A New Massage Chair!

Elannah wanted me to go with her to the store to check out the Easter candy sales. I knew that was a bad idea, but I went anyway. And I bought some Dove chocolate. Not the best, certainly, and I prefer 90% dark Lindt chocolate these days, but whatever. I'm on vacation for one more day.

I have to take exception to this, though:

I don't even know where to begin with this message. I won't go into a nerdy rant about it (you're welcome), but Dove's message generator needs a tweak to its algorithm. I hate to think some human came up with that.


Now that that's out of my system, here's a picture of last Friday's lunch:

I don't usually take photos of my meals, but, guys, it's fish-and-chips (for me) and pie-and-chips (for Husband)! Also note the squeezie bottle of malt vinegar, the chip-shop-worthy curry sauce on Husband's plate, and my glass of apple and black currant squash. The only thing missing is brown sauce.

Here's the story of Friday: Husband found an amazing deal on a top-of-the-line massage chair that was barely used. He's used our crappy but serviceable massage chair nearly every day for the last couple years, but this one is a Rolls Royce to our Pinto.

Hubby made an appointment to go pick up the chair from the sellers on Friday, a day we had off work because of Easter break. The sellers live way up north, near the Idaho border, so we planned on a little road trip, just him and me. As the Little Taste of Britain restaurant is located in Layton, Utah, which was on the way, we decided to go there for lunch. They do a really decent British chip shop lunch, and I was craving some battered cod.

When we got to Layton, something happened. I won't tell you all the details because you don't want to know all the details. The gist of it is that I had an apocalypse-level female experience. Thanks, peri-menopause!

That catastrophe took a bit of time to sort out, but once things were handled, we headed to lunch.

The restaurant has a little store where you can buy British things, so Husband bought a bottle of Robinson's apple and blackcurrant squash (it's a sweet syrup you dilute with water) because I love it. It always takes me back to the winter I spent in Loughborough, Leicestershire, England, where my mission companion and I drank it hot because we were so dang cold all the time. He also bought a Flake chocolate to split, for dessert.

As we were getting ready to leave, Husband ran into one of his work colleagues. She had come up to the restaurant from our little burg because her husband, who is Scottish, required Iron Bru soda at the party they were throwing, so she bought a couple cases and happened to be there just when we were. Small world. But I don't know why anyone would want to drink Iron Bru except the Scottish. They like nasty stuff like that, haggis being another fine example.

We got back on the road and wended our way through Cache Valley to Smithfield, near Logan. If I was going to move somewhere else in Utah, I'd move to Cache Valley. It is one of the most beautiful places on earth. It flourishes in spring especially. (But no one can be responsible for flourishing spring itself. You cannot flourish anything, though you can cause something to flourish, though the entire season of spring is not a thing a human could necessarily cause to flourish. Argh. Sorry. Just couldn't leave that alone after all.)

We found the house, and the very nice homeowner let us in to look at the chair. Husband tried it out, and yes, it is a seriously great massage chair. I didn't try it out because I have a bad history with massage chairs. They tend to screw up my back, and then I'm in pain for days. Irony.

The next problem was how to get it out to the van. The chair, which must weigh several hundred pounds, had been assembled in the homeowner's bedroom and hadn't been moved in the six years they'd owned it. Plus, it had been assembled by company representatives. She had no idea how to disassemble it and no idea of how we were going to move it. It was too wide to get through the doorway, so some disassembly was going to be necessary.

Husband is a smart cookie, fortunately, and he's pretty handy with an Allen wrench. He figured out how the arms could safely be removed, which allowed us to get the chair through the door and outside.

When I say we got the chair through the door and outside, you cannot possibly imagine the amount of straining and sweating that went into that. My legs and arms were noodly by the time we got to the driveway. I sat and panted like a dog for a while, recovering my strength and trying not to black out. We managed to hoist it into the van by a Herculean effort on all our parts, and then Husband and I were off on the road back home.

When we got back home, we didn't relish the idea of manhandling that chair out of the van, into the house, and up the stairs to our second-story bedroom. Husband asked Sophia (who visits just about every weekend) to call her boyfriend the physical trainer to come and help. Meanwhile, I, Husband, and my FIL got the chair out of the van. FIL was just saying, "I can't believe how strong you are!" to me when I felt my back go out: a searing spasm of muscles, a sure knowledge of even more pain to come. I managed to croak out that we needed to set the chair down, and then I also managed not to drop my side and crush someone's foot. And then, ow!

I sat, grimacing, on the couch while the the men slowly and painfully pulled and pushed the behemoth up the stairs.

It sits now in our bedroom, and it has become well-loved by every member of the household--including me. It has this function where you can go to a zero-gravity reclining position, turn on the heat and air compression program, and then sit for 15 minutes of massage bliss with no rollers. Between that and the foam roller I've been using, my back is almost completely back to normal.