Skin Care, Roommates and Bulletin Boards --- Oh My!

Every so often I get a bug up my butt about taking better care of my skin. Actually, it seems to be an annual event that lasts from January to spring when I realize I’ve dried out my skin too much. Dermatologists don’t recommend daily showers for old people if we’re not doing stuff to get sweaty and dirty. Our thinning skin apparently is chronically too dry which exposes us to all kinds of nasty skin ailments, the least of which is wrinkles. I don’t care about wrinkles but I’d like to avoid cracking skin and eczema, thank you very much, so I listen to my doctor. On days when I don’t shower I do what Victorian ladies referred to as ‘performing their morning ablutions’ which involved a servant bringing the lady of the house a pitcher of warm water and removing her chamber (aka pee) pot. The lady of the house would brush her teeth and wash her face, her arm pits and what I'll refer to euphemistically as her "nether region." Old school historical romance writers were fond of morning ablution scenes and you can use your imagination as to why. My husband had a more colorful term for doing morning ablutions. He called the process “taking a whore’s bath.” Google doesn't seem to know the etymology of that term but---again---put your imagination to work and it's not hard to believe that it's a term as old as the oldest profession itself. Boy, have I digressed!

If you’re a long time reader of this blog you may remember me lamenting the fact that I had great skin when I was younger but old age brought me teenage acne. Not a bad case but this time of the year I’ll look in the mirror and scream, “Holy cow, those blemishes are bigger than my nipples!” And I’ll make The Promise right there and then: “Cross my heart and hope to die, I’ll wash my face twice a day until it cries.” This week I made The Promise and also ordered some products. Not the hundreds of dollars an ounce yuppie stuff. Nope. I’ll break the promise before I get to the bottom of the jars and tubes plus I don’t buy the argument that they work any better than the cheap stuff. I’m pretty much an Alveeno Girl---or rather an Alveeno Old Lady---and I like Beauty & Planet products like their sugar and roses scrub. My husband had the biggest crush on Jennifer Aniston that lasted from her days on Friends until he died. Every time he'd see one of her commercials for Alveeno he's sit up straighter and pay closer attention to the TV. I was okay with that because I also had a 'Freebie List.' Did you and your spouse have a ‘Freebie List’ which is defined by the Urban Dictionary as “a list of 5 celebrities who, should the opportunity arise, one is allowed to sleep with without it being considered as cheating by your significant other?” Don’s list had Jennifer at all five bullet points. Mine has Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Gerald Butler, Kevin Costner and Bill Gates. Yes, Bill Gates. Brains are sexy and I know how to close my eyes.

Years ago I used to be a Neutrogena Girl and once I bought their ‘P Cleaner’ that was supposed to deep cleaner your pores. When I put it on that it dried blue and made my husband laugh out loud. He was raised with four brothers and two farm hands and wasn't used to seeing girlie things on faces back in the good old days of learning how to share a bathroom. I threw that stuff out because it reminded me of my college roommate. She modeled clothing for a large, Chicago department store and she spent an obnoxious amount of time on her “morning ablutions.” She’d walk around with skin care masks on every night and literally spend more time on her looks than her homework.

Everything she did was obnoxious, a snob from day one and she ended up getting me kicked out of our room. I was an art major who was taking figure drawing classes which creeped her out. I never tried to draw her or anyone else in the dorm but apparently she thought that anyone who’d sit in a class drawing naked people had to be twisted sick. She went weeks without even acknowledging that another person was in the room. No “good mornings” and “Hi” when coming back from classes. No eye contact. No answers to my pleas, "Why won't you talk to me?" "What did I do wrong?" I had no clue. Turned out good for me, though. I got moved out (at her request) and another student got moved into my old space. The room I was moved to was a tiny room for one on the top floor. It was in a converted 4^th floor attic dormer with crazy, sloped ceilings that the artist in me loved. It also had a window that overlooked the football field while the room we shared overlooked a parking lot. I feel in love with bulletin boards in that room and I've had one ever since.

