To peel or not to peel...

So, my sweet sister-in-law, Megan, is an esthetician. What is that (some of you) ask? Well, I asked too, when my brother told me what she did. An esthetician (as best I understand it) is someone who does facials, body wraps, hair waxing…basically, skin and facial maintenance. I used to think things like this were frivolous until I recently looked in the mirror and realized my skin is getting older just like the rest of this aging body. So, in my effort to somehow help this aging skin and also to support my sister-in-law, I called and made an appointment to get a facial with Megan.

Megan is very good at her job. She made me feel very comfortable and she treated my face to a healthy refreshing. The facial lasted 30 minutes and I came out of there with the smoothest, most refreshed feeling skin! I asked her what I should do in the evenings to help this aging skin feel like this all the time and she gave me some advice. I chose to purchase just one of the pricey items she used – a “peel.” She also gave me a bag of samples to try some of the other things she used…which leads me to the experiment…

Two nights ago, I decided to get out my peel and the bag of samples and try some of this skin maintenance myself. I lined up all of the 12 bottles and 3 pouches of samples she gave me on my bathroom counter. No – I’m not kidding – I had 15 things sitting there. Not knowing what to do with all of this stuff, I resorted to reading the labels thoroughly (which I never do). In my crazy mind, I thought that would help – until I realized that all the bottles had only one line of English and about 16 lines of other languages on them. All I know is I had toners, moisturizers, replenishes, rose toners, peels, night balms, “liquid gold,” cleaners, and eye cream. Since the eye cream was the only somewhat straight-forward label, I chose to set it aside. I still had 14 bottles. Suddenly, a brilliant idea – I would get out the peel I purchased and hope there were directions in the box. Much to my delight, there was a sheet of instructions…that had one paragraph of English and 40 other paragraphs in different languages. The one paragraph did tell me in what order to apply and rinse 5 of the products. Finally – a little direction…however, I quickly realized that the peel I purchased was a different brand and none of the names in the directions even remotely matched the labels on the 14 bottles…

After about 15 more minutes of trying to sort products and pondering the situation, I dumped all of the bottles back in the little sample bag and resorted to my regular skin care ritual. I did add the “peel” into my already 4-step ritual…and I now know why they call it a peel. I think it literally peeled the top layer of skin off of my face. Ouch!! We’ll see if I try that again! (I probably did it in the wrong order)

So, I figure I’ll have to take my sample sack and a sharpie back to Megan and get her to number the bottles in the correct order for me…but for now, I’ll be using my trusty Mary Kay skin care 4-step ritual that I have been using for a little while now. Thanks to my sweet friend, Jolie, I am in the loop with Mary Kay!