1994, soon after his release from prison and election to the presidency.  Being in his presence was surreal, like meeting Gandhi or having an audience with God.  It was magical and indelibly etched on my memory.

16.  I won a set of World Book Encyclopedias at 13 by writing Ask Andy, a national science question column, and asking why it was so hard to swat a fly.  Had my picture in the paper and got my green and grey set of 12 books delivered to our door.  In case you are wondering, it’s because they take off backwards, so aim a half inch or so behind.  Haven’t missed one since.

17.  I’m pretty good on a pair of roller skates. As a kid, I once skated with Dallas Bias, the Police Chief, at the local rink.  We skated arm-over-arm, hand-in-hand, leg crossovers as we rounded corners.  Idol worship at its best.

18.  Mr. Deitrick had a garage near my two room grade school (See Martin School post March 13, 2012) and he had a pet bear in a cage that we walked past to get home each day.  Don’t know why I didn’t think it was strange or scary.  Maybe because my parents voted in that garage every election day, stepping behind cloaked booths right beside his pot belly stove. And the bear.

19.  I love Toby Keith’s American Soldier.  I crank it up every national holiday, road trip or whenever I need an inspirational kick in the butt.  Cry every time.

20.  I have never had a McDonalds burger.  Never.  Still waiting for Letterman to call to do a spot on that.

21.  I can sing and read music, but only when holding a Methodist hymnal.  I can harmonize with any hymn, great or small and do it loudly and with confidence, much to my children’s’ chagrin.  Especially on Easter morning or Christmas Eve.

22.  I always carry a tape measure in my purse.  I especially like the small leather one my sister gave me several years ago.  It comes in handy for a myriad of things: furniture at flea markets, dress length, inches to the finish line if my grandson comes in second.

23.  I am a slow reader and often invert numbers.  Unless it is the finish line and my grandson comes in second.

24.  I am addicted to lip gloss.  Must have it on my lips day and night.  Day on a dip-stick and night in a pot.

25.  I am convinced waiters spit on or do worse to food returned to the kitchen if it is too cold, undercooked or not just right.  I am sure it often happens to me since I always order at restaurants something like Sally in When Harry Met Sally.

So we have this woman who cleans and generally looks after our house in West Virginia. (I know, don’t even get me started on the PBW of that.) She comes in before and after we leave and keeps the place in better shape than we do.

And she is one of a kind.  In all ways.

She is a watch dog for every man, woman, deer or UPS truck that steps foot on the property or darkens the door there.  We met through the former owners and it was love at first sight.  For me, at least, it was.

The interview went something like this:

Me:  So how did you get into this line for work–care taking, house cleaning?

Trina:  Well, I was carin’ for my mother-in-law and she died.

Me:  Oh, I am so sorry.

Trina:  Oh, don’t be.  It was time.  I’d been wipin’ her butt for fifteen years for free.  Figured now  it was time I got paid for hard work.

Can’t argue with that sort of pragmatism, I thought.  She was hired on the spot.

Trina started working with us practically the next day and when I am there alone, she talks.  We talk.

She climbed out her bedroom “winder” at sixteen to cross the border to Virginia where marrying her twenty-one-year-old Dean was legal.  Thirty years and three kids later, both their eyes twinkle when they are in one another’s presence. He gets up at 3:30 every morning to mine the coal he has for thirty five years and she gets up with him to make his coffee, serve him breakfast and pack his lunch.

Her married name is Trina Lilly Lilly.  “There are too many Lillys ’round here so I just divide them between the good ones and the  bad. Dean’s family was one of the bad Lillys, except for him ‘course.  We are definitely not relations.”

He has a hand-engraved tatoo inside his left wrist that is a simple crooked inky” TL.”  They are a great American love story.

But I digress.

The real stories are the ones that Trina tells as she is carrying out a trash bag or helping  me  change a bed. She usually starts with, “Did I tell you about…”  and it will entail some wild tale about her sister, Toots, or her other one who is “on the check,” Sharon, or some lady from the church she used to attend.  Her doctor visits are always good ones.  She had a pin put in her left foot and when she woke up she told the doc, “That were the worst screwin’ I ever had. ”  She swears he smiled behind his surgical mask.

