Why knitting is better than a spa.

Hello again. Things have been... okay, they've been flat-out nuts here. Himself went back to work, the spare car blew a head gasket, and Junior's trying to do everything at once. Between staying up all day with the little man and staying up all night with the little job, I'm looking in the mirror at a total stranger.

"You need to relax!"

Well, duh. And how do you propose I do that?

"You should go to one of those day spas."

First off, everybody at the bank knows me, so stealing enough money to afford a day of slacking isn't high on my list of Likely Events. Secondly, I've read about those places. They do weird stuff there. Don't believe me? Read some of the stuff I've discovered whilst researching:

Picture if you will a spa. The lights are dim, soft music is playing, and scented candles perfume the air. You lie facedown on a padded table, secure in the knowledge that money can occasionally buy happiness.

Then somebody dumps a box of snakes on you.

The latest health and beauty craze to hit northern Israel is snake massage, a deep-tissue massage technique designed to, er, tip the scales in favor of relaxation. Spa owner Ada Barak has been offering snake massages since 2006, and says that once her clients got past their fears, they "said that holding the snakes made them feel better, relaxed."

I'm sorry, but if somebody drops a box of snakes on me, the only thing that's gonna be relaxed is my colon.

Snake massage is not the only beauty treatment from the Land of Weird. Take fish, for example. Now in my book, fish are relaxing. Downright hypnotic, at times. Did you know that fish are good for your feet?

Apparently, the Garra Rufa fish, also referred to as the "Doctor Fish", is used in a spa version of footsie. You stick your feet in a pool of water, and these fish come along and nibble the calluses off your toes. Your toes, not mine.

But wait, there's more! Want a glowing complexion? Want to treat your face to vital enzymes and other cool stuff to make you look good? Give yourself the bird with the "Geisha Facial". Sterilized nightingale droppings, smeared on your face. For $180 a pop. I've been scraping a fortune off the windshield all this time.

Okay, stop the beauty bus and let me off. I'm drawing the line at this one. Leech detoxification? Now, I'm all for natural. Give me organic over chemical any day. But there is no way I'm letting anybody stick leeches on my spine to "draw out impurities".

It seems that the FDA disagrees with me, as they have actually regulated and approved leech treatment for such problems as osteoarthritis, swelling and detoxification.

Well, if you've got plenty of cash and a sense of adventure, you might be willing to give snake massage and some of the other weird treatments out there a try. Lemme know how it goes for you. I'm going to stick to knitting. Sure, I might get frustrated with a hideous design, a poorly written pattern, or The World's Ugliest Color Combo, but it's soooooooo stress-relieving to fling stuff against the wall.