Something I did for me

This afternoon I went out and got a full hour of massage, for the first time in almost a year (or maybe even longer than that); definitely for the first time since I quit dating Hands.  (Besides being someone I dated, she used to be my regular massage therapist).

I went to someone I’d gotten a chair massage from last tax season when I was having a lot of trouble with referred pain from my herniated cervical disc, which was being exacerbated by lots and LOTS of keyboard work (an occupational hazard of my job).  She did some things that stopped the referred facial and neck pain dead, and anyone who can do that in thirty minutes has something going for her.  Today I had her work on my shoulders, which were in their usual catastrophic state from too much keyboard, and some touch-up to other places.  My neck still feels pretty good hours later, which doesn’t always happen when I have a full massage.  I think this one may be someone I’d like to keep for as much as I can afford—which is an issue; at $60 an hour, she’s more expensive than the market.

While I did that, L took herself over to do the final fitting of a prom dress that she made for the costume designer in the LBJHS drama department.  The girl she’s making the dress for is six feet tall and tips the scales around two-hundred something; she’s just flat big.  The dress L built has a fitted, lined and boned princess-seam top in dark-green satin with an inset front panel of white satin with a million tiny pearls sewn on it, full medieval-looking pointed sleeves (slightly belled, but not really flared) and a floor-length skirt in the green satin.  The skirt is, as L put it, “forty-eight goddamn inches long!”  (I did mention the girl is six feet tall, didn’t I?  Well, an absurd amount of her height is leg.)

This evening I phoned Mel for few minutes’ chat.  This is a particularly trying time for her, and I wanted to see if there was anything particular I could do to be helpful.  I believe she’s gonna work past the ugliness she has to deal with and survive it nicely as, by her own telling, she’s done so often before.  (Mel, if you find you need or want a sympathetic ear, email me and I’ll send you phone numbers—or hell, look me up in the phone book!  I’m so goddamn retro, I’m even listed.)

Uncle Bob eloped to the home of a trusted friend for the ferocious terminal.  Fnord.