I Said It, And I Meant It

I decided to head over to Opry Mills at my lunch break.  Opry Mills is an outlet mall where once stood an amusement park.  It is about as average an outlet mall as you could want.  Over the years, stores have come and gone.  

To their credit, they have a handful of good-ish restaurants - at least, for the Outlet Mall Aficionado type.  There's a Chuy's, they have a Cheesecake Factory - two themed restaurants - The Aquarium and Rainforest Cafe - I trust those are self-explanatory.  There's a new Olive Garden being added, a Bavarian Beer Hall, and a Paula Deen family style experience.  That's in addition to a few fast casuals (Chili's, TGIF), and a food court.  Plus, the standard roasted nut kiosk.

I do not visit Opry Mills for the food, though.  And only on rare occasion do I shop there.  Since Dress Barn folded, what's the point?  Well, there is one point.  Chair massages.  There's a little storefront filled with massage chairs, beds etc.  They do a good job, and today, my right shoulder finally needed more than I could give it.  So I took my sad little carcass over to O'Chi (that's what it's called) for some tough love.

The woman who took me dug in and found some knots.  Not hard to do - I'm full of muscle tension in my neck and shoulders.  I started letting my mind drift, as one does, and I had a very quick and intense memory of my father and I teared up.  Well, nobody likes weeping chair meat, so I pulled it together and let her continue pummeling me.  

There is something about massage that stirs up the sediment in your body and kicks it into your circulatory system.  I mean, that's not purely scientific, but that is how I would explain it.  I apparently had some toxic goo* stuck in me that made me briefly sad and nostalgic.  Glad I release it into the body at large where it can be released as a burp or whatever.





I do love a good massage - even if they give me some nostalgia released into the bloodstream.

The weekend is here, and I am glad.  I am seeing my friend Jim to get breakfast together, and Matt and I are going to go and do... something.  I don't know what, yet.  Plus there's the whole laundry/groceries/housework thing that needs attending to.  I feel like I am missing a whole lot of somethings.

Oh well. Rock on, friends.  Rock on.

And get a massage!

ae

*I was just kidding about toxic goo, but check it - this was according to Professor Google:  Lactic acid appears as a colorless to yellow odorless syrupy liquid. Corrosive to metals and tissue.

Comments

Christopher said…
It never occurred to me before that lactic acid is actually acid. It's stupidly obvious since it's right there in the name and I know it's in the nature of acids to corrode metal. Corroding tissue shouldn't be a surprise either.
The massage chairs do sound like they'd be worth the trip. I grew up going to Opryland at least once every summer, sometimes more than that. The one time I went to Opry Mills I saw that the old Opryland gates were still there. I had a flood of memories and felt very sad about what was gone. But the massage could help with that.