Wednesday, April 18, 2012

I'm Gonna Melt Old Age Right out of my Skin

I’ve been hiding at my desk this week, hoping nobody notices me.

This is not because I accidentally melted my face off earlier in the week, although I will admit that that was a bit disconcerting.

It was an honest mistake.

I use to have this awesome lotion/exfoliating soap from St. Ives that smelled like apricots and felt like loving sandpaper. It would scratch the top layer of dead skin off my face and make me feel young and beautiful again.

Of course, I had that stuff back in about 1998, and apparently things have changed since then (I still think of the late 90’s as “recent," so I may be a wee bit out of touch).

My skin has been unusually dry and itchy lately, and it was getting to the point that I was scratching my face constantly throughout the day and I was a little worried that I might wear through my cheeks.  I had to do something.

So... I borrowed my mom’s St. Ives Apricot Exfoliating Face Wash to use before I moisturized the shit out of my face.

I just assumed that it was the same apricot shit that I used back in my 20’s, and that the only thing that had changed was the packaging.

Let me repeat that.

I put some chemical shit on my face and just assumed I knew what it was without reading the label.

Anyway.

The next morning, I noticed that my "treatment" didn't seem to work very well because my skin was still way too dry, so I washed my face with it again.

I woke up the next morning, and I looked like I had a five o’clock shadow, only instead of stubble, it was my SKIN molting off. Or sloughing off? Is that a word? Sloughing?

My whole lower face, just flaking, and painful, and burny.

The part of my faces that I used the Apricot shit on.

Maybe I should look at the motherfucking label, you know?

Yeah.  That Apricot Scrub shit was was completely different from what I thought it was, and the active ingredient was Salicylic acid and I had just washed my face with freaking alien blood.

Twice.

Because chemical burns are really good for removing dead skin and acne.

And live skin. And my flesh.

But no, I am not hiding because of that.

And no, I am not hiding from the office zombies that want to eat my brains. I mean, seriously, those things have an awesome sense of smell, and would totally find me at my desk, especially since I keep putting this Oatmeal and Shea Butter lotion on my burny face… holy fuck, y’all. I just noticed this lotion is totally from St. Ives, too. Those Swiss bastards are probably going to give me boils or some shit and call it “invigorating” for the skin.

Anyhoo. What was I talking about?

Right.

Hiding at desk.

And failing.

It turns out, you can’t actually hide from your email, especially when you are sitting at a computer all day, even if you are getting up every five minutes to add moisturizer.