I Feel Pretty, Oh So Pretty

(Ten points if you can tell me which musical that song comes from--and you're not allowed to Google it!)

Let me be blunt: I have never had what I would consider a pretty face. I would never stop traffic. I'm about as plain Jane as they come. Which is why yesterday was SO MUCH FUN!

I mentioned in a previous post that my friend Leisha is a Mary Kay bigwig and she took one look at me when I arrived at Woodland West and said, "Oh, girlfriend, you need help." NO, she didn't say that! She wouldn't say that in a million, trillion years! But she did call me the other day and ask if I had ever used any Mary Kay products (nyet) and if I would be interested in a facial. Are you kidding?? Where do I sign?!

She said I was welcome to bring my kids with me but since we arranged our appointment for Friday, I had the luxury of leaving them with Randy. Leisha said the "make-over" could be accomplished in perhaps an hour or so (it doesn't take long when you don't have much to work with) so we settled on a 2:00 meeting time--it just so happens that Randy and I were planning to go out to dinner with Leisha and her husband Tom that evening so I thought that would give me plenty of time to get back home, tidy up, maybe bake some cookies for the babysitter and get back to their house by 6:00.

I arrived at the appointed time and for the next THREE hours I was pampered and made over in such a way that caused the song that inspired my blog title to pop into my head. The funny thing, I didn't really look all that different, but I felt different. First of all (and this is a HUGE plug for Mary Kay and Leisha is NOT paying me to say this), the skin care line is UNBELIEVABLE. My skin looked and felt beautiful from the moment the first product she handed me touched my face. To tell you the truth, I have sort of shunned products that are touted as "age-defying" or that promise to "reduce the signs of aging in just two weeks!" And not because I think they're a bunch of baloney or false advertising. I just have enough preoccupations as it is to add obsessing over my wrinkles to the list.

I believe what caused me to change my way of thinking was seeing a photograph of a ninety-year-old woman the other day. No kidding, she could have passed for late 60s, 70 tops. And she attributed her youthful appearance to a good skin care regimen from the time she was a little girl--yep, her mama enforced a "No going out in the sun without a big straw hat" rule from infancy. Well, Mama, you stood your little girl in good stead because she looks like she could live to be 120! And she just might, too--she was as thin as a rail so her mama probably enforced a "No sweets after 6:00 p.m." rule too.

But I digress . . . I just came to the conclusion that now that I live in a state where the sun actually, you know, shines from October through March (unlike a certain state-that-shall-not-be-named) as well as the other six months of the year, I might ought to get serious about taking care of my skin. So I took the plunge. And I feel younger already! Leisha even convinced me to step out of my comfort zone and try a few new shades of lipstick, which is amazing given that I have worn the same shade (Loreal Spice) for, oh, I'd say about fourteen years now. That's just sad.