That's A Wrap: At Home Spa Day of Doom

Pinterest has been both a blessing and a curse to my life.  It’s given me wonderful recipes, tips and tricks, DIY projects and my favorite – at home beauty tips.   The idea of an at home spa day is wonderfully appealing to me since it costs far less, and some poor stranger isn’t subjected to seeing me in nothing but a pair of panties if it’s a body wrap or scrub I want.  Inevitably, these spa days wait until Sunday, when Bear is at work and the house is empty, save for myself and the cats.  Usually, that’s a good thing since I don’t think a husband needs to see every single little step of their wife’s upkeep and grooming.  (IE: bleaching my eyebrows so they’ll match my hair – no one needs to see me walking around the house looking like an Oompa Loompa gone wrong with thick white paste on my brows)

And so it began…my friend Kim had pinned an at home body wrap which I promptly repined to one of my boards.  When she posts beauty stuff, I pay attention because she's easily one of the most beautiful women I know, and she's really smart about all things beauty.  Since I’d been fighting a cold all week it seemed only appropriate that part of Sunday was dedicated to a little pampering.  I may not feel physically better but if I look better, that’s something, right? 

I began gathering the ingredients together, and in my usual pinch of this, dash of that fashion, modified them slightly to accommodate what we had in the house.  Epsom salt is in the house, but where in the house is a mystery.  Amazingly there was a jar of Bentonite clay in my “beauty box” that I forgot was there.  Huh.  Rarely do clay facial masks not get used up around here, so this is a really lucky find! 

Beware the secrets of the Aztec!

I put 2 green tea bags into the water to boil, measured out the rest of the ingredients, and then poured the boiling green tea into the clay & added the olive oil and some Geranium essential oil which is supposed to be good for toning the skin.  So far, so good.  It looked a bit too thick to work with….I’d read where adding some apple cider vinegar to the clay really helped pull out the impurities, so in it went.  Suddenly, I’m greeted with a bubbling, frothing, hissing mass of angry clay that now smells like very tart geraniums.  Undaunted, the mixing of this concoction continues.  Off we go to the bathroom, with the clay mixture and a roll of plastic wrap in hand.  The slathering part went fairly well, and I was feeling pretty good about myself as none of the clay mixture got on anything but me.  (a minor miracle)  After rinsing my hands, it was time to wrap my newly slathered self in the plastic wrap.  The midriff section was deceptively easy.  It lulled me into a false sense of confidence.   That confidence didn’t falter as I wrapped my hips, it didn’t so much as waiver as I wrapped around my derrière…it wasn’t until I was attempting to wrap plastic wrap around my thighs that the thought occurred to me, “Houston, we have a problem”.  My first thought was to just wrap around both legs together but the thought of hobbling around the house like the little mermaid didn’t sound appealing so I started wrapping down one leg, contorting myself to ensure every square slathered inch was sufficiently wrapped.  Then came the second leg and that’s when I discovered that I couldn’t contort myself nearly so easily as the first leg and hip were very tightly wrapped, as was my midriff, and movement was impeded, to say the least.  Somehow I managed to wrap the second leg and again was reminded of the wisdom of doing these sorts of things home alone, as a certain Bear would have been laughing too hard to be of any assistance to me. 

The instructions said to soak tights and a tight top in hot water to put on over that, but I skipped that step because I didn’t want to be a soggy mess.  Next was to put on my heaviest pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, to keep the body heat trapped in.  The sweatshirt went on easily.  The pants required more effort than you’d think – my legs and hips were fairly immobilized by plastic wrap, which made the whole experience rather akin to dressing a Barbie doll whose legs don’t bend.  Pants on, I was free to go about the house albeit in a sort of penguin waddle kind of way.  The instructions said to relax for 45-60 minutes.  Lowering myself onto the couch with a mug of green tea in hand, I felt this…oozing feeling upon sitting.  The feeling of trying to sit, slathered in goo, bound in plastic is…there’s nothing to compare it to, really.  HGTV makes for a nice distraction, but about 20 minutes in, I start to notice this…feeling.  It’s like my skin is starting to come to life – in fact, it’s starting to feel like it’s pulsating.  My midriff, back, thighs, hips, yes, even my bottom are pulsating.  What fresh hell is this?  It’s not a pleasant feeling and there’s this niggling thought at the back of my brain to check the jar of clay, the clay that somehow managed to remain virtually untouched for two years in my beauty box.  Looking at the jar, I see this:

What marketing genius decided THAT was a good catch phrase?

“FEEL YOUR FACE PULSATE!”

I’m not sure how I managed to forget that this stuff isn’t your normal, run of the mill fairly mild facial clay - it actually does exactly what it says on the jar and makes your skin pulsate and throb like it’s trying to come OFF your body.  Well, mine couldn’t since it’s encased in plastic but I’m pretty certain if it wasn’t contained it would.  At least the mystery of why it sat in my box o’ beauty unused for so long was solved.  Since the clay was doing what it was supposed to, I determined to let it do its thing for the full length of time recommended.  HGTV does not distract nearly enough in times like this, and what’s worse, after another 15 minutes my green tea is gone.  Tea goes right through me, in fact, it’s amazing I didn’t need to tinkle prior to this but now I’ve really gotta go.  Like, now.  Except I’m still wrapped in plastic and I’m fairly certain that my self imposed mummification has made it impossible to use the rest room and in all my wisdom I decided to do this at home with no one to help cut me out of my plastic wrap in a hot hurry.  Houdini himself would have been proud of the speed with which I escaped my plastic shackles. 

I wish I could say that this is a rare sort of occurrence in my life, but the fact is, I often find myself wondering how it is that I manage to get myself into such “I Love Lucy” esque situations.  Sadly, this won’t be the last time I do this – after finally unwrapping and cleaning off the clay goop, the results were noticeable enough that we will once again find me covered in clay, wrapped in plastic, and doing the penguin waddle.  Hey, no one ever said looking good was easy! 

Till next time, y’all!