Month: January 2017

Gone Again

LagosMum4 Comments

I was looking for a post I wrote about 18 months ago. A post about the children’s nanny and the fact that she was away/had been away for about 6 months…

Anyway, so that time has come again. Annual leave time.

E (the children’s nanny) left yesterday for a month.

It all happened rather suddenly. She wasn’t meant to go until the summer, but something came up and she had to leave this month. While I spent the last two weeks worrying about the children and how they’d cope, worrying about how I’d cope and worrying about who would do the laundry (I suppose I’ll have to be a bit proactive!), I realized that this was actually a good thing. At least I can have a summer holiday too, then!

Anyway, so the post I was looking for had to do with Vins’ bedtime and the fact that I had to pat him and sing him to sleep. Not sure if you remember that one?

So last night, when it was bedtime he asked me to put him to bed. I said, “Of course I’ll put you to bed!” I thought, “ARGH!”

I tucked him in, he closed his eyes immediately. I patted him for a few minutes, but didn’t sing. It looked like he was asleep, so I stopped the patting and studied his face (in the dark), hoping he didn’t suddenly sit up and ask to sleep in my bed. After about a minute, he opened his eyes, looked at me and said, “You can go now.”

So the time has come. The time when he doesn’t need me (or anyone else) to sing Dream A Little Dream to him. And he doesn’t need to be patted to sleep (finally). He even stayed in his own bed (until 4.45am).

He’s really growing up, isn’t he?

A Morning at Oasis Medspa

LagosMum2 Comments

For Christmas, LagosDad gave me a gift certificate for Oasis Medspa in Ikoyi. I hadn’t been there before, and hadn’t heard too much about it either. I asked a few people about it, but no one really knew much about it. Anyway, so my gift certificate was for “The Ultimate Glow Package”, which was a body scrub and massage. I love a good body scrub! The expiration date was January 21st, so I thought I’d use it today – before the chaos of school starts next week.

I made my appointment for 10 am (my preferred time of 12 pm wasn’t available) and got there ten minutes early.

The place is really nice. The decor is all blue and white and (apart from a few tacky bits and pieces) it was very clean and relaxing.

They open at 10 am and, as I said before, my appointment was at 10 am. Now, you tell me – if you open for customers/clients/the public at 10 am – shouldn’t everything be ready by then? Apparently not. Not here, anyway. They turned on the generator after I got there. The cleaning people started sweeping and mopping while I was waiting for my appointment. And some of the people that worked there arrived at 10 am. I don’t know – but I look at it like being in a school. If lessons start at 7.30 am and all students are expected to be in class and at their desks, doesn’t the teacher have to be in earlier to get things sorted before that? Oh well.

So I was taken to a large room by the lady that was doing my scrub. There were two massage beds in there and I thought I’d have to just strip and lie on one of the beds for my scrub. But no. The lady told me to strip and put on one of their robes. As I put it on, I caught a faint smell of something. I sniffed the robe and it was gross. I can’t really describe the smell – but it was as though it was left in the washing machine for too long after the cycle ended. She then took me into a shower room (complete with gold tiles on the walls) and made me lie down on a concrete shower bench. You know what I mean? It was covered in a rubber sheet, and it was quite narrow. Apart from that, though – it was so hard! And it wasn’t very comfortable. It was strange – but I saw how it made sense. It minimized the mess and cleaning up after. And I was already in the shower room for when I had to rinse off.

The body scrub was good, but I couldn’t wait to wash all that gunk off me. It gets stuck EVERYWHERE! When she finished, she showed me the shower gel and told me how to work the shower. She then disappeared. I was pleasantly surprised to find the the water pressure was strong and started to rinse myself off. I was under the shower for 30 seconds (no lie) and the water ran out! WTF. I stood there, butt naked and called out MANY times – but there was no one there to hear me. Five minutes later, the lady came back in with a towel for me to dry myself with. She asked if I was ready. Err… Not quite. She was very apologetic and told someone to put the water pump on. I was actually ready to go home by this time. I finished showering, took the towel she left for me and started to dry myself. But there was that smell again! I finished by patting myself dry, wrapped the towel around myself and put the smelly robe back on. I was still damp, but was then walked down the corridor to another room where another lady was going to do my massage.

The masseuse told me to take off my gown and lie on the massage bed face down. There was no face hole. Instead of using a clean, fresh sheet to cover me with, she used the SAME DAMP (smelly) TOWEL I had used to dry myself with! Jesus Christ.

Now, I have to admit – the massage was very good. I enjoyed it thoroughly (apart from that lingering smell).

The whole treatment took about 90 minutes. And I’m glad I did it. My skin feels amazing. I would go back for another massage – but I would probably take my own towel/sheet for them to use!