I'll Be The One With The Hickies...

When was the last time you had a hickey anyway? Hopefully it was around sixth or seventh grade, and you were smart enough to walk around in a scarf until it healed up. If it was last week, then you need to comment so that I can offer serious cover up advise privately. I thought about hickies for the first time in about thirty years because:

• The girl who rang my book order at Books-A-Million had a huge one in the front of her neck. I can only assume she was proud of it as she was a rather plain looking wench and it was proof she could get a lover.

and

• I had a second fractional resurfacing treatment yesterday, and we did my neck as well. On the way home I glanced in my mirror, only to see that my neck looked to be covered with a multitude of hickies. Sadly everyone in traffic could see this as well, and two rednecks in a truck showed a tremendous amount of interest in attempting to catch my eye while waiting for the extremely long light to change. Normally I give strange men at lights a flirtatious, yet unavailable look. However I maintained an icy unapproachability yesterday; which is difficult when one looks to be covered with trashy love bites.

Ahhhhhhh. What one does in the pursuit of beauty. I did go home and take a Benadryl immediately to take down the swelling and redness post haste. Hopefully the red patches will not reappear this afternoon while I am at the gym. That has been the only drawback to laser resurfacing, for about a week I have phantom red blotches appear when I am exerting myself. Other than that my skin looks incredible. Not only are the pores invisible, which is amazing in itself since you could see them from several feet away, but my skin is as tight as it was in my twenties. We went under the neck yesterday to tighten up the "waddle" thing that is forming directly under my chin. Friends tell me they can't see it, but you know women do tend to lie to each other over these things. My jaw does look firmer today and I have notices that the cliff forming between my cheek and eye socket is not as pronounced either. I don't have filler under my eyes yet, note yet, but I am considering it. Another ugly fact about aging: fat moves around. The fat in my under eye area (that used to make it smooth and line free) has migrated south and settled on my upper cheek. At least it's not in a big pouch. I noticed pronounced eye pouches on a woman in my book club Monday and briefly wondered why the hell anyone would keep these with all the help available these days. Mine seems to have made a comma shaped ridge around each eye, but that is not noticeable this morning.

I have to tell you, if you are in the Valdosta area or anywhere close by, this is the town to go to for procedures. While doing research for fractional resurfacing, I found the average charge for a session to be $1000 to $800 each time. Since you need 4-6 treatments total, spaced at one month intervals this can be a bit pricey. Here it is $200 a treatment, and I had two free ones since I purchased the full sized Obagi kit. When I was pricing breast augmentation a few years ago I found the same thing. Doctors in Atlanta and Jacksonville were charging $8000, plus anesthesia and operating room costs. I did mine here for $3600 and my doctor has an outpatient operating suite. Plus, she is the best and they are absolutely perfect.

I also purchased some Jane Iredale products yesterday. I had not tried these before, but have been reading about them for years. I love my new pure powder mineral foundation! I used it last night when I had to drive back into town to pick up the Teenager from Driver's Ed and it did a great job covering up the red blotchies on my face and neck. I also bought a product called Absence, which is a primer for oily skin. I normally use Smashbox and love it, but it doesn't control my oil as well as I would like. I have seriously oily skin, which I should love as I have few if any lines in my face because of it. However, it's hard to look pretty when your face looks like it's covered in Vaseline all the time. You can always find me easily in a group picture, I'm the shiny one. I never leave the house without oil blotting papers in my purse and can go through a pack in about a week. I used to use a product called Clinac-O.C., but that didn't work at all for me. All of you with oily skin know that after an hour or two, your foundation or powder turns orangy and gets those gross oily clumps in it. The Clinac O.C seemed to help the oil clump up into little balls of greasy foundation that then flaked off everywhere. Some people love it and it seems to work for them, however I cannot say the same. I can't wait to test drive the Absence today to see if it works better.

I am happy with color of foundation that was matched up for me too. I have found over the years that I always get matched with yellow based foundations which make me look even more sallow than I already am. By January and February my skin becomes a shade called "chicken yellow". If you have darker skin, you know exactly the shade I'm talking about. Having done so much damage over the years to my skin by not wearing sunscreen, I don't dare go to a tanning bed ever again. I used to deal with my winter color by hitting up the tanning bed once or twice, that's all it took to give me a little more brown in my skin so that I didn't look so washed out. I guess I'll be spray tanning from here on out, though I hate the way it gets all over the sheets. However the new color seems to make me look a lot less sallow. I'm using "Riviera" in the PurePressed mineral powder foundation and it is a cooler color without the added yellow underbase. If you get a chance go to the Jane Iredale site: http://www.janeiredale.com/ and play around with the foundations. They have models you can try foundation shades on. However I still would let a professional pick out the right color. I did play on the site, but the closest model to my skin tone was the East Indian looking one and she's not quite as yellow as I am.

Aside from that it has been a boring beauty week. I have not sat down to watch the London Fashion Week shows which is inexcusable I know. I do promise to do that this weekend and start to plan my wardrobe for next weekend's trip to Atlanta. I am off to the Spring Book Show and you know there will be shopping done. The Teenager's birthday is Monday and clothes mad boy that he is I though we would stop by Lenox for a little post birthday wardrobing at Urban Outfitters. I bought him the Rayban Clubmaster sunglasses he wanted and they arrived yesterday. I did resist the urge to wear them myself, they are awfully cute.

Have yourself a pretty Friday!

Love and Kisses,

Cult Diva