mystery solved

I can check off January's "do something new and different twice a month", thanks to my “new and different” this morning...

When I was a kid, the women’s health club (which was really just a fancy locker room with a tanning bed, a sauna, a telephone and a tv, private showers, and bathroom doors that actually locked) at the YMCA was a great big mystery—from how to get there to what was in there.

The back stairwells, seemingly secret-passage racketball courts, and hidden-in-the-wall weight rooms that surrounded and protected this secret locker room made it all the more, well, secret.

If you read Harry Potter, this locker room was like Platform 9 ¾ on the Hogwarts Express: with a little luck and a lot of magic, it would appear out of nowhere to a fortunate few.

On Sunday afternoons, a little girl could legally get into the locker room provided these two requirements were met:

1. Her mom paid the extra dues to be a member of the women’s health club; and
2. Her mom felt she behaved well enough during the week to warrant a family-day swim followed by a sauna and a shower in the WOMEN’S HEALTH CLUB….

My mom met requirement number one; I tried hard to meet requirement number two because WHAT A TREAT IT WAS.

And this morning, probably 15, maybe even 20 (yikes!) years since my last sauna sit, I did it again.

Oh my gosh. Go find yourself one. NOW.

::

Ava directed me, under no uncertain terms, of the following, “Mommy, big girl diapers, get ‘em, wear ‘em”

Now that I’m writing it, I think she meant her. I hope she meant her.

Weekend SPLURGE:

TWO glasses of wine and duck fat frites (translation: fries fried in duck fat) on a DATE with Pete!