My son thinks she should have a spot on David Letterman.  He can picture him saying, “And now it’s time for our segment called Let’s Talk to Trina,” as he picks up his cream-colored corded phone.  And Letterman should. Hearing her tell a story is as good as the story itself.  She could read the phone book and make you laugh.

Full of horse sense and good humor,  her perspective on all matters is honest and direct and uncluttered by pretense.

So today she called with a good one, as she says.

Trina:  Did I tell you about our friend who died?  The egg guy?

Me: No, you told me about the guy who died on an ATM.

Trina:  Now, Nancy, you know I meant ATV (all-terrain vehicle).  Was funny, wasn’t it?  I suppose if you got held up at an ATM you could die that way, though.

Me:  You have a point.

Trina:  So anyway, there’s this real good man we know, just the nicest kind.  Joe Smoot.  He’s  sold eggs ’round here for years. Well, the obits two days ago says he had died.

Me:  That’s too bad.

Trina:  Well, I know but the puzzlin’ part is, I’ve been searchin’ the paper everyday for the details. You know, of the service, his wife’s family name, the survived by names and all that.  And everyday–nothin’. And as I said, I really liked the guy. He was popular with alot of folks.  And I wanted to show my respects. So finally after three days of nothin’, I called Rose and Quesenberry, the funeral home, myself.

Me:  What did you find out?

Trina:  Well, a lady answered and I asked what were the particulars of the Joe Smoot funeral.  And she said, “It weren’t the egg guy. And there ain’t no funeral.” And I says, “What?”  And she said, “Yup, thars another Joe Smoot and he’s the one that’s dead.  The egg guy even called me yesterday to see if we could handle this confusion and I just told him. We are busy enough dealin’ with the deceased to worry about him bein’ alive.” And then she said the livin’ Joe Smoot said it was turnin’ into a terrible mess.

Me:  A mess?

Trina:  That’s what I said,  “What mess? ”   And the lady said, ” Yeah, the egg guy, Joe Smoot, said, ‘Can’t we do anything about this mix up? My front porch is a pilin’ up with food and flowers all over the place and I have no idea what to do with them!'” I told the lady he oughtent just send them to the funeral home for the dead Joe Smoot since no one seemed to care about him and all. But the lady didn’t take to that.

Me:  So did you call the alive Joe Smoot ?

Trina:  Now, why would I do that?  I don’t need no eggs.

So I have little or no good explanation as to why I have not blogged in a month.  I guess my only excuse is time flies when you are havin’ fun. My daughter and her brood moved out about the time I took this hiatus. Perhaps I have been prone on the couch exhausted or luxuriating in the sweet silence of having morning tea alone for the past few weeks.

Mostly, I have spent the last thirty days (more like six months) preparing for and enjoying the trip of a lifetime.  My husband and I and our adult children plus an in-law and a girlfriend, took a ten day vacation in Provence, France two weeks ago.

I spent months researching and planning the details of our travels from where to stay, train schedules on weekdays to which hikes lead from which perfectly quaint hill town to another. I checked the weekly weather in France, prayed for sun and listened to French for Dummies on CD’s in my car.

I scoured the stores for comfortable yet Parisian chic shoes.  (Which in the final hour I did find and immediately bought in two colors.  Best packing move ever.)

I researched the lightest, strongest luggage for overseas travel, updated documents, cut my hair shorter to keep up with the younger ones who walk out the door with “wet head” and look adorable.  I dyed my eyelashes black, again to wake up perky and stay with the pack.  Needless to say, I put some thought into this trip.  We were celebrating my birthday with a zero at the end, my son’s 30th, our daughter’s 25th and we landed on our 38th anniversary. As though we needed even one reason to make such a trek, we had many.

Since our return, I have thought and thought about how I could write about this trip.  Without sounding like a PBW.

Which brings me to my main hesitance about this entry. My brother, who is a writer and faithful supporter of my blogging, wrote this to me not long ago.

