Canyon Ranch sojourn
Okay, I'm the luckiest person ever. Here I am at Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona, spending my days hiking, swimming, working out, and just plain pampering myself. I've just returned from a facial and in two hours I have a hot stone massage scheduled. Life is tough. This is my birthday present from my mom and I'm loving every minute of it. It's a great chance for us to spend time together since she lives in Denver and I'm in New York. Any other visit that we have involves the whole family, so this is just our time. Mom is truly amazing. She's 76, a cancer survivor, and does more here than I do. I could barely keep up with her today on our hike.
The food here is delicious. I think it's practically impossible to lose weight even though everything is low fat and healthy. There's so much ruffage in the food that everyone walks around here farting. It's especially bad in exercise classes when we're all down on our hands and knees. The farts just reverberate (sp?)through the room. I can't tell you how often I've been on the massage table and the masseuse is working on my backside and I'm holding in a fart. It's not my fault. It's all the ruffage. I'm sure they're used to it, but still. Tres embarassing. Other than the farting issue, the food is amazing and you can get all their recipes by going to canyonranch.com.
We start our day with a walk through the desert at 7 a.m., before it gets too hot. It's about 102 out there right now. The desert is just so beautiful with the cactus, mountains and animals. It's important to stay away from the animals because they're wild. Then it's breakfast. I have blueberry pancakes every day that are great - whole wheat - ruffage - but good. After that I go to stretch class. Man does it feel good to stretch every muscle you have for 45 minutes. After that, it's swimming pool for me - water aerobics. This is my first experience with that, and I love it. I'll take another class after swimming, like pilates or tubing or exercise ball. Then it's lunch. Also mouth watering and fart inducing. In the afternoon, I do my treadmill workout. I'll also have some appointments - today was facial and later is stone massage. I'm meeting with a doctor on Thursday to assess my heart risk. They took blood on Monday for that. I saw that commercial about the woman whose sister got mamagrams every year, but died last year of...dum dee dee dum...heart disease. So I thought I'd better check out my risk for that.
One evening I spoke about my experience writing Ivy. It was a well received talk and now people come up and introduce themselves to me like they never have on any other trip. They also gave me and my mom a free day at the Ranch because I did the talk.
I did sneak some wine in my room, so after dinner, I'll enjoy a nice glass. There are always evening activities. Lectures, star gazing, art classes, bingo on Friday night (very popular).
The people are really very nice and down to earth. Most are like me - normal looking people just trying to live a healthier lifestyle. There are a few women who are abnormally beautiful, face and breast lifted, lips plumped. They tend to be from L.A. I've talked to a few and it seems that they have very rich husbands and come here to keep up their exceptional appearance. That's a lot of pressure. I'd like to be that abnormally beautiful, of course. Who wouldn't? But I'd hate to have the pressure to keep it up in order to hold on to my rich husband. That would be a tough pill to swallow.
Anyway, it has been fun and I have two more full days of this before going back to NY. I miss the kids and Mark, but I wouldn't trade this time with my mom for anything. And the massages and facials are not bad either.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
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posted by Karen Quinn : 5:21 PM
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