[pictures of a neighborhood farm]

So back to the story of the gift.

I was getting what turned out to be a partial at-home-spa treatment for free!

I raced around cleaning the house of all the embarrassing left-out dishes, scattered dog toys & dining table junk. I didn’t want them walking in to see a messy house.

Which, off topic, why is it the house always get trashed over the weekend? During the week I’m on it, Baby. Sweeping, cleaning, dusting…I’m near fanatic about it. I have this vision that my tombstone is going to say ‘Here lies Jennifer. That girl could sweep.’

But by the time I got everything looking respectable they were at the door.

My friend, “Mary”, and the spa consultant?…spa expert?…spa practitioner?…I’m not exactly sure what her title is, but let’s call her “Kim”.

The first hurdle in our upcoming adventure was Moo.

One of Libby’s lasting legacieshas been to teach Moo to bark incessantly anytime someone’s at the door. Big…deep…booming…barks.

(The kind that make the Jehovah’s Witnesses think twice about ringing the doorbell.)

So I ordered Moo upstairs, welcomed them in, turned to get the baby gate to put up across the bottom of the stairs & in that split-second Moo started to make her way back down the steps.

In my haste to fuss at Mooch, get her to turn around & go back up, Kim ran into the bathroom to hide, crouching behind Mary who was her last line of defense against the monster living in our house.

I apologized profusely for the scare – Maggie hadn’t even made it halfway down the stairs. But it was enough to frighten her to death. Her’s was the typical Korean response…

“Oh! Oh! Oh!….[pointing]…Beeg dog!…Oh! Oh! Oh no!…[hand over gapping mouth]“

Lovely…hadn’t even got the girl into the living room yet. But things settled a bit & she proceeded to give me an initial consultation before working her magic bag of nickles.

Kim asked the questions in Hangul & Mary translated.

‘Where do you hurt?’….’How long has it hurt?’…’Do you have a lot of stress?’…on & on.

And as the questions were asked Kim began touching my shoulders, feeling my neck…trying to get an idea of how tense everything was. Which was immediately followed by a lively discussion in Hangul between Kim & Mary.

Apparently, I was in “bad shape”. So bad that my partial treatment became a full-on-body treatment. And before I knew it, I was stripped down to my panties, face down on the couch cushions laid out on the floor.

So you have to picture it – my big 5’7″ oversized Texas woman frame all spayed out surrounded by two little petite, perfectly proportionate delicate Korean women.

They began squirting the proprietary gel on my back & with hand-sized gadgets emitting an electrical pulse began systematically pushing the gel into my skin.

That would be the politically correct version.

The reality was that this little, petite Korean girl – all of 25 - might as well have had been pounding on my back with a bag of nickles.

It didn’t really hurt at first…but pound on something long enough & soon you’ll be hurting. I thought it would just be a quick 20, 30 minute rub-down. Afterall, I was getting this for free. But they kept going & kept going & kept going. And I started to worry a bit.

Eric wasn’t home yet – he had no idea I had people over, let alone I would be almost stark naked in the living room with two little Korean women rubbing me down with vibrating electrical devices. And before I knew it I heard…

“Ahh……hello, sexy wife.”

And for a moment, Eric thought he was the luckiest husband alive.