It's OK to no-show me!

OK, so if I'd a dime for every no show I've had this week, I'd be 20 cents richer today. I haven't been great at sending out email reminders lately, so I should expect it!
When there are stories going around of an imminent pandemic and local schools start to shut down, I'm sort of OK with no shows these days.

My hope is that Stephen King's "The Stand" isn't about to be made a reality. I have to wonder who I'd be dreaming of though - the little lady on the farm or the wandering guy in the denim jacket?

Gaelic lesson #38": "muc", pronounced "muck", believe it or not, meaning "pig"

"My little Alien friend will be massaging your neck"

Don't you just love it when you're working on someone's back and then suddenly your stomach starts to make these really weird, LOUD noises right next to the client's head? It sounds like there's a dinosaur in your chest or like you're about to do a John Hurt impersonation on the table and have an alien burst out of you.

It might be handy to have a wee alien buddy work on the client's neck though - some of those knots need chewed!

Gaelic lesson #37 "goile", pronounced "gill-ye", meaning "stomach"

A Massage Therapist's Right Thumb doing Yoga

Yep, that's downward dog - thumbstyle.
(Plus the cutest wee yoga mat in the world).

Artie is very aware of all the benefits of yoga - increased flexibility, stress reduction, increased strength and body awareness.

Gaelic lesson #36 "madra", pronounced the way it looks! meaning "dog"

Gladiatorical thoughts.......

Back to my massage soundtracks......

"Gladiator". Surely it'll go down as one of the best movies ever made. Ridley Scott hit the nail on the head in every aspect, especially with the music. I try to keep the music slow and so I took the track "Duduk of the North" off the main soundtrack which speeds up towards the end with a "guitary bit", but it's still fits into the playlist well.

However, what thoughts come into the client's mind?

Is there anything more relaxing than the thought of some guy's family being slain for the sake of political gain and then he ends up in the Coliseum with other Gladiators, all fighting each other to death, smashing each other in the face with telephones?

Er....hang on......am I getting confused here?

Gaelic lesson #35 "scairt ghuthain", pronounced "ske-irt yeu-hinn", meaning "telephone call"

Wish all celtic women could sing like that......

.......just got back from the Celtic Woman concert.

Those chicks can sing!
Unfortunately this Celtic woman's singing could be used as a form of torture.

Gaelic lesson #34 "amhran", prounced "um-rahn", meaning "song"

Tea Parties - a very civilized way to protest!

One of my favorite clients and I often have conversations about interesting things that normally I steer away from in the massage room - politics, religion and the like. She's one of those special people that you can discuss such things with since she's so open minded.

Today she brought up the fact that there was a local tea party where people were protesting the government's handling of the economy. So, in my head I'm thinking "That's pretty darned civilized" and I'm imagining people sitting around with their bone china cups and saucers, maybe having scones with jam or pastry, picked off a lovely cake stand, all sitting on lawn chairs under a marquee. And then someone standing up, teacup and saucer in hand and having a wee rant about stuff. Lovely. I want to go to one!

It wasn't until the end of the conversation that I realized that an AMERICAN tea party is WAY different from an Irish one. My vision was totally squashed when she said that the tea party had caused a traffic jam that even made the traffic report on the radio. "People with teacups out on the middle of the road? Ohhhhhh.....THAT sort of tea party - Bostony type of tea party!". (You can tell I haven't been watching the news lately!)

Gaelic lesson #33 "cupan eile tae", pronounced "cup-on ay-ya tay", meaning "another cup of tea"

A home-made spa product and a product review combined

A few weeks ago I got a salt glow on a cruise ship. It was lovely. Expensive.....but lovely nevertheless. I happened to ask at the time about the product they were using and I was told it was a lime and ginger salt glow mixture. If you look back at previous posts you'll find a link to a long and tiresome description of my experience of the whole thing (which might put you to sleep - I AM in the business of relaxation, after all). Anyhoooo....when I asked how much the product was to BUY, I nearly had heart failure when I heard the price of a wee glass jar of the stuff, so I stopped myself.

I decided I was going to try and make my own.