“The great writers are always one of a kind.  What’s unique about them always comes through, and that’s what makes them great ones.  Think about it — you can recognize Poe or Fitzgerald after reading only a sentence or two.  I think what’s unique about you in this blog, as a blog writer, is this mix of privileged burb wife-at-the-spa (PBW) and heart.  These inner conflicts.  Most of the great ones are expressing  their unique inner conflicts —  even the unique stylistic features seem to come from these conflicts.”

So aside from him nearly comparing me to Fitzgerald ( a stretch but I’m running with it) my conflict here must seem self evident.  How do I write about this nearly perfect, ridiculously expensive trip and not sound like a privileged burb wife (PBW)?  And rereading his note, I figured it out.  I will tell you about it from my heart.

First of all, having all my children plus their most-loved others travel happily with me anywhere was magical in itself. Now granted, calling my kids and saying, “Wanna come to France with me in April, all expenses paid?” was sort of a slam dunk but kids can be kids and life throws up roadblocks. But this time it didn’t and we got an overwhelming “woot woot” on the first group email.

Secondly, we could have been at the Wisconsin Dells (if cell power was down) or in a log cabin in the Smokies (if there was no land line) and my trip would have been much the same.  Away from our daily routines, gathered in the same house for ten days, I had my kids with me dawn to dusk, without their thumbs tapping on a cell phone or them leaning into a computer screen.

We were all on a new and exciting adventure together where no one knew the way and we were finding it together.

Yes, the French countryside was so picturesque and heavenly perfect you almost expected the director, with a beret of course, to step in at each corner or field of lavender with his black and white clapperboard and say, “Cut, that’s a wrap!” (I’d write that in French but don’t know it.)

But aside from the exquisite beauty of our locale, the moments, the real moments, happened in the seven person mini van we so embarrassingly, American-lookingly traversed the countryside in, as a team.

With a European GPS, we would set out for a destination and invariably, there would be a glitch, at least one moment of right or left panic. But we rolled with it, laughed alot, mostly at my youngest who, nodding off at her window, said things like “Oh you love that French hand lotion so much. Should I arrange for each of you to bathe in it tonight? ”

Perhaps the highlight of our trip was the final night together. We had hired a cook, organic no less, (I know it oozes PBW) and sat around this great dining room table at our house with a fire roaring at one end. But before dinner, my son-in-law had the idea that my son’s girlfriend, who is a stylist for J. Crew, should raid all our closets, mix and match all our clothes and dress us all for the “last supper.”

Well, it was one of the best fashion shows I have ever seen.  She went into each person’s room with a pile of clothes and knelt and tied and cooed and smiled and made us all feel like movie stars.  Then we each emerged from our rooms, one at a time, before dinner and walked the runway around the pool.(I know, dear God, we had a pool!)

At dinner, all shiny and new with our revamped attire, we all talked about our favorite moments of the trip. And overwhelmingly, it was “What was the name of the waiter we had at lunch the first day?” or “Wasn’t it funny when we found out on the last day we had seven keys to the house and all along we had been juggling one?” “Maybe it was that crazy scops owl that made his mating call all night long, every night?  I was ready to go offer myself as a mate.”  (Again, my youngest.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km3D2jq1HoQ

Alas, it was the moments between the moments that stuck in our minds. The little gifts my husband picked up at the flea markets we visited each day and presented to the “ladies” at dinner each night.  The late night dancing to iTunes cramped in the only tiny room in the house that offered Internet. The rooftop views of the Luberon Valley.  The church bells that chimed out our windows, 24/7 every hour on the hour and one at the half.

In the noise and the stillness, we were together in a strange land and always familiar to each other.

And that was the best gift of all.

Just writing that title, it takes me  back to Bob Phillips Drive-In in Charleston, WV, replete with curb-side orders into the intercom perched on a pole beside lines of cars with roller skating waitresses.

Yep, right out of Happy Days.

On a  summer day in 1962, my brother at 17 was hanging at the curb with some friends and apparently, things got a little rowdy. No dope, no alcohol, just a few amped up teenagers honking their horns and feeling their oats.  The cops were called and when they got to my brother’s car, they leaned in his window and asked for his driver’s license.

