It started out simple enough - shower, which means shampoo and condition my hair and shave. Floss and brush my teeth. Pull hair into ponytail. Apply mascara and lipgloss. Meet Bella and Kelly at Cafe del Mundo.
Not a lot of steps to my daily routine. Seward has an ideal humidity for my skin type, so my beauty regime mostly consisted of what I didn't do. Didn't smoke. Didn't drink. Didn't stay out all hours of the night. Didn't get up at the butt crack of dawn.
My cousin Kim, who has flawless skin, would always gently insist that I do something. She would kindly offer me a bottle of nectar to stave away the wrinkles, and later complain about the quality of my complexion.
That was then, this is now. Anchorage is a desert, and the dry air makes my skin hurt. In the world of HD, every fine line is magnified and captured for posterity. Bella complains about the amount of time she spends Photoshopping my pictures so I don't look like a grannie.
Both she and Kelly looked flat mortified when I shared that I often use Vaseline and Chapstick to moisturize my skin in the winter, and Bag Balm in the summer. Oil of Olay got way to complicated for me when they rolled out the different tiers of product, but I'm telling you right now it did right by my Grandma Mom.
When I accepted Kelly's kind offer to set up a program to take better care of my skin, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Now Kelly Whitworth is a trained professional, a medical esthetician, she does this skin stuff for a living so I will quickly grant she knows what more about skin than I ever care to. She rolls out all these latin words like I roll out sugar cookies. I think she even knows how to spell them.
I was honestly thinking Kelly would suggest some miracle creamy thing you slapped on when it got cold so your cheeks and nose wouldn't get more frostbit, and something else around the eyes to smooth out the wrinkles that was featured in a Popular Science issue that I missed.
No such luck. The large bag was filled with boxes and bottles. Filled. It came with written instructions that laid out how a counter full of products would be applied in which order twice a day. Twice a day.
Against my better judgment, confident this was going to be a waste of time, I spent a ridiculous amount of time removing all the packaging. Literally filled up my bathroom garbage can with cardboard and plastic.
And then I went through the list. One pump here, apply to face, floss your teeth. Another pump there of a different product, apply to face, brush your teeth. Yet another pump of yet another product, smear it around, brush out your hair while it is soaking in. You get the idea. Ridiculous.
Except. Well, okay. I hate to admit this, but after following the 500 steps of skin care Kelly lined out, my skin feels softer that I can ever remember it feeling. It doesn't feel itchy, flaky and tight at all, and I only did it one time. I know, so much for my give-it-the-old-college-try-then-blow-it-off theory - the stuff actually works!
There is no way I am going to be able to go through all the products and understand what they are in one sitting, or several. Kelly spent the better part of two and a half hours walking me through them this afternoon. I replaced all that data with the movie Karma Calling, which I watched tonight with the rest of the Anchorage International Film Festival Features Jury. Hey, I'm a natural blonde, and the short term memory is full, when new data comes in something has to go out.
I'll try knocking the products off as I figure them out and distinguish the serums from the creams and the toners for you. Thus far, all I can say is that everything seems to smell good, and a little bit goes a long way.
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