I spent my birthday gift today. An hour massage. Bliss.

After wrenching my shoulder yesterday, I decided to call in the heavy guns, my masseuse. Now, this is not a regular occurrence. Maybe  once every 3 months or so, but it is so worth it.

I was asked to come in a half hour early. The girls were being, well, insane, and so I jumped at the chance.

When I first came for massages, I was embaressed to get undressed. I still keep my panties on, but I remove everything else. It really helps. Now I just go right in, get down to the skinny and get on the table.
She came in shortly after I was resting on the table, face up as she had requested.

I asked for music and she put on my favorite, the CD where I can either be in Hawaii, Japan or a North American conifer forest. The birds are making wonderful chirps, water is flowing and a gentle wind instrument plays. I got lost in the moment as she worked my shoulder, my neck, my arms

I get little electric shocks when she does my fingers. I never know why except it always happens. She moved to my legs and feet. This is amazing. I can almost see the trees above my head as I lay in the grass by a Buddhist temple. There is a specific temple in Hawaii that this CD reminds me of.

After I turn over, she works my back. Oh I can feel the tension dissolving. I am floating. She works the backs of my legs, my calves and hamstrings. Oh this is so good.

My neck and head get attention again. I know my hair will be a greaseball when I leave from all of her oil, but man does this feel like heaven. My sore shoulder is doing better, but then she works it hard again. I can feel the lactic acid breaking up.

Finally, sadly, my hour is up. I take my time getting dressed, getting ready for the real world.

When I return home, the girls jump at me and then immediately start fighting (they were playing chess when I walked in and fighting over trading bishops). The tension is returning already. Sigh…

But at least I had one hour of bliss…

This is stolen from American Family and Chicago Mom!

100 things about Spacemom

1. I really like Buffalo New York
2. I am starting to really enjoy Boston Massachusetts
3. I am the second child of a two child family
4. My sister is 5 years older than me
5. My mom had 5 pregnancies
6. Mom fell down a flight of stairs when she was 3 months pregnant with me and broke the amniotic sac
7. The doctor told her to rest and then told Dad outside of the room that she would lose this pregnancy
8. She didn’t
9. I was a loner in elementary school
10. I only had 2 close friends
11. In Middle school, the circle grew to include 2 more
12. I still talk to 2 of these women on a semi-regular basis
13. Crazy H is one of these friends
14. She lives 20 minutes from me now
15. We met when I was 4
16. My best friend now lives in the same small town we grew up in
17. She has 2 kids
18. And she is a widow
19. Her husband died in the Army
20. I will never forget that day, January 6, 2000
21. He was 22 days shy of 30 years old
22. I have always loved astronomy
23. Since I was 5, I would watch satellites when we went camping
24. I hated camping
25. And spiders. I hate spiders
26. I once could name all 88 constellations
27. I can still identify most of the Northern ones within a few minutes in a dark site
28. My first telescope was a cheap one.
29. It took me almost 30 minutes to get the moon in view
30. I was scared to look in the telescope because I might see something scary
31. I worked at 3 different places during high school and college
32. The first was the museum of science in Buffalo.
33. The first signs of overt racism came in when people asked me if I was scared to drive there
34. I wasn’t scared and only once people mentioned it did I notice the area was predominately African-American
35. The second was an amusement park that is now owned by Six Flags.
36. I worked in the commissary
37. I loved making popcorn
38. It would take 1 hour to make 10 garbage bags full of popcorn
39. I loved mixing the sugar and cotton candy flavor
40. I would sneeze pink or blue after mixing it up for hours
41. When an apple fell in the candy mix one day, I got a 3rd degree burn on my finger.
42. The park wanted me to just work through it
43. I insisted on going to a doctor.
44. I got fired the day I refused to sell beer because it would have left two 14 year olds in the commissary to do all of the work.
45. In New York state, 14 years olds can not touch knifes in the work place
46. We had peppers and onions to prepare that day
47. I was disgusted by the quest for profit over safety
48. I worked nights at a local department store
49. I was the only woman on a stocking crew
50. We would race around the store at night in shopping carts
51. My team often won!
52. When I was 10, a family member tried to commit suicide
53. It didn’t work, but it set up family counseling
54. I was the one person who never talked in the sessions
55. Nobody cared that I didn’t talk
56. I started to withdraw
57. I fell in love with a kid at school
58. Everyone knew I had a crush on him
59. He was scared of me
60. I was obsessive
61. I still wonder where he is
62. I decided to apply to schools in New York only because Dad had lost his job
63. In the end, I only applied to one school, University of Stony Brook
64. I got in
65. I loved it
66. Long Island hair scared me and I never understood how people did that
67. My first roommate was from Staten Island and incredibly racist
68. College was the first time I met a Jewish person, an Indian person and an African-American
69. One of my best friends was Indian
70. Her family was very strict with her
71. She tried to commit suicide in sophomore year
72. Her family took her out of school and made her get married in an arranged marriage that she didn’t want
73. I went to her wedding, but have not heard from her again
74. After she left, I would go up to the chemistry building and stare out the plate glass windows at night
75. I often considered running down the hallway and not stopping at the glass
76. I never did it
77. I went through a very depressive stage during college
78. I discovered that going to the Long Island Sound or the ocean calmed me.
79. I discovered that rough seas made me feel better
80. That discovery disturbed me
81. My first boyfriend dumped me when I started going to the mental health clinic
82. I was devastated
83. I threw myself into thermal dynamics and raised my C average to an A- for the year
84. I started working as a resident assistant to start things over
85. The woman that I took over for had woken up in her bed with a strange man next to her watching her.
86. I got her room
87. It scared the shit out of me
88. I started a job in the astronomy program
89. There was a grad student working on observations, I signed up one night a week
90. It was Jay
91. We worked together for almost a year before he asked me out
92. I said no
93. After I broke up with another guy, we started dating
94. I was still working for him
95. I applied to grad schools, but decided to stay with Jay
96. I was the first planned Master’s degree in the astro program at SB
97. Jay got offers for jobs in Germany, they would have taken me in the PhD program
98. Instead, he took his current job
99. I was officially hired here before he was
100. One hundred things is not as many as I thought