Deep Tissue Massage

Oh...it hurts SO good.

My last couple of weeks at work have been somewhat stressful/chaotic/tiring/head-hurty-ish. I'm managing 3 projects pretty much by myself that are running concurrently. They are for the same parent company, but different departments. So, my life as of late has been full of conference calls, system configuration, project management, etc. And my kids have been in their last couple weeks of school, so this meant end of year parties where I have to buy crap for them to bring...but I usually don't find out about it until the last minute which leads to 9pm grocery store runs...which I don't particularly enjoy.

And then to top it all off, I thought that I was still young enough to do cartwheels and roundoffs with my kids in the front yard last night. I was wrong. Those activities use muscles that are agile and flexible (do those words mean the same thing?) when one is young...when one is older and stiff, those muscles scream at you the morning after...like waking up with a hangover, except with aching muscles instead of aching head, and no tequila burps.

So, with the combo of job/life stress and achy muscles, I scheduled my monthly massage at Hand and Stone. I broke down and got the monthly membership, so I get one massage a month "FREE" with the membership. They are usually 50 minute relaxation massages, but I asked the gal if I could request deep tissue. Of course I could, for $10 more. ;) I paid the 10 bucks...it was worth it. Did you know you can have tight muscles in your ass, even though you sit on it all the time, and it's most definitely not from doing squats and lunges? Even though you would like to pretend that's why they are tight. And the hips! I didn't even know there was muscle on my hips...I thought it was just excess fat there, but lo and behold there are muscles underneath, and they hurt when someone pushes on them with extreme force. She got into the shoulder blades, and neck, and those muscles that run along the spine all the way down to your lower back. When she was done, I felt like a million bucks...it seriously melted the stress away and the achy cartwheely muscles. And I only yelped in pain once!