Now at this point, being nine years his junior, I always picture him as a 60’s classic: crew cut,  khaki pegged pants, oxford cloth starched shirt, skinny  black belt and white socks with Weejuns, shined to a mirror gloss.

My brother looked up at the policeman and when the officer repeated the request, he retorted, “Driver’s license. Driver’s license? Driver’s license!”

Well the rest of the story is family history and local lore. My brother and his two buddies in the car were thrown in a paddy wagon and hauled into the station for his irreverence, along with a dozen or so others.  He called my parents and asked their advice as to what to tell the police and they basically said “the truth will set you free.” Innocent and kind as my parents were, they were also naive. The other boys got daddy’s attorney to set them free and my brother’s name was the only disorderly youth listed in the Sunday paper. Even made the local news as he, on his own accord, was the only one of those arrested not to cover his face in a Justin Beiber-like faux cry for privacy.

Family uproar at the time, but now it makes me smile. Every time I hear the words “driver’s license”  I think of my brother and that day. As complicated as it seemed when it happened, it calls up a simpler time in my mind. When kids were called rowdy for what they said, not who they hurt or what they did. And helicopter parents didn’t always hover for a landing in each child’s learning experience.

But on to the purpose of this post. As I mentioned last week, I recently had a birthday and with it, I needed to renew my driver’s license. (Do I hear car horns, roller skates, The Shirelles?)

My letter in the mail from the Secretary of State noted I was required to take the written test as well as get a new picture. Both thoughts sent chills down my spine.

I had the good fortune for eight years to have kept the same license and the same decent picture.  Because of my good behavior, unlike my brother, I got a sticker on the back of my my driver’s license for my pristine record that gave me an automatic renewal for a basic fee.

But  this letter stated  I must show up before my birthday and take the written exam.
I don’t like exams because I have to get an A.  Tests bring out the ACT/SAT watch the clock/sweat bullets in me.  I become the three point shot at the buzzer, the defining cross-examination in the trial, the horse that pulls out in the final lap and takes the crown.  I have to get 100%. Or die.

My daughter told me to print out the Rules of the Road online, which I did,  all 90 some pages, in black and white. I studied.  I fretted. My hair fell out, I developed an ulcer.

So after three days of ruminating, I decided on a whim to breeze into the DMV and pick up the real Rules of the Road.  The computer sheets just weren’t doing it for me. And while I was there I, again breezily, asked the guy at the desk to check and make sure if I did indeed have to take this exam. Hope springs eternal.

He took my license, glanced at it and said, I swear with a wink, “You shouldn’t have to take the exam, unless of course , you have been bad.” Wide-eyed I assured him I had not been, as he typed my social into the computer.

“You weren’t bad four years ago in West Virginia?”  Busted, deflated, again full of test angst, I remembered a little speeding ticket I had paid for at the local station and supposedly gotten off my record.  Mom and Dad would have been so proud, I pled guilty as charged.

“Ah, go on and take the test,” he said, “It’s slow today.  Look around.”

So I took a deep breath, paid the fee, picked up my test and sat down in a row of  school desks lined up for test-takers. Really?  Couldn’t we have lounged on sectionals, munching popcorn, lazily choosing a, b or c? The pressure was killing me.

I have to say my days of study and quick perusal of the Rules of the Road as I stood in the short line for the cashier paid off.  I finished quickly, only missing one.  The picture taking was a blur of post-exam relief.

As my son in law said at dinner a few days later after he had also taken the test to reestablish himself as an Illinois resident, “Even a chimpanzee could pass that thing.”

Averting his gaze, I peeled my banana and reached for the next limb.

So for the conclusion of sappy week on asmrsmom.com (I promise to move on to higher ground next week) after five months of cohabitation, elation, frustration and mostly infatuation, the troops are moving on.  My grandsons that came here at four months and barely over two, are now practically grown men at nine months and two and a half.  And their parents are ready to fly the coop to their new home.

