I feel pretty, oh so pretty!

 My hair is fixed!  Praise the baby Jesus, because my hair was a hot mess. 

I need a new beauty routine.  Here is my current one, in all its complicated glory:
I brush my teeth.  I shower on a near-daily basis.  I use Neutrogena facial moisturizer with 50 spf. 

That's it. 

I don't wear makeup. I may have mentioned before that at my fifteen year high school reunion, I thought hmm, maybe I should put on some makeup....but I couldn't find the bag of makeup.  Which tells you how often I wear it. Occasionally if we go to a fancy event, like someone's wedding, I may put on blush, and if I'm feeling crazy, eyeliner. Mascara now drives me crazy and I avoid it like the plague.  Foundation? Eh.  I know I have freckles, why bother covering them up.


I'm tempting fate here, but for the majority of my life, I have had rather nice skin.  In my early twenties I even heard comments along the lines of "you have the skin of a porcelain doll."  I get the occasional zit (omg, I am so tempting fate here---actually, what usually happens to me is that I think to myself, you know, I haven't had a zit in a while, and voila! One shows up that afternoon.) but nothing too bad.  I did have fairly sensitive and dry skin, but frequent moisturizing kept it in check.

A few years ago....I honestly can't remember how long....it was probably around the same time I gave up wearing makeup....I stopped washing my face at night.  This must have been around the time my oldest was born and I gave up all pretense at looking good.

One benefit to not washing my face?  I no longer had dry skin.

Fast forward five or six years.  I still don't wash my face.  However, now I notice that THERE IS GUNK IN MY PORES. Like, lots of gunk.  Washing my face does not get rid of the gunk.

I would like to get rid of the gunk in my pores.  Wth, is this a part of aging?  Along with that one hair that sprouts in the middle of my forehead? But I am OVERWHELMED AND ADRIFT at the massive amount of beauty products in the "get gunk out of your pores" aisle.  What do I use?????  I tried those Biore strips and they didn't work. I still have gunk. 

I am not 19 anymore, I have no need of a zit regimen, and I know that any product with salycic acid is going to irritate my skin.  I am getting wee wrinkles and oh, maybe an liver spot or fifteen (they are FRECKLES, yes, FRECKLES.) 

I am considering getting my first facial.  I've never had a facial.  Know how in those bridal magazines they tell you to get your facial at least a week before your wedding because you might get zits?  I don't want zits.  Those magazines have forever given me the fear of zit-producing facials.

A friend of mine got a facial once, and afterward, her face was all red and pinchy looking where the tech had squeezed the stuff out of her pores.  Don't they say DONT SQUEEZE your zits in all those beauty mags?? Why is it ok to pay a lady to do it, but not squeeze them yourself?

If I were to get a facial, I have a gift certificate given to me by my mother in law to a popular day spa.  I went to get a pedicure with someone at that spa, and there may or may not have been an incident in which people were yelled at, not by me although I was standing right there, and I may or may not be waiting for the popular day spa to forget what I look like, although they may have flagged our names in the event that we ever return.  So if I were to get a facial there they could totally screw up my face on purpose, although I would not know that they did until a few hours later. 

Help me. I need recommendations on de-gunking your pores.  And perhaps a skin regimen for an old lady. Am I right to be afeared of the facial?  Should I just go get a facial?