Hey there adoring fans (Rob Schiffmann)!

It began with an earlobe.  It was a burnt earlobe.  My burnt earlobe.

You see, a few weeks ago I went to visit my family at our beach house (and by beach house I mean a quaint one story cinderblock cottage built by my grandfather in the 50’s on the Tappahanock river in Deltaville Virgina, population 12… I love that beach house but wanted to give you a clear visual of where I spend my summer vacations so that I don’t lead you to believe that our family owns a Hampton’s summer mansion or P-Diddy type yacht because then you would all probably start asking me to “borrow” money to invest in your pyramid schemes).  Before going outside, I slathered myself with sunscreen just as I do every time I go out in the sun.  With all of the jogging, reading, and water sports I do in the summer, I have to be very careful of scorching my pasty/veiny skin.

Look here’s a picture of me jogging at the beach…

But alas, I forgot to put sunblock on my dang ears and they got burned so badly that a few days later a flake of dead ear skin fell into my coffee mug of cabernet (because sometimes you need to drink wine out of a coffee mug…because you’re at work…).  Had this earlobe problem not happened, I probably would have just kept on walking a few weeks later when I came across this woman at Wholefoods.

She was sitting at a desk with what appeared to be an illegal spaceship on it.  At first, I dismissed her.

Woman with illegal spaceship:  Hi there.  Would you like a free skin analysis?

Me: No thanks.

Disclaimer: In New York City, every where you go people are always trying to stop you during your incredibly busy day to give you things that you don’t need often in return for buying things you don’t want.  Example: “Excuse me miss.  Do you like stand up comedy?”  “Sure.”  “Great.  If you give me $1200 dollars and a DNA sample I will give you 2 free tickets to see Stinky Peterson tonight at Pierre Canseco’s Comedy Saloon.  This does not include the 7 drink minimum.”

Second Disclaimer: I’ve never actually stopped when anyone has asked if I like stand up comedy.  I can only assume this is what happens.

After dismissing the spaceship woman, I continued on my way around the store in hopes of finding some free samples of tortilla chips and then stopped in my tracks when I remembered my flaky skin cocktail.  I have actually always wanted to know what was up with my skin and how to take care of it.  How does one prevent wrinkles while simultaneously fighting off pimple gangs?  I have also heard that we humans should get checked by a dermatologist once a year and although I am quite aware that estheticians are not dermatologists, they probably know more than I do about skin and at the very least probably don’t refer to acne as pimple gangs.  Being an uninsured pasty person, this was starting to sound like a good idea.  Plus my blog is about trying to make my life awesome so learning how to make my skin awesome would probably in turn make my life awesome, right?   And I was in a Wholefoods, which was a pretty ok company to trust (aside from my theory that they inject all of the food at the salad bar with lead so that your salad can never cost less than $17.84).  Right?  Plus I still had 20 minutes to kill before any reasonable happy hour started, so why not?  I marched right back over and said…

Me:  Is this like totally free?

Girl with illegal spaceship: Yep!

Me: No catch?  I should probably let you know up front that I’m currently as poor as a hobo.

Girl with illegal spaceship:  It’s totally free.  I’m a licensed esthetician and Wholefoods has hired my company to teach people healthy skin practices.   

Me: Foshizzle?  I’ll do it!

I stuck my head in the illegal spaceship and got some pictures of my epidermis…

The first few weren’t so bad.  When compared to 1,000 women my age and skin type, I was actually doing pretty well especially in the wrinkle division.  She said any findings below 30% were things I needed to worry about but anything above was fine.

Spots 43% and Wrinkles 85% (nice!)

Texture 85% and Pores 49%

And then came the gross part.  Where they remove the epidermis and focus all up on your dermis.  Sun Damage!  Out of 1,000 women my age and skin type I was in the bottom 1%

UV Spots 1% and Brown Spots 12%

Josie Grossie!

Apparently what I’ve always considered to be adorable little freckles are pockets of melanin (or pockets of something that sounds like melanin…I didn’t really take notes…and as I mentioned before, this event was followed by a happy hour so I may be remembering a lot of this entirely wrong).  Now, I know what you readers are thinking.  “Sarah, she’s a shyster!  She’s only saying you look like a dead baby giraffe because she’s trying to make you buy some shit!  You’re the most beautiful skinned person I’ve ever seen.  There’s no way she’s telling the truth!”   And I thank you for saying such sweet things to me readers.   But she didn’t make me buy anything and I think a true shyster would have told me that I had horrible wrinkles and should probably start investing in her company’s stock of unicorn blood, so I trusted her.  She did however recommend some sort of fruit enzyme product that would eat away my sunspots, which sounded really freaky and cool.  Then I asked her if there was anything that I could pick up to rub on my ass cheeks to eat away my cellulite but she didn’t know of anything for that besides cocaine and then I reminded her that I was as poor as a hobo and that cocaine was probably expensive or at least seemed that way on Law and Order.  I told her that I was suprised by the sun damage especially since as an adult, I’ve always worn sunscreen on my face but she said that most of the damage was probably done when I was a kid,

and that I needed to be extra careful and to use atleast an SPF 30 every single day and that makeup with SPF in it didn’t really count.  All in all the whole thing took about 15 minutes and really was totally free, so if any of you New Yorkers are ever around the WholeBody in Chelsea, stop in and see the lovely Winter Cohen from MyChelle Dermaceuticals so she can tell you exactly how much your parents didn’t love you by not properly shellacking you in SPF 2000 as a child.

*If any of you would like to subscribe to my blog to get alerted when I write new posts so that you don’t have to rely on Facebook or that batman like shadow that I post in the sky, please do.  I think there’s a ‘subscribe’ button somewhere.*