Right now, my bulletin board looks pitifully under dressed in its downsized mode and it holds: 1) A greeting card with a panda bear, 2) A business card with a cow, 3) A list of people foods dogs can’t eat, 4) A photo of the three untouchable poisonous plants that grow in Michigan and 5) A photo of my two nieces and nephew. Over the years my bulletin board has become a depository for quoted lines I've read or heard and wanted to savor. Today I added, "She's a red string tied to my finger and I can't forget her." Simple but a great metaphor from The Girl in the Painting by Max Monroe. If you don't want to read a risque quote that made me laugh out loud, quit reading here. It was from Charming Co-Worker and the line was, "He's the catnip to my kitty." The book was forgettable but ohmygod how do writers come up with stuff like that? Lest you judge me based on this two quotes don't do it. My saved quotes over the years have run the gamut from Bible quote to---well, to this kitty joke and everything in between.  ©              

The Project

In recent weeks I’ve become obsessed with my skin. My face is full of lines and wrinkles and suffers from years of neglect. So what’s the problem, you’re thinking, two out of three of those things are age appropriate, aren’t it? Well, yes, they are however my mom had skin like a porcelain doll when she was my age and I’m bemoaning the fact that mine isn’t. Apparently flawless and fair English skin skips haphazardly through the generations. My famous Colonial era ancestor---whose portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.---plus several great-aunts, my mother and one of my nieces are all skin twins. Why not me? I share the same gene pool. It isn’t fair.

One day I was in the facial products isle of the store when I spotted what is essentially a power sander for your face and after seeing a second brand of the same type of tool I decided it must be the latest and greatest gadget designed to take dollars away from wrinkly old people like me. What the heck, I thought, it’s never too late to start caring about your skin. So I bought a face sander. The second time I used it I got too much water on the disposal pad and some of the micro-derma abrasion in the pad dripped into my eye. Let me tell you, it hurt almost as much as the time I Crazy-Glued my eye shut. But I was undeterred. The next time I used the mini power tool on my forehead I got smart and held a washcloth along my eyebrows to catch any drips.

I am in week two of my of skincare project and I can see a difference but not enough difference to make some old dude at the senior hall want to eye-hump me from across a room. That’s a joke. Old dudes can’t see that far for one thing, and for another I just heard that term for the first time a few days ago and I’ve been wanting to use ‘eye-humping’ in a sentence every since. It makes me laugh---maybe because ‘hump’ was my late husband’s favorite euphemism for sex. Besides, at the senior center there are ten plus women for every guy so if I actually did want to get eye-humped I’d have to stand in line. There are some beautiful, slim trim and well-put-together women in my peer group. Although I must say some of their conversations are lacking. For example the last time I was there some of the women at my table were talking about jewelry brands until my eyes crossed and I wanted to scream, “Who really gives a flying fig!” Apparently the answer to that question is at least four out of  the 109 women who were in the hall that day.

The box my power sander came in---it’s actually called a micodermabrasion system---makes many claims about reducing pores and age spots leading to smoother, firmer skin with less wrinkles and a luminous glow. All that for twenty-one bucks. What’s not to love about that prospect coming true in six to eight weeks? But with my luck and enthusiasm for the product I’ll probably end up sanding all my facial features off and no one will recognize me without my nose and high cheek bones. I’ll keep you posted.

Fall is approaching. I hate that. Do I want to see my first gaggle of geese heading south? No! Do I want to see frost on the pumpkins or radiant colors in the trees or any of the other sights that inspire poets to form pretty sentences on paper? Hell, No! I want time to stand still, to stop its march across my life. I want. I want. I want. Do people ever quit wanting what we can’t have? I suppose, though, if we were predisposed to never want change mankind never would have invented hand tools or the wheel and I’d be in a cave right now drawing on the walls while waiting for the mud mask on my face to dry. What? Even cave women must have wanted to look good. Why else do you think they invented the comb and leather thongs? ©

“You don't stop laughing when you grow old,

you grow old when you stop laughing.”
George Bernard Shaw

Painting above:  Old Woman at the Mirror by Bernado Strozzi