PROLOGUE
Winter 2005 ~ I close my thriving birth center due to lack of third party reimbursement and it damn near breaks my heart. It is a beautiful facility that has a fabulous reputation and I can’t make a go of it without insurance coverage. It makes no sense for the insurance companies to refuse to cover us...we save them a ton of money, but they refuse anyway and drive us out of business.

The bastards.

I retire from catching babies and wander around aimlessly. I have been a midwife for thirty years and I love my profession more than life itself. I was the first midwife in New Hampshire and have delivered a bazillion kids but I don’t really have any other employable skills. I garden and take care of our farm. I spend the day in my brown velour sweats and crack my first beer of the day for lunch and email legislators about shitty legislation to make myself feel productive.

I know my husband Tom is concerned about me, but he never says much more than, “Honey, I’ve always loved you in brown.” What a great guy. He’s a survivor. He knows how to protect himself from great bodily harm.

I start to get worried about me too. The physical hygiene has been definitely slipping. I garden all day, am coated with dirt and sweat. I fall asleep for the night dirty without bothering to shower. When I look in the mirror in the morning, I see a wild postmenopausal woman with edematous, fluid-filled sacs under her eyes looking back.

My scrotum eyes.
 
I have been able to get by for fifty-five years on a great smile, good genes and a diet of nutritious food and lots of wine...
but now I am starting to seriously look like the functional bag lady I really am; no question. This is bad, something’s got to give, but I have no idea what.

~ )( ~

Late Summer 2005 ~ I am sitting in my car on Main Street, Concord, pissed that I have yet another parking ticket. Soon I’m going to get the proverbial Boot. Concord has the worst frustrating parking problem. I look up to see a marquee that says:

ESTHETICS INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SKIN CARE

~ Enroll now for Fall Classes starting in September ~

I sit there looking at the sign until I wonder if I’ve had a stroke. Can’t move. Yeah, right. You’re contemplating going to Beauty School. You are desperate, girl. Wicked desperate.

Yeah? Well, listen, Scrotum Eyes…how’s this sound? The thing you loved the most about the Birth Center was the “Spa” aspect...the sense of community, the sense of a beautiful place where women could go for their health care and feel included and be heard and respected…not a cold medical/clinical environment to be dreaded but a delicious place to be pampered and take care of one’s necessary Whole Woman health regimen.

Epiphany 101 ~ I start to grin as the concept begins to develop. Right! I could get licensed as an Esthetician and open a Spa. Women can come in for their annual exams…and have a yummy facial and get checked under the hood. They can have breast exams, seaweed algae wraps, lash tinting, blood work, Pap smears! Brazilians! The Works! After a woman has her pelvic exam and her feet are in stirrups…she can have a pedicure! I am on fire. I will name my Spa…
WRAPS & PAPS!

OK...I’m gonna do it. I’m going to Beauty School.