I thought I had been living for this day but now that it is less than two weeks away, I am facing it with very mixed emotions. Like anything, we seldom appreciate what is sitting in our lap until it is empty.

The thought of no pitter patter of little feet, knee high hugs or the sound of, “Is that you, Yaya?” when I open the front door is a void I can already feel.  The upcoming silence is palpable and their absence as real as them still in the house.

On a brighter note, they are only moving less than a mile away. (I know. Seriously.) I can pop in and out of their lives at will and I will still be nursery school bus driver number one. But as close as that all feels, I realize it will not be the same.  All too soon they will move beyond the thrill of a Yaya visit to hockey sticks, soccer balls and after school dances. High school football pep rallies, college applications and marriage proposals.  And before I now it, I will not be, “Is that you, Yaya?” but the obligatory phone call or Sunday visit at the old folks home.

I know I am rushing ahead of myself here and life doesn’t move at the pace of one paragraph.  But then again it does.  So my hope is that in the recesses of their little brains, they will see a picture, recall a story and think of a time that they lived at Yaya and Pops’ house.

And remember it fondly, with affection, as I will.

Photo courtesy of:   Bill Hale

While I’m on the subject of West Virginians, my mom who I have spoken of before, taught me many things about living, dying and all the stuff in between.

Especially pivotal moments to go into action were life and death. She’d remind me there are two things you can’t do for yourself, bring yourself into this world or carry yourself out, and those are times we need to pitch in and help others.

Since I was the baby of the family, I don’t remember many dinners we made to take to new mothers but I do remember the funerals. Whether you knew what to say or what to bring, the main thing was to show up with something–a pineapple upside down cake, potato salad, deviled eggs–hug a lot and talk about the person who died.  Preferably remember a funny anecdote they were involved in or something they said.

Nothing sad people like more than remembering someone they’ve lost with a smile.

My mom’s dad, Grandpa Kyle, was the king of telling a good tale on someone.  Even himself. He would start in about some “old boy” who was probably half his age since he lived to be 103, but to him everyone was always older.  Probably why he lived so long.  He always had an old pal to catch up with.

Anyway, he would begin a story and before he could get to the punch line, he would start laughing.  He would try to keep the rhythm of the story but the point was garbled in his chuckles that soon led to tears.  He was a laugh until you cry guy. My mom’s whole side of the family is. It’s a very endearing quality actually.

He’d hike himself up on his right thigh and pull out the hanky he always kept in his left hip pocket, remove his wire rim glasses, carefully one ear and then the other, wipe his tears and then shine his glasses, since they were already off and in his hands, and keep on going until we had all lost the point of the story but were all caught up in his tears of laughter.

Toward the end of his time on this earth, he asked my mom’s sister, Aunt Mary, why the people in the assisted living (which he didn’t go to until he was over 100) all called him Ed.

The tale he heard went something like this:

“Because, dad, that’s your name.  You are 103 years old.  You were born in 1886 and it is now 1989.   You saw a time where there were no gas powered cars, you witnessed the First Transcontinental Railroad and lived through eight states being added to the union. You and your brother, an architect, built many of the finest buildings in this town including your church, where you spent 80 some years in the choir.  You lost a wife and your mother in one week during the flu epidemic of 1918.  Left with four children, including a six week old baby, you moved in with your sister and allowed your architect brother, who was childless, to adopt your baby daughter.  She calls him Dad and you Pop and feels equal affection for you both. You went on to marry two more times and have three more children. You have outlived all your wives and a few of your children.  You are a carpenter and have worked on your own, for yourself, most of your life. You can still hammer a straight nail and strike a plumb line.”

When she finished, Grandpa, who had never cursed a single word in his life, crossed his hands on his chest, shut his eyes and said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

My brother, who spent many hours with  Grandpa in his workshop or just shooting the breeze,  spoke at his funeral.  I am sure he thought about that idea carefully and assumed it would not be a daunting task as Grandpa had lived such a full and and unnaturally long life. He had planned, I am sure, to tell tales of Grandpa’s escapades, his joy for all things great and small, and his sincere interest in anyone and everyone that no doubt kept him around so long.  I’m sure my brother thought he, too, might bring tears of laughter channeling the Kyle gene and being a great storyteller himself.

