Color me pampered.

For Administrative Assistant's Day, my fancy-schmancy day job gave all the ladies a half-day at Cornelia Day Spa.

I need not expound on the matter of my palace of employment and it's frivolities at this time, but please note that I am well aware that this place is ridiculous.

The Half-Day Package includes:
Signature Facial
Signature Massage
Manicure
Pedicure
Eye Treatment
Complimentary Lunch with Champagne

NO I'VE NEVER BEEN TO A SPA!
Are you kidding!?

Here are the juicy deets:

I checked in at about 12 noon on Sunday, June 25th, 2006.
The spa is on 5th Avenue, and 5th Avenue was rife with The Gays as it was the day that The Gays feel Proud. Poor Gays. It was really raining hard yesterday.

Anywho, after I checked in on the 8th floor, I was shown to the Ladies Room, where an attendant with a computer station and a smile asked me what size slipper I wear and handed me slippers and a plush white robe. She then lead me to a beautiful locker room and gave me a locker for my things and then slipped a piece of paper in the name-tag place that said, "Ms. Jen Hammaker." I changed and left the Ladies Room.

There was a very softspoken lady waiting outside the Ladies Room for me. She took me to the Relaxation Library to wait for my first treatment.

Maybe if you were a billionaire, you could call the Relaxation Library a waiting room.
Things the Relaxation Library has that waiting rooms don't have:
A very plush interior, painted in a dark brown-grey, with dark carpeting and candles on the walls
Comfy brown wicker chairs will coffee-colored cushions and matching ottomans.
A small table and lamp beside each chair
Literature in the form of coffee table books about New York or about Beauty, some with notes from the author, such as, "For Cornelia Spa - The best Facial in New York City! Love, [whoever]"
A juice, tea, and fruit bar
Optional microveable neck pillows.
A soft-spoken attendant who will gladly serve you anything from the bar that you would like.
Soothing Spa music.

After picking a bottle of signature Cornelia Spring Water out of the mini-fridge and pouring a glass, a soft-spoken girl with a European accent informed me that it was time for my massage. I left the bottle and the glass on the table.

She led me to a private candle-lit massage room.
This was my favorite part.
I'm training for a marathon and I had helped Mat move the day before, so my body felt like I had been trampled over by a horse.
About and hour and a half later, the Masseause led me back to the Relaxation Library.

There, I began to look at this book until a soft-spoken, white-haired lady with a European accent introduced herself to me as my provider and that it was time for my facial.

She led me to a well-lit private room with the word "Lilac" on the door. There was another lady inside and they both left the room while I changed into towel - like little number that snapped at the top.

Now, this was embarrassing. I was nervous. I saw a huge machine next to the table and It reminded me of the dentist's office.

I put the towel - thing on wrong. I put it around my neck. And so I exposed my underwear.

The lady calmly told me how to wear it when she came back into the room. She was nothing but polite about it. I was nothing but humiliated.

She told me to lay down on the facial table/bed thing and put my feet in the water. There was a small tub at the bottom of the table and it was filled with warm water for foot soaking. What this had to do with a facial, I am still not sure . . .
Her accent was thick, but I understood that there would be several things happening to my face.
Steam, Extraction, Peel, and Collagen Mask.
When asked how often I go though facial treatment, I replied, "This is my first time."
To which, the lady responded, "EYE-Ya-YAI!"
She tried to get me to pay $90 for some excess eye treatment and I said, "EYE don't think so."

Before the steam, she assesed my skin. Apparently, I have sensitive skin. Then on went some fresh-smelling ointment. Then, the Steam. The steam was weird. She covered my scar for that. It was hard to breathe. After the steam was another ointment application.
Then came the extraction.
That meant that she was cleaning my pores and getting rid of blackheads.
This hurt like the dentist hurts.

The whole time this is going on, the other lady is massaging my arms, btw. To distract me.

She told me something gross about the pores on the side of my nose that I dare not repeat.

After the pain, there was astringent, then ointment, then a papery mask. Over the papery mask went something cool and that all stayed on for as long as it took for the other lady to get my feet out of the soak and massage them and my legs. Then, there was another lotion, then it was over.

My face felt good. She told me I looked beautiful. She had taken some dead skin off of my cheeks and cleaned my pores and tortured me. And during the whole process, we heard only two songs on repeat, Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd and The Who's Teenage Wasteland.

"You like the music?"

Yeah, once.

Okay, so it was back to the Relaxation Library to wait for the next event.
The next event was lunch.

Lunch was in a glassed-in restaurant on the roof.
There was an older couple in the restaurant, in white robes, discussing things that they usually discuss (I suppose) and not eating the bread that was on the table.
There were only tables for four available. Was I supposed to bring a friend?

Do friends all go to the spa and eat lunch together, dressed in white bathrobes?
Was I supposed to go with co-workers? That would have really been a team building experience, seeing everyone in bathrobes, faces oily and shining, in various states of post-massage half-nap all around a white table on a glassed-in rooftop restaurant at 3pm on a rainy Sunday, sipping cucumber soup and listening to the sounds of The Gays Parading down Fifth Ave. Let's Get Loud, Let's get Loud . . .!!

For lunch I had the cold cucumber soup and a delicate smoked salmon wrap.

I was almost comatose.

Back to the Relaxation Library, which, by now was quite crowded. The couple from the restaurant was there, asleep in ajacent chairs with their books open and their reading glasses sliding down their faces. His mouth was open, but no sound was coming out.
There was a mother there with her two daughters. On the window seat was very attractive couple, reading the same book. Various single women read magazines or checked Blackberries. Everybody ignored each other.

Then Olga arrived. She took me to get my manicure and pedicure. I let her pick out my colors. She did a bettter job than I would have done - sheer fingers, coral toes. I got to keep the nail polish.
Except I didn't becuase I left it in my robe.
Olga is Russian and she LOVES Broadway. She never got a chance to see Riverdance and that was upsetting to her and her friends out in Queens. I told her that I was pretty sure it was playing in Vegas. That was good news. She LOVES Vegas.

Then it was time to shower and leave.

I was beat. Exhausted. Ready to sleep all afternoon. Still sore, but relaxed.

The shower was one of those fancy ones where the water comes out of the ceiling like a waterfall. Plush clean towels were kept on a warmer.

They should have little nap rooms at the spa.

If they did, I would still be asleep right now.

During the entire Cornelia experience, two thoughts battled each other in my brain:

I deserve this.

and

I will never ever get to do this again.

Which made it an incredibly fulfilling experience.

Thank you Fancy Job.

It has been worth all the torment and emotional upheaval that you have put me through.