So I used:

- REAL limes (yep, REAL - used their juice)
- REAL Ginger (REAL - juiced some of it in my juicer)
- Sea salt - fine grained
- Some Himalayan Bath Salts
- Pure Jojoba Oil
- few drops of essential oils

Why Jojoba oil? Well, I kind of like it. I read an ad in a magazine a while back where they were giving out free samples of it, so I tried it since it's pure - no chemicals and here's the great thing - IT DOESN'T MAKE SHEETS STINK. In the past I've been reluctant to do salt glows since I've found it doesn't matter how fast you get those sheets in the washer or what detergent you use, if there's oil on them, they'll stink. When I got the free sample I tested the theory and put some on a pillow cover, left it for a few days and then had a good old sniff at it - no smell! Great!

The mixture turned out fabulous. I had some of the mixture left over, so I put some in a little glass bottle with the flip top that I got from Michaels (for a buck) and gave it to the client afterward (I was sure to tell her to be careful if using it in the shower since it could turn her tub into a slippery widower-maker) and she loved it. Her skin felt FABULOUS - softer than a baby's butt.

I've also used the Jojoba oil for hot stone massage and it works well for that also - good "slide factor". No preservatives also mean that there's no weird chemicals getting into my system through my skin too, which is a nice thought. So I'm sold. I was quite pleased the little experiment turned out well. Now what will the next one be.........hmmmmmm........wonder if I could turn my vacuum cleaner into a lipo machine?

Gaelic lesson #32 "craiceann min", pronounced "crack-on minn", meaning "soft skin"

Getting stoned with aromatherapy......

...but not in the way you might think!

The other day I gave my aromatherapy bamboo display and all my bottles a good cleaning with that fungicide/bactericide/everything-under-the-sun-icide cleaning material. I also got a little "Monk" ish over my bottles all being lined up perfectly - they look so pretty! I also washed my wee stones that I keep on the display too.

I love my wee stones. They're from all over the place.

There's a wee stone from the beach in Greystones in County Wicklow, Ireland, another from the beach in Portstewart in County Antrim, another from Tulum Mayan ruins in Mexico, another from Florida and about 20 other places. It's just nice to have a collection of stones from my travels right there in the massage room, so when I go pick out the oil which suits the client best, I immediately get a relaxing vision of crashing waves on an Irish beach ......or Mickey Mouse.....or Mayans performing a human sacrifice - depends on the client!

Gaelic lesson #31 "cloch beag", pronounced "clough be-ug", meaning "small stone"

Platoonical thoughts.....

OK.....so I'm still playing my movie soundtrack playlist during massage.

One of the tracks on there is "Adagio for Strings" by Barber. It's one of those classical pieces of music that you'll stop doing anything and just listen to it since it's so beautiful. Anyway, having watched Platoon at least 20 times in my life, I've come to think that Oliver Stone used one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever made as a juxtaposition for the most horrible things that humanity can do (kill each other). I think.

The above photo is of Willem Dafoe's famous death scene, which mirrored a real photo from the Vietnam war.

So, I'm asking myself: Is there anything more relaxing than the thought of someone getting ripped apart by hundreds of bullets while being completely abandoned by his buddies?

Yep, I'm thinking I'll have to rip that music off my playlist too.

Gaelic lesson #30: "cogah", pronounced "coga", meaning "war"

My Reading Ability After Watching an Episode of Real Housewives

Gaelic lesson #29 "Ean mhor", pronounced "yun woar", meaning "big bird"

Those Guys at Google are SMART.........

Not only because they built the most popular search engine on the Internet, but in building and maintaining it, they realized the importance of massage in the workplace and have a massage therapist work on their engineers. Not only do they do this present day, but they realized the importance of it early on and the result was a massage therapist that later became a multi-millionaire.

Bonnie Brown, a massage therapist, was partly paid in stock options at Google. She started working there when it was just a small company and ended up a rich woman when the company IPO'd in 2004.

I love this story. Not only because just the thought of a member of our profession made it big by doing what we (and she) love, but there's the fact that she now spends her time as a philanthropist, helping others. That is so "massage therapisty"! Since I'm an ex-she geek and worked for 2 start up companies as a software engineer (both companies ended up in the proverbial toilet) I loved to hear the story of a company that made it. Her book was interesting - laugh out loud funny in a few spots, especially her "hot mussels" story on page 112. I think any massage therapist would enjoy this book not only for relating to what goes on in the head of another massage therapist, but for the entertainment value. It made me think that I would like to have a pint and a natter with Bonnie sometime, just to hear more of her entertaining stories.



Gaelic lesson #28 "Ta si lofa le hairgead", pronounced "Ta she low-va le hergad", meaning "She is stinking rich"

I don't know about your association.....

....but mine is brilliant.

I switched to ABMP a while back for a couple of reasons, one of which is too long and complicated to explain, and the other being that I heard that good things about them. I was on a course with 2 ladies from Beaumont, Texas (who were a blast, and if Sandy and Carol are reading this - you gals still make me smile when I think back on that course!) who sang the praises of their association after Hurricane Katrina hit and AMBP called THEM, not the other way 'round. They didn't have damage to their place of business, but I was impressed by the fact that their insurance provider actually took time out to make sure they were OK.

Anyhoo.....I'm impressed with their service. They provide a free website to their members which is easy to use, and even though I have a main website, I'm using their free website (they have a range of different templates to choose from) to get more visibility for my main site (links to my main site help with search engine optimization for it). BUT I had a brainfart when I entered the website domain name and misspelt "massage" - yep, you'd think that I'd know how to do that by now. It annoyed me that this happened and even though I won't be putting the domain name of the freebee site on anything, I just didn't like the fact that it was just wrong. So I emailed them and they got on to it right away. Nice as pie in their communications and efficient in executing what needed to be done. You'd think I had my own wee I.T. department. Oh, and they also provide a lot of cool printed material for your business and lots of good marketing advice.

So if any of you are thinking of changing associations at any time in the future, keep ABMP in mind. I think the acronym actually stands for "Association of Brilliant and Marvelous People".

Gaelic lesson #27 "daoine deas", pronounced "din-ye jass", meaning "nice people"

Condo-monium and an upset GPS

I had a home visit in a condominium complex recently that turned out to be an "I'm-in-need-of-a-massage" experience for me AND my GPS (who's name is Nuvinia).

I turned into this massive condo complex that had street names and building numbers, but could I find the building number that I needed easily? No. It so happened that a big cop car pulled in right behind me just as I was entering the complex. He saw me doing my first 3 point turn. No harm there. Meawhile Nuvinia is starting to do her: "Recalculating.......drive blah blah blah...to blah blah blah", but I ingore her and try to go by building numbers. She doesn't like it. "Recalculating...recalculating..drive blah blah blah to blah blah blah", then I do another 3 point turn, then another. "Recalulating....for goodness sake, woman, aren't you listening?". Nuvinia is about to burst a blood vessel in her head, if she had one.

Meanwhile, the cop car has found me again - he watches me do my fourth 3 point turn. I spot him in my rear view mirror and I'm just waiting on him turning on his disco lights.
I turn into a parking spot and wait. He looked at me for a while, then I think he saw my big magnets on the side of my car with my business name. He probably thought "There's a crazy massage lady that doesn't know where she's going" and drove on.

I was glad for those big magnets. Thank you vistaprint for providing them! You saved me the hassle of trying to explain that I was indeed lost.

Eventually all was well - I found where I was supposed to be. I sent calming vibes to Nuvinia and put her back to sleep. Poor Nuvinia - she deserves a wee virtual neck massage.

Gaelic lesson#26 "carr poilini", pronounced "car pollini", meaning "police car"

Just smile, smile, smile!

Don't you just love it when you decide to have a quick snack before a client's visit, just to keep your energy levels up. Then they arrive, you're all smiles, asking them how they're doing and where they're hurting, getting them situated. Then you come out of the room and look in the mirror to find that you didn't actually get all the snack into your digestive system at all - half of it is stuck on your front teeth.

I'm never smiling again.

Gaelic lesson #25: "moinghaire", pronounced "moyne-yarah", meaning "smile"