But he surprised himself because he cried tears of grief remembering this wonderful and unusual man.  And I learned a couple things that day.

Unexpected tears are the best, most honest you will ever shed. And no matter how long you have someone in your life, it is never so long you are ready to give them up.

My sweet mama is inching up on 90.  My brother can be an old curmudgeon but I know I will miss him terribly if I am still around when he is gone. I just had a big birthday that had a “O” in it. And I don’t know how I became a grandmother when I still feel like the grandchild myself.

I’m not sure if I want to laugh or cry at this moment. Maybe in Kyle style, I’ll do a little of both.

My husband and I recently spent a Friday afternoon at the King Spa and Sauna in Niles, IL.  Run by and mostly frequented by Koreans, it is a chain. There are others in LA and Houston. I heard of its healing powers years ago and then recently we both seemed to have it come up in random conversations, so we had to try it.

Choosing a Friday afternoon created an authentic orientation as the spa is a sort of Korean family enclave on the weekends.  And when I say weekends, I mean–all weekend.  Yes, people, families pay the twenty five dollar per head admission fee and stay there for hours, or days.

Here’s the set up. You enter at the front desk and pay your admission fee and receive a key. Men go one direction, women another and you enter single-sex locker rooms.  Your first locker at the entrance to the locker room is for your shoes only. After those are tucked away,  you enter barefoot to the larger locker room where everyone, except a handful of Korean attendants, is naked.  Women spanning ages eight to eighty, are walking around nonchalantly in their birthday suits.  Mothers, daughters, friends, sisters of all nationalities, all walks of life–you name it– are milling around lockers, hair/makeup stations, sinks–all nude. It is amazing how quickly I felt stupid with my clothes on. Maybe took me twenty seconds to get in the groove and shove everything but my key in locker #109.

You then sign up for a treatment.  I chose the one raved about on Yelp, called the Queen Scrub.  You pad through glass doors to the “wet room” which contains four hot tubs of graduated temperatures, a sauna, a cold dip pool and open showers lining two of the walls.  Everyone is required to shower before moving toward any of the facilities and nowhere, nowhere, is there a towel except for a stack of hand towels that are now on the other side of the “wet room” doors.  More attendants “point” orders, as very little English is spoken here, and you are directed to shower and soak until your appointed treatment time.  I got a little hot and spooked, sitting toe to toe and practically cooter to cooter with naked strangers, and hopped out of the hot tubs after fifteen minutes motioning toward the scrub area, a line of plastic-covered massage tables along one wall. I was quickly hand-motion scolded and told to re-immerse but after by best Betty Boop body cover up imitation I was scuttled off to Sunny’s table and told to lie face down, again on a hand towel.

This woman, dressed only in matching bra and underwear and purple Crocs, had nothing in common with her name. She must have been North Korean or had distant cousins in Nazi Germany, because from the second I lay down on her table, I was hers.  She first poured some pretty soothing buckets of warm water over me and then pulled on rubber gloves that looked to be coated in sandpaper or Brillo pads and began to scrub me down. Everywhere.

If Sunny has never skinned a cat or gutted a deer alive, I would be shocked.  I was flipped and scrubbed with her prickly paws until I was sure I would bleed out on the table. Thank God it was vinyl.

After several thorough scrubbings front and back with much flipping and turning, (I will say no more here than a friend of mine finished this part and said she may have had her first lesbian experience and had lost three skin tags) I was washed with several more buckets of warm water, patted dry-ish and given a thorough massage with baby oil. The baby oil actually brought back memories of my own babies and summers spent on the sundeck of my local public pool growing up.   The rub down was polished off with a cucumber something applied to my face and one last flip where she washed and cream rinsed my hair.

Then off the table to another mandatory shower and back through the glass doors to the locker room where I was given two hand towels and the yummiest thick pink cotton gym uniform/ hospital scrubs to wear into the unisex “hot rooms.”

This was actually one big room which contained a Korean restaurant at one end and seven or so sauna mud huts scattered throughout the space.  Oh, I almost forgot the movie theater filled with lazy boy chairs playing some G-rated movie for the kids and sleeping adults.  The center of the room was dotted with giant chairs and couches where clusters of people/ couples were chatting, dozing, reading magazines, staring into space.  I found my husband, his jammie scrubs were grey, and we tested out the sauna huts whose floors were lined with bamboo mats and each had a special scent or material covering the walls–amethyst, cedar, gold, mud, salt to name a few. The medicinal values of each were posted outside their Hobbit-sized doors.

All in all, I would call my first experience at King Spa successful. I left limp-noodle relaxed, except for a few skin lacerations between my shoulder blades, and received a wonderful lesson in giving up control and expectations.

Not to mention the two layers of skin I left on Sunny’s table.

As I mentioned earlier, my daughter and her husband are rehabbing a house around the corner. Through my own aesthetic visions or their lack of time to pursue their vision, I have become their project manager. I love doing things like this. And it is so much easier to do a house thirty years after you have done one yourself.  I did my first house piece-meal, a room at a time, a dollar at a time. With the housing market as it is, they got a great deal and are able to do all the messy stuff before move in day. And I love the challenge.

But, if I start talking Burlap vs. Ostrich walls and Ancestral vs. White Dove trim, their eyes glaze over and they say they hear a baby crying, even if it is the neighbor’s.  I, on the other hand, see the project as a giant puzzle just waiting for me to fit the pieces together.  I envision a beautiful little cottage like the one that I can see on the puzzle box cover.

When I told my daughter it was time for lighting decisions, I saw the sheer panic in her eyes. But when I said we could find most of them at Lowe’s, I saw the grip on her wallet relax and she agreed to go only if her good friend Selvin, visiting for Christmas from California, could come. Selvin shares my interests in the aesthetic.  He also had a camera to take pictures of our options so we didn’t have to lug 10 boxes home and return five fixtures that didn’t fit because of color or size.

I’ll share with you a little trick about Lowe’s house fixtures and hardware. You can get great stuff there for half the price of a place like Restoration Hardware.   But you have to be careful of two things–weight and material. Some of their lighting looks great from the ceiling display and is feather weight plastic when you open the box at home. Same with kitchen knobs.  Pretty on the wall but you must hold them in your hand to see if they are at least heavier than a marble.  And I mean the super size ones, not the little guys that come with a Chinese checker board.

My only stipulation for this outing was that because of my foot cast, I would have to ride the “Call me please, Jenny Craig” cart. My daughter rolled her eyes but when she saw I was dead serious, she said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.’

Before you judge my name for said cart, I will explain that every time I see someone in one of those contraptions, rarely, I mean very rarely, are they infirmed or carrying a big green oxygen tank.  No, in my experience, they are usually about 200 pounds overweight and cannot walk on their over-burdened knees or hips far enough to buy a light bulb. My judgment might also have to do with the fact that I own a house in West Virginia, the third most obese state in the country,  and the Walmart there has more riding carts than grocery carts.

As our party of three arrived at Lowe’s, my daughter and Selvin walked ahead to start scouting fixtures and I lagged a bit behind hobbling over to the riding cart section.  When I finally caught up to their aisle in my mean machine, I turned the corner with a “Look , Ma, no hands!” pose and didn’t realize until Selvin texted this picture yesterday, he was playing paparazzi rather then snapping images of floor lamps.

Some say a picture can say it all, and this one does.  The last few posts, I have talked about “needing a little help” and I didn’t even notice the sign on the cart until this photo arrived.

We had a great time. We found a few fixtures. I went aisle to aisle in my cart.  It even had a horn for close calls, which most often happened when I was tailgating my daughter’s behind.  For a few hours, I was thinking about everything and everyone but myself.

And oh, it was such a relief.

It was brought to my attention that the web address for my LOL Downton spoof would not open so I am posting it here. Also love the irony that the site is called the HappyPlace.com.  Who needs Abilify when you can just